Save Our Sorry Selves

Chapter 6

Monday

My head was pounding, throbbing even. I was stuck in a closet with one of the last people I wanted to be with. I still couldn't even process everything that had happened. Peter's dead eyes staring into my fearful ones. Dodging the many bullets flying past me while racing to the bathroom. Chloe's last words and screams still filling my ears. Her blood pouring out on the floor reaching my stall. Almost facing death, but mercifully saved by the least likely person. And here I was now.

Jowen hadn't spoken to me in probably 20 minutes after he questioned if we could at least make out in the closet. I wasn't sure if he was being sarcastic or not, but most likely he was. So many thoughts filled my head, I didn't even know where to begin. If only he were here, rather than rotting in the ground. 

"So.... we better start talking if, ya know, we are gonna be stuck here for quite some time." Jowen casually brought up. "Can you be any fucking louder?" I whisper shouted. "Oh! Sorry, I forgot that we are kinda trying not to die." He began to whisper, with a small smile, barely visible except his pearly whites giving the smile away. 

"We better not be stuck in here forever, we have to get out at some point." I sighed. "Well, I wouldn't mind personally," he said. I could just hear from his voice he was still smirking. I turned my head towards the ground, burying my head in my knees. I had to get out. What happened to Riley? She saved my life right before Jowen did. If not for her, that pyscho Travis would've done exactly what he did to Peter. Put a bullet straight in the middle of my forehead. Where were all my friends? See, this is exactly what happens. Everyone saves me, cares for me, and I do nothing in return. I can't care about anyone or feel anything. Because the truth is, all my feelings, all my cares, went down in the ground with him. He taught me to care when I was about five.

It was my first memory in fact. I was playing with one of the neighbor's kids. I had to be her friend otherwise I would get in trouble for not being nice. We were in the middle of the playroom of my expensive, ginormous old house back in my old neighborhood. We had Barbies tossed all over the ground, I was brushing mine, and she was brushing hers. I was about to put on my favorite heels on my blond girl. I always had a thing for blonds, I secretly wanted to be blond. The second I put them on, she started to whine, "No! You always get those shoes! My turn! You can't be shellfish!" I remember getting annoyed immediately. "Exactly, they're my dolls, so I get to choose who wears what, and what does shellfish even mean?" "It means you don't share things, that's what my mom told me!" "Well, I don't care what your mom says. They're mine." She began to cry and she then pulled my brown hair, bowl-cut style. "Hey!" I then immediately punch her hard in the stomach. She of course screamed. That's when he walked into the room.

"Hey! What's going on in here?" Percy's warm, hazel eyes filled my eyesight. He was about seven but was by far way more mature than I could have ever been. "Nothing" I immediately said. "No! She punched!" "Because she wants to steal my high heels!" "Because she's being shellfish!" That's when Percy's laughed filled the room. "You mean selfish?" "Yea." She quietly said. "Atlas? I need to tell you something. You can't always have things for yourself, and only care about yourself. You need to think about others too. Care about them and their feelings, not your own." He embraced me in his small embrace, but I found comfort in it and I nodded. 

I wish I could always imagine him that way, a sweet little boy that was only trying to help his little sister. But I only imagined him now, being bald, and helpless in a sanitized, white bed. How did I even see his eyes in Jowen's? They were nothing alike and would never be. 

There was a lump in my throat. I had now lost a best friend, not only a brother. And the truth is, I hadn't cried for either of them. My feelings went entirely with my brother. Because watching him be placed down in the cold, dirty, brown earth was like watching my own funeral. And people don't cry at their own funeral, because they impossibly can't.