A Journal To Share

(6) Slow motion

He started to make me feel safe.
Safe. What a strange word. A short word, but means a lot. Another poem was coming to my mind, but that wasn't the moment.
I knew that was my end. Our end. Our? Well, he was also going to...die, but his expression showed that he wasn't.
He carefully grabbed his large bag from his back and grabbed two ropes and a red flashlight.
I was...hopeless, but I looked at him (barely touching his face because we were very close, as I said before) and I could tell he believed we would escape from that moment, which I didn't, but I liked the effort he was making for me...for us.

Shawn put his helmet on, grabbed the two ropes, told me to hold the edge of one of it, then threw it to the floor (rocks kept on falling) and looked at me and said: "just in case, it was nice to meet you".
He jumped.
...
I couldn't react. I screamed "no!", but that didn't change anything. I held the rope tight so that he didn't fall. He landed.
He then told me I should jump, too. That was when I started crying.
"You have to be strong. Trust in me, because I trust in you and I know you can do this. I'm right here."

I hang the rope to a sharp corner of the cave, and small rocks were falling now. It was the moment to jump.
And I did it. I landed, and he hugged me. It wasn't a "love" hug: it was a "we did it" hug.
After that, I looked at him. He was bleeding. It looked horrible. We went really fast to the house, but my foot was still hurting.
When we arrived, he instantly gave me some ice. Ouch. My foot looked pretty bad.
Shawn's eye was about to explode. He explained to me that when he was falling, a rock kicked him right next to the eye. He was worried. Not about him. Not about me.

NEW YORK, HOUSE.

SHAWN: Sorry. I know it's been an awful experience-

ME: No, you don't have to be sorry. It was me the one who accepted to go
SHAWN: Please, I gave you the idea to do it...

He was sitting on the couch right next to the window. I was in the corner of the couch at that moment.

SHAWN:...What will the TV say about this-
ME: Sorry? What did you just say?
SHAWN: I mean, the newspapers, the critics...What will everyone say when they know you are injured because of MY fault?

My face was blank, and my mouth was wide open because I couldn't believe what I had just heard. He was fake. He was a plastic toy: cold, "shiny" (as all celebrities), and fake. Completely fake. I didn't mean anything to him. The competition didn't mean anything to him. The winner of that competition (me) didn't matter an had never mattered. I just stood up in a way that my foot didn't hurt and left the living room. He stood up and looked at me with like saying "wait...", but I had nothing to wait for.

The next day I went to school with Aaliyah. It was my first day because in my country classes started in February, but in the USA, they started in September. It was a really nice school. Shawn went to classes, too, but I didn't talk to him and he neither did. So, he's plastic AND a coward. 
People were really nice. I met a girl, Jenny, he was super sweet and she guided me all day long. At lunch, I met Kiara and Bright which were very fun and we got to know each other a lot. First days at school were very different in New York than in Argentina. I admit, in Argentina, they're a bit more fun cause we don't really "study", we just know our teachers, get used to the classes, do something to get t know each other, etc.
I ended up exhausted. When I arrived to the house, Shawn's parents were inside having some coffee. They asked me about my foot, always with a smile on their face. I wished my parents were like that.
My foot was a balloon. It was red and violet in the edges and inflamed. It was actually hurting a lot, but I just said I was fine. I wasn't.
After having some cookies, I prepared my school stuff which took me ten minutes and then I went to Aaliyah's room.
Aaliyah had always been very nice to me, and I thought that was because I'm older than her, but a month had passed since I had arrived in New York (I arrived in August, classes started in September) and that night I just told her to treat me normal. She smiled, and we had the best night ever.
We saw horror movies all night long. We made a cushion fight which was very fun because I never did that before and she was like "wha? You never did a pillow fight? OH-MY-GOOOOSH", and that was actually very funny.
She was funny. After watching the movies, which we stopped watching because it was 2 AM and everyone would wake up, we talked about school. I told her about my day and she told me that I was very lucky.
But lucky for what?
She didn't have many friends. She told me that two years ago from that moment, she had four best friends that she never fought with, neither discussed or anything. It was them against the world.  However, one day, at the ball dance, she went to look for something to drink, and she heard her friends saying that they were only with her because of the fame and because of Shawn's fame. She ran to the toilet, and from that day they didn't talk anymore to each other.
I told her that she wasn't alone. She had me by her side.
That just made her sadder. She said that she loved being with me, but that wouldn't last because I would just record a stupid video and then I would fly home again. She was right, and there was nothing I could do about it.
As I lied in bed, I figured out I couldn't sleep. My eyes were wide open. It was a very slow night which seemed to last forever.
Life is a movie. A video. That moment, I wished it was a 2-second video, but instead, it was a slow-motion video, which only showed my slow night with my eyes wide open all the time.