Sleeping Beauty

Chapter 3

America

The singing boy kept coming back and I eventually caught on that he came every other day. Our conversations were quite one-sided considering I couldn't answer, but he would ask me a question and pause for a minute like he wanted me to answer, and most of the time, I did, but sometimes he would ask me a question I couldn't answer.

"The nurse wouldn't tell me how you got here so I figured I would ask you." I heard the quiet echo of the strings of a guitar, as if he was plucking it silently. "So, America, how did you get here?"

I couldn't answer this one because saying it meant it was real and if this was real, I wanted to die.

Today, he stuck one end of a pair of head phones into my left ear and  I assumed he stuck the other end  into his ear. "Wrecking Ball" by Miley Cyrus was playing.

"Miley Cyrus sings it. I didn't know if you were here before or after she went wacko, but I figured I'd play it for you anyway. Once you get past the whole sitting on a wrecking ball naked part, it's actually quite beautiful."

I have only been out for six weeks, thank you very much, Shawn.

So we just sat there and talked and listened to music and he played parts and pieces of songs for me that I was starting to believe he wrote and it was absolutely perfect.

Shawn

I am starting to wonder if America is the reason I'm going insane. For the past two weeks, I have literally locked myself in my bedroom and written song lyric after song lyric. Then, if I got tired of that, I would listen to music and try to figure out if she would like it or not.

Finally, my mom caught on. "Are you feeling alright?" she asks when she brought me dinner.

"Yeah, totally fine mom." I waved her off because  I was losing my train of thought.

She walked across the room and leaned over my shoulder to see what I was writing.

I covered it up with my arms. "Mom!"

She started fake crying. "I get it. You're too old to love me."

So I rolled my eyes and stood up to hug her, but when I went to wrap my arms around her, she shuffled under my them like some ninja lady and picked up the notebook. She started flipping through the pages, giggling at some of them.

"What?" I ask.

She smiles at me. "You got it bad."

"Got what?"

"Spill the beans. Who's the girl?"

I shake my head. If only she knew.

So I went back to the hospital on my normal day and started talking to her and I played "Wrecking Ball" by Miley Cyrus for her and I just sat there and talked to her and nothing could've been more perfect than that moment.

When I was walking out, I was  staring at her and wondering what her voice sounded like when I tripped over the corner of the bed. Some of the sheets fell off. I picked them up off the floor, but froze when I looked back at her. One leg sat on the right side of the bed, perfectly fine and intact. The other one was merely a stump that cut off right where her knee used to be.

I threw the blankets back over her and left as quickly as I could.