A Falling Sky

Chapter 2

I walk into my boyfriend’s apartment and shut the door behind me, closing my eyes. I can’t allow myself to even admit that I find another guy attractive, simply because I’ve never found anyone else attractive—it’s like I’m asexual or something. I think that it has to do with the energy thing inside of me.

This “energy thing” as I sometimes call it—but my boyfriend, Heath, hates when I call it that because it sounds stupid—anyway, this energy within me is hard to explain. It is the thing that makes me change the weather. For example, if I am feeling particularly upset, it will affect the weather by making it rain. The amount of rain and area of rain depends on how worked up I get. Well, I guess so, anyway. It’s not something that I’m totally sure of.

The only experience that I have is when my mom died in 1999. It was January 1st and a snowstorm began in Chicago. She was driving, trying to make it to my aunt’s house for a New Years Day party when she hit ice on the highway and…well, you can guess.

When I got the news, the snowstorm picked up with a vengeance. On January 2nd, almost 20 inches of snow blanketed the entirety of Chicago and further—the greatest single-day snowfall ever recorded in Chicago. The howls of my sobs rocking through my body matched the howls of the frigid wind outside. My tears rained down my cheeks like the wet snow fell. My heart turned to ice—the same ice that my mother skid to her death on.

I shake myself out and notice that the room has become significantly darker, with the clouds covering the sun outside again. Whether it is my doing or not, I don’t know. I haven’t thought about my mother in a long time in fear that I might lose control again.

Sometimes, I think: Maybe if I were just happy that day, I could’ve stopped the snowstorm from ever beginning. I mean, the snowstorm began naturally—I didn’t cause it— but I sure didn’t help it either. If I were happy, I could’ve cleared the storm clouds and then ice never would’ve blanketed that road. It’s dangerous to think this way and it makes my icy heart crack and split like being chipped away by an ice pick. Heath and my father have told me many times that it is not my fault, but I can't help but feel that it is. But I learned long ago, that I can’t control my emotions like that and therefore I can’t really control the weather.

But whatever. I need to stop thinking about this because I’m putting myself in a funk. I wipe the bangs from my eyes and call out around the apartment.

“Heath?”

No answer. I decide to see if his roommate is home.

“Bradley?”

I peer into each room of the small apartment but only see empty, unmade beds. In their living room, their video game controllers are spread out with a bag of Doritos open on the coffee table. I decide to stick around and wait for them.

I plop down on the couch and pick up their remote with two fingers. It’s a habit I do. They think I don’t see them put their hands down their pants to itch their balls, but I do. And when it comes to washing their hands? I don’t think that there is even any hand soap anymore in the bathroom after I used it all. They never bothered to replace it. Ugh…boys.