The Property Of: Neena Eellante | ✓ |

18. Sincerely, Just another cold night

You remember that Soren kid? Well, everyone came back from that camp thing and the amount of gossip I have heard has given me a headache.

Everyone said some girl I've never heard of and him got lost in the woods together and fell asleep in a tree. Two things; ouch your ass and the second thing, some weird part of me wished it was me.

I wanted to talk to him. He always looked so sick, barely slept and his cheekbones stuck out painfully. Sometimes his eyes sunk into his skull and his shoulders became more hunched than usual.

Some part of me wondered why the boy was deteriorating like a paper bag in water with each coming day.

Maybe that's why I plucked the courage for the first time in my life to talk to him. Ew, I sound like some hormonal twelve year old gossiping about her non-exist boyfriend.

But, you have to believe me that I honestly wanted to discover why he was falling apart but more importantly, why he stayed.

I think I knew that if I looked in the mirror;
if I didn't cover my dark bags underlining my eyes,
if I didn't flush out my cheeks and
if didn't pull my bra clip in another line — I would see myself in him.

I would see the paper bag I had become. The girl who had dropped an excessive amount of weight, who barely slept, who wore fake nails to cover her bitten to blood ones, who wore bras two sizes too small to make it look like she hadn't lost weight.

I think I would see him the mirror.

And I was afraid that - - that boy would look back at me and see himself too. Afraid that he would reach out and touch the mirror like I wanted to. I was afraid our skin would touch.

I was afraid he'd fall apart, dissolve into the water, into the world before I got the chance to SHOW him, not tell him but let him see that he....

That he's not the only one.

Yah, well I talked to him and it went horrible if you wanted to know. I don't blame him though. I started off with calling someone a 'loser' — that girl, I called her a loser without knowing her. I'm cringing at the the entire conversation. Everything I had rehearsed went out the window and someone replaced me.

Something darker replaced me in that moment and it held my mouth close,
I didn't want to say the things I did.
And in a disparate need to recover my mistake I told him it should have been him and me in that tree .

I could cry from embarrassment if I thought about it long enough. Who says that?! I mean I was trying to tell him that I wish we could get to know each other.

The black haired boy had just leant against his locker looking at me with a bored expression, he didn't give a damn about my existence.

I knew what I wanted to say to him. I wanted to tell him that it'll be okay, that everything was okay but all that came out was, "Soren..." as my hand shakily reached for him.

I just wanted to know he was still there. Weirdly enough I just wanted to feel his heart. I think I'm going crazy, I don't think it's normal to think that. Just wanted to know someone like me was still alive, they hadn't given in.

He caught my outstretched hand and he had crushed it. It hurt but some part of me was too dazed at feeling his hand to recognise or maybe to care that it hurt.

He walked away and I had watched everyone watch me, watch him.

But No One, he's not like me. I know that now, from the moment I got the chance to actually look him the eyes.

I could see the pain in his eyes from hurting me. And it was then, I knew. We were nothing alike.

Because I am numb. 
I don't feel remorse like he does.
Am I still human?

I can't feel anything. I know I am numb because I don't cry after being with boys anymore, I keep walking when my father gets angry at my mother, I cast my eyes down when she brings another man into our home and takes him up stairs.

No, Soren McKinin and myself were very much different indeed. That boy felt things.

I guess, he refused not to not feel because maybe he had seen me. He realised once the world forces you to stop caring (something you do in an effort to protect yourself), you become less human.

Maybe Daisy was right, you somewhat need company to survive.

Sincerely,
Just another cold night