Moments and Impacts

Impacts of Pictures

Impacts of Pictures

I don't understand what's wrong with me. Dr. Hamilton says it's completely normal, but I hate, and that's just making it worse.

I take deep breaths as a boy bumps into my shoulder. It shouldn't be enough to make me made, but I'm seething. It's taking everything in me to not turn around and scream at the guy. He didn't even say sorry!

"Hey, you okay?" a hand is set on my shoulder, and I know that it's suppose to be reassuring, but I can't help and feel like whoever it is, is just stoking the fire.

"Don't touch me," I snap.

For a second nothing happens and my anger just swells more and more inside my chest, but after a second they remove their hand. I feel bad. They hadn't done anything wrong, they were just trying to be helpful, and I just went a yelled at them.

"I'm sorry," I sigh, closing my eyes and turning my face away from them. Great, now I'm crying.

"Hey, it's okay," they grab my chin and force me to look up at them.

"Hey you're the kid at the hospital, Brently, right?"

He looks like he's on top of the world, and I can't figure out why, "Yeah. I-um-didn't think that you'd be here."

I shrug, "It's better than staying in Malachi's," I choke on my brother's name, "room. And secretly I was kind of hoping that you would be here," I lied. Now he looks like he's on top of the world. His eyes are sparkling with an emotion I can only explain as pure joy, "You know, since you were in the car crash with me, I kind of assumed that you'd be here."

"You wanted to see me?"

"Well, yeah. You're the person that told me about my brother. I don't even know if my parents would have told me if it weren't for you," I'm so happy for my therapy sessions. Dr. Hamilton has been helping me focus more, and I'm now able to finish sentences, full sentences at that, without thinking about each and every syllable that goes into them. Well at least for a while. I get tired really fast, talking doesn't help it, and the more tired I am, the harder it is to focus. I've been sleeping almost sixteen hours each day, "I guess I just want answers. And you knew about my brother, so I was hoping that you could help fill me in with everything that I've missed. I just feel so out of it. Everybody else is all grown up, and my body feels like it's seventeen, almost eighteen, but my brain still feels like the girl who just turned fifteen. And it sucks. Okay, it just sucks.

"It's like my brain is a book, but the author didn't like the last two chapters, so they just deleted it and left it with empty pages. And I'm tired of all the empty pages. I want to understand why my parents don't like to be in the same room longer than they have to. I want to understand why Colston is answering my phone calls. And most of all I want to understand why, whenever I think about you my hair stands on end."

At the end of my speech I feel about ready to collapse. I didn't even realize any of the stuff I was saying was true until it was already out of my mouth.

Brently is smiling at me like he's won the lottery and I'm the giant check, "Do you want to go for a walk? You can ask me whatever you want," he must see that I'm swaying on my feet because he quickly grabs onto my shoulder and steadies me, "I know a private place that we can talk, and you can sit down. Is that better?"

I nod, pinching my nose with my fingers and taking deep breaths.

When I open my eyes he's watching me with careful eyes, "Can I?" he motions a hand around my waist. I nod again, it feels like if he doesn't help me stand I'm going to fall down.

Surprisingly when he wraps an arm around my waist the anger doesn't come back. Instead my body reacts to him in a way that my mind doesn't remember, but it feels like it's the most natural thing in the world, and I've done one thousand times.