Paper Stars

15

Charlotte Hollins
Before---3 years ago
East Hills High School, Senior Year
Lizzy is dead.
The thought is constantly circulating in my consciousness. When I'm sitting at the kitchen table taking online classes on my laptop, or when I'm doing the dishes for Aunt Joan, or when I'm down in the basement vigorously practicing the drums, it will materialize from the haze of my mind and hit me like a bullet. Fast and quick and completely unexpected, it tears through my flesh and leaves a bloody mess behind. It won't heal for days, but it doesn't matter when it does. It's a wound that'll only be torn open again.
Summer is more of a curse than a blessing. With no more schoolwork left to do and officially under house arrest by Aunt Joan and Uncle Kenny until I prove myself "responsible", it's difficult to keep the dark thoughts at bay. I can hardly sleep anymore; the thoughts like to pester me relentlessly during the night and keep my mind awake until the early hours of the morning. The few times that I eventually doze off, I'm awakened with a jolt, shivering and drenched in cold sweat. I've talked to Dr. Rodriguez about it, but she said there's nothing she can do. I'm not allowed to take any medication for at least six months after my discharge.
The days are hardly better than the nights. The thoughts are less persistent, but they still drive me crazy. One day Aunt Joan came home from work to find me in her bathroom, crazy-eyed and hysterically trying to bash open the lock on the medicine cabinet with an iron. That resulted in an over-night stay at the rehab center and a three hour long therapy session with Dr. Rodriguez. She told me to find methods of distraction, something to drive away the thoughts.
Drumming helps a little. I hide in the basement for hours and play the drums until my shirt is soaked through with sweat and the skin on my palms is raw. I also jog around the neighborhood, at Dr. Rodriguez's suggestion. Some days, the days where the thoughts are really bad, I don't even get out of bed in the morning. I just sit in my bedroom and stare at the wall while my fingers make paper stars. By the end of the day, the floor by my bed is completely littered by them.
Sometimes Emma watches me. I'll look away from the wall for a second and see her standing in the bedroom doorway. Whenever I come back from my jog, the curtain on the front window will move and I'll see Emma's face. Sometimes when I'm playing the drums she'll come down to the basement and pretend to organize her folders of cello music, but I know she's really just supervising. Making sure that I don't do something stupid, like try to break into the medicine cabinet again.
Every time I see her, my gut twists. I'm the one who's supposed to be watching over her, not the other way around. Ever since I was 4 and she was just a baby in the crib next to my bed while mom worked two back-to-back shifts at the hospital. Ever since mom had to go in for treatments that she couldn't afford and Emma and I sat in the hallway outside the chemotherapy room and waited for hours. Ever since mom's funeral, when Emma was just 4 years old and she didn't understand what was going on but she was crying anyway. I held her hand and put my arm around her and said, "Don't worry, you've still got me. I'll take care of you."
And here I am, fucking up my promises again.

***

Aunt Joan and Uncle Kenny decide to send me back to East Hills High in the fall for my last year of high school. Walking through the doors on the first day of school, I can't help but feel like I've walked into a gaping black hole. All around me students are talking, smiling and laughing with their pearly white teeth, embracing their friends, strutting around in their special First-Day-of-School attire that they're only going to wear once. The seniors are the loudest of the bunch, because this is the year that we're the kings of the school. "This is going to be my year," every one of them is thinking. "This is going to be the year where everything happens, where everything falls into place."
Everyone is thinking that—except for me. Because after the sudden turn of events nine months ago, I no longer believe that bullshit.
When I walk through the doors, the only thing I feel is emptiness. Lizzy is gone, and without her, I'm just another face in the mass. I'm no one.
This is not going to be my year.
For all of September, I keep the dark thoughts away by throwing myself into my schoolwork. I don't skip a single class, and I spend lunchtime in the hallway doing homework. I keep straight A's and relish in the expressions on my classmates and my teachers' faces whenever I hand in completed homework, or get 100% on a quiz or test. It's not much, but it feels damn good. I've buried myself so deep into my schoolwork that it's easy not to notice—or at least pretend not to notice—everything going on around me. Like the fact that Alejandro is back from juvie and is loaded with new goods from his supplier. Or how Flet and Nadia Ganesh are dating now, and have been dating since February. Or how Flet got noticed by an LA producer and is flying out to get signed to a label at the end of the year. Or how Flet hasn't talked to me in 2 years. Or how Flet walks past me in the hallway and can't even see me anymore.
I just bury myself deeper and deeper and ignore it all. None of it will matter in a year anyway.
October arrives, and that's when I realize that I've been careless. I didn't build my walls of schoolwork and ignorance strong enough, because the dark thoughts find a weakness in the brick and leak through like drips of rain through a leaky roof.
It hits me during while I'm walking from my fourth hour to my fifth. I blink, and all of a sudden the crowd of students around me feels like it's pressing closer and closer. My lungs shrink and I feel like I'm suffocating. I look over my shoulder for Lizzy, but she's not there, there's just an empty space where she's supposed to be.
Youknowwhatwouldmakeallofthisgoaway.
I lift my head up and see Alejandro at the end of the hallway, talking to some freshman.
It'snothardtodo.
I spin around on my heel and weave through the crowd, pushing people out of the way in a desperate attempt to get away. I start to approach the bathroom, but my feet freeze in place once the memories of smoke and white powder and Lizzy with a cigarette between her fingers come flooding back.
Stoprunningaway.
I need to scream, or puke, or just explode.
The late bell rings. The last few students filter into their classrooms until it's just me, standing alone in the hallway, trying to remember how to breathe again.
My feet take me to the library. I find a place way in the back by the nonfiction shelves, where nobody ever goes. As soon as I sit down, the explosion comes. Tears and snot and painful sobs that rip apart my throat.
I have never felt so alone.
I don't know how long I sit there, but eventually I open up my backpack and take out my emergency paper strips. My fingers are a blur as I rapidly fold and tuck until I have a pile of paper stars in my lap. As the minutes pass, the sobs eventually fade and the tears dry and the dark thoughts slink away to the back of my mind, whispering that they'll be back soon. I don't know whether or not to tell Aunt Joan about this. I don't want another three hour therapy session with Dr. Rodriguez, or an overnight stay in rehab.
"Charlie?"
I look up. A library cart with books sticking out of it is positioned by the nonfiction shelves, and it's driver is none other than Fletcher Gibbs.
Well shit.
Flet halts the cart and peers down the aisle at me, taking in my red puffy eyes and the pile of paper stars in my lap. "Are you all right?"
The question is so vague and out of place that I laugh, a sharp bitter bark that causes Flet to startle. "Well, that depends on your definition of 'all right.' My definition is 'it's none of your damn business.'" I look back down at my lap and make one final fold in my paper star before dropping it into my lap and picking up the next strip. "You can leave, you don't have to play Mr. Good Samaritan with me."
I feel a quick pang of guilt for being so cold, but I ignore it. After all, that's what I've become good at.
Flet doesn't seem to get the hint. He abandons the cart and takes a few cautious steps towards me, like I'm a rabid animal that might bite at any second.
"I'm..." He swallows hard and takes another step closer, his hands shoved in his pockets like he always does whenever he's nervous. "I'm sorry about Lizzy."
I try, I really do, but no matter how hard I bite my lip it won't stop quivering. Silent tears stream out of the corners of my eyes. My lungs are closing up again.
"How'd you hear?" I ask, my voice audibly shaking and choked from the lump in my throat.
"Overheard some seniors in the hallway last April." He's standing one step away from me now, and his shadow falls over my face. He's gotten taller since we've last talked. "I wanted to talk to you, but you weren't in school."
I take slow deep breaths through my mouth, trying not to break into sobs in front of Flet.
"You wanted to talk to me?" My voice is barely above a whisper.
There's three beats of silence, and then Flet sits down next to me. Warmth radiates from his body onto my cold clammy skin. "I wanted to talk to you on that last day of exams, before winter break, but you left before I could. And then you didn't come back to school after that." He shifts. "And then Lizzy..."
The sobs break. My entire body is shaking. My vision blurs. I can't stop crying.
Flet's arm ends up around my shoulders. "I'm really sorry, Charlie."