When the Lights Go Out {complete first draft}

Day Five - Stay With Me

There are fifty-two Fridays in a year, but this year, I had fifty-seven.

 

I don’t think this was about what I was doing with my life anymore. I was still dying. I was still waking up at one in the morning, on a Friday, to Vincent’s phone call. This was about something else. But this wasn’t about me, I didn’t think anymore, it couldn’t be.

                  When I sat up, I felt heavy. All my limbs were aching and my head was pounding. I didn’t know how much more of this that I could take. My brain was working on overdrive, and I wondered when it would give in. I couldn’t die again. I don’t think my body could take it. When I woke up, the first thing I felt was the gun shot going through my stomach, even though there was no scar. I wasn’t waking up, weeks later, from a coma, with a gunshot wound. I was shot hours ago, in a restaurant, in front of my mother, but it didn’t kill me because I was already dead.

                  My phone rang for a second time, and I jumped at it, turning it off. Make your own way home, I wrote, messaging it to Vincent. Then, turning my phone on silent, I went back to bed for a few hours. I tried to sleep straight away but it was hard. I had so many questions running around my head. Why was this happening to me? Why did I keep dying? Why was I waking up on Fridays’ still? Was I missing something? What did I do to deserve this? There were so many questions, I just couldn’t keep up, but eventually, listing them all off, I fell asleep again.

                  When I woke up, again, the light was streaming into the room. Kendal’s door was being shut down the hall, and her footsteps lightly patted down the stairs. I got out of bed, and pulled on some clothes. I assumed she was going into school today with Matthew, as I hadn’t spoken to George, or told him to win my sister back, because I hadn’t gone to pick up Vincent, or talk to either George or Kendal. But I didn’t have enough energy to run after her and tell her she was making a mistake. Not today. I’d have to deal with it, at school, and make them see eye to eye. There was no other way for it. Matthew could have it his way, just for now.

                  I didn’t bother putting any make up on – why should I? I only had a certain amount of time before I died again; I wasn’t going to waste it by slapping foundation all over my face. Instead, I grabbed my bag, and made my way down the stairs. My sister bounced out the front door before I even got to her, and I didn’t go after her. She’d made her choice, and until I fixed it, she was going to continue down that path – a path similar to the one that happened the day I died. That would chance, though, I made sure of that. I wasn’t going to let that mistake ruin her life. She wasn’t meant to travel with Matthew, she was meant to ride with George, the boy she loved, because she needed him and he needed her.  

                  My mom was in the kitchen, with my younger brother. I looked at him, realizing how old he really was. He was fifteen, and was shaving, but I had never thought of him like that. Not really. He was my baby brother. He barely spoke to us – only mom – because he was a moody teenager, but still mommy’s boy, even if he didn’t want to admit it out loud. I knew his interest. He liked computers, computer games, running, and reading. He read all the time. Only a handful of times I’ve been in Jowan’s room, and I can’t always remember what it looks like, but I know there are books everywhere. You can’t get away from them. He truly is a typical teenager boy, even if I do still think of him as a ten year old.

                  Jowan looked up from his seat, sipping and slurping his orange juice. I smiled awkwardly at him, realizing I hadn’t spoken to him in weeks, definitely hadn’t really spoken to him since I’d died, either.