FACELESS

Chapter 15

AFTER

I tell Jesse I feel like total shit and a train wreck the next time she meets me. My bandages had been just changed just minutes before she came in, now her hair pinned neatly on her head and her dress ironed. She wears two fluffy, pom pom earrings on her ears. Today she walks in with heels.

High stiletto heels.

I hear her footsteps before I even see her enter the room.

I tell her I really feel like shit.

"And when did this started?"

"Ever since..." I trail off at my sentence. Do I say after the incident or before? Does it start the moment the fire had touched the first layer of my skin, eating me and my will to live alive away in matters of seconds? Or does it start from the day I changed my school? The day me and...

"Bailey, I guess."

Her name.

It sounds... strange on my tongue. How funny.

How funny that someone close to you can change in a blink of an eye.

"Bail...Bailey?" She mutters the name. She says it multiple times.

"Bailey. Bailey. Bailey..."

Then she pause. And then she speaks.

"Who is Bailey?"

I've asked myself too many times the same question, laying against the bed frame, looking up at the ceiling with chipped painting  and the loud, mechanical whirring of the fan above my head. Who is Bailey?

"A friend of mine, I guess."

"A friend?" Jesse scrunched her eyebrows together. "I've never heard you mention her before, is she... in the same school?"

"We were in the same primary school as well."

"Oh." Jesse said. She stills for a second.

"So." I say.

"What?" Jesse blinks, she hesitates for a moment. "If you want to talk about her, that is."

"Yeah, I— " I swallow, blinking back this fear. Her name doesn't come to me easy. "Abigail's fine. I can, talk about her. It... just feels really weird, that's all."

"Why is it weird?"

I pause for a moment, taking a shallow breath. Images of Bailey flashed into my mind, our first memories together. Our first time eating together in our school cafeteria, giggling at each other awkwardly in the beginning. We had our periods on the first day of school together as classmates for the first time in 6thgrade, and clicked off since then as best friends.

We did everything together. We had called each other every day for 2 hours, we ate together and she sang to me and we laughed at everything together. I hadn't felt happiness in so long during that time, when my parents were struggling in the business and on the brim of divorce. She was there. Bailey was always there.

Until I messed up and I fucked up and I ruined everything like I always do.

"Bailey and I were close, you know?" I speak out, breaking the silence in the room. "The kind of closeness where you were sure the love you have for someone, you could die for them?"

Jesse pauses, she blinks and then she says: "Yeah, I know."

"Me and Bailey were close, we were so... corny, actually. I needed reassurance constantly due to my parents, and she... she assured me I was her best friend, assured me that I – "

My voice broke at the end, cracking up. Tears formed inside my eyes slowly and I bit my lips, forcing myself to not let the tears fall down onto my cheeks.

" – that I was the closest thing she ever had. "

Then I let out a laugh, the laugh filled with the bubble of sadness that sunk itself into my core that made it seemed like the world was cruel and harsh and I just had to force myself through everything by smilingand laughingas if everything's fucking okay. Jesse has a weak, sympathetic smile on her face. She nods for me to continue as I laugh pathetically at how shitty I feel. Its feels so awful to speak about this to a stranger – someone I never even knew until this incident happened and I become fucking disfigured and now finally someone who actually cares for me but then I realize that Jesse gets paid and maybe she does care but only partially and only with the money.

And I still don't have anyone who cares till today.

"Bailey was just, fucking everything, okay? I could die for her and I knew maybe she wouldn't but I didn't even fucking care I was bullied for so long. I was bullied for 4 whole years till I met her and I could become myself again. I was carefree and she made me feel better."

I am crying now, hysterically. I sob into the rough blanket with torn out pieces of yarn and acrylic as the snot and mucus sunk into the fabric and the tears swelling up my eyes. I can't breathe for a moment, sucking in air and letting it out the next second and my shoulders heaves up and down god Bailey I miss you Bailey Bailey Bailey–

"Hey, Audrey, calm down. Calm down. Breathe."

Fuck you, I'm trying, can't you fucking see?

"Don't think of her now, Audrey. Audrey –Look at me, Audrey."

I raise my head up, feeling my lungs that turned numb and my feet and arms that was trembling and icy cold with pins and needles through them with black spots, dancing in circles in front of my eyes. Through them, I can barely make out the figure of Jesse. She dances like shadows on a wall.

"Focus on me, Audrey. C'mon, girl, you can do this. Look at me."

"I'm looking." My voice comes out breathless. I can't breathe. I feel lighthearted.

"Breathe. Slowly. 3 seconds in, 3 seconds out, okay?"

I feel so deoxygenated that it took me a few seconds to even understand what she was saying.

"Okay, I'm okay. Okay."

Jesse stares at me. I do not fumble under her gaze. I am used to how she looks at me, and her presence is the only person I've been able to communicate with after the accident.

Her phone rings.

The screen lit up ominously in the dim lit room, her screen flashing and the phone buzzing loudly, trembling against the table.

The caller ID reads: Aunt (Melissa)

Melissa.

My mother.