ZanarkandFayth
ZanarkandFayth
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- Posted: Sun, 19 Jul 2009 21:06:01 +0000
.1
It was my favorite moment, that silence after we’d been talking for hours about everything and nothing, when we were propped against the wall of that old, abandoned place, his arm around my shoulder and my head against his chest. The perfect moment, right there. He hummed something under his breath, a song I was sure I knew but couldn’t quite recognize in the overwhelming silence, as if his quiet voice was muffled by nothing at all.
He squeezed my shoulder gently and rocked slightly in his spot on the dusty floor, a little whimper escaping his lips. I looked up, watching him through a curtain of hair that had fallen over one of my eyes. “You okay?” I asked breathlessly, hypnotized by the look on his face, a strange mix of calm and confusion.
He shrugged subconsciously, limply. “It’s going to rain,” he said simply and he swallowed hard.
My mouth tugged into a grin and I relaxed. He was convinced that it rained wherever he was, no matter the state of the weather before he set foot there.
But as I looked out the dirty old window right across from us, large and grimy, letting little sunlight drift through the dust, I saw a single drop of rain slide down the glass, marking its way through the dirt. With a smile, Wes tapped my shoulder and pointed wearily. “Told you,” he whispered into my ear. “It rains everywhere I am.”
“July, dear?”
Mom called my name once, twice and three times from downstairs, her voice wavering. I didn’t respond, and instead caught another glance of myself in the mirror, a long crack from top to bottom breaking my reflection in two. My face was blank, my hair a tangle of brown and blonde layers spread across the pillows on my bed. Blinking, I wondered if that had been the most movement I’d made in days, that little, involuntary twitch. Or maybe it had been hours, or minutes. Weeks? I wasn’t sure. Time had slipped by me, fallen out of my hands and refusing to completely make sense anymore. At times it seemed as if the hands of the clock on my night stand didn’t move for hours, and at other times it moved quickly, the hands spinning for as long as I watched them.
I rolled over and turned my back to the mirror, burying my face into a pillow and curling into a ball, wrapped in the blankets on my bed. Mom shouted again, her voice becoming louder, an edge of irritation floating up with them. With a huff, I heard her turn on her heel, her shoes hitting against the floor with a deliberate heaviness.
“Sophie, please get your brother,” she said a bit too loudly, as if the threat of my sister coming to my room was such a terrible fate. There was a pause, as if that had been their plan, to simply scare me out of my room. Rolling my eyes, I pulled the pillow closer to my face and listened as Sophie sighed angrily and scooted her chair out from the dining room table, her steps heavy as she stomped up the stairs. Such a hassle it must have been to come get me, such a terrible request that Mom had asked of her. How unfair.
Her footsteps stopped as she lingered in the doorway. I looked over my shoulder and pulled the pillow away from my face. Her face was twisted in a scrutinizing glare, her eyes drifting over the dump that my room had become. Clothes sat in heaps at the end of my bed, books with lines of words that made little to no sense to me anymore were tossed, open, on the floor, and Mom’s attempts to feed me were left on my dresser, untouched plates of food from breakfast to dinner.
“You’re not dead, are you?” Sophie mumbled as she crossed her arms and moved carefully into my room. I winced and felt my hands tighten and clutch the pillow harder, the urge to throw it at her numbed only by the knowledge of the energy the action would require.
Instead, I propped myself on my elbow and squinted at her in the dim light. “No,” I hissed, scooting against the headboard.
Without a word, she moved through the mess, her feet shuffling over the floor and pushing things out of the way. She tossed her head to the side and blew a piece of hair out of her face. “Mom wants you to come down for dinner,” she said, the message stale and practiced, the same one she’d delivered for days on end.
Groaning, she took another step inside, meeting the heap of clothes with a poorly disguised look of disgust. “Come on, Jules, Mom’s worried about you.”
“Why? I’m fine. Peachy.” I flashed a smile at her to prove my point.
Her eyes drifted to the rotting remnants of Mom’s attempts at getting me to eat. “Aren’t you hungry? You’ve been up here since–”
“I’m fine,” I said, cutting her off before she could finish. I held up a hand and unconsciously pulled my knees up to my chest. “Really, Sophie. I’m okay.”
She watched me, unconvinced and took another look around the room, proving her point. Her eyes stopped at the only thing that was okay, the only thing that wasn’t knocked on the floor or in a heap, the only thing I’d left unbroken in a fit of destruction. It was a photo, protected by clean glass and a metal frame, sitting on the edge of my night stand. It was a simple photo of me and Wes, him smiling, me blank and dazed, his sister Halle having snuck up on us to take it. Still, it was my favorite picture of us, though it was my only picture of us.
“Jules,” she sighed, shaking her head as she looked back at me. My eyes stayed fixed on the picture, on his face and the smile that was spread so easily across his face. What had caused it to sour? Sophie didn’t offer a consoling word, and she didn’t sit on my bed to talk. Instead, she took a step back and turned away from me, saying only, “Fine, I’ll just tell Mom to bring you your dinner. Again.”
She lingered at the door, like her being there for any longer would tempt me out of my room. “July?” she said, my name drawn out from her mouth, the tone almost taunting.
The click of the door as it closed was the only signal of her leaving.
“Wes,” I mumbled quietly and pulled the photo off the night stand, holding it in front of me. I traced his smile with the tips of my fingers and looked for any indication of that pain, any little bit of a frown that could have told me he wasn’t keeping it all from me. But there was nothing, no down turned edge of his mouth, no strained happiness in his eyes. Nothing that told me I could have know.
As a pressure built behind my eyes, I smiled for both of us, wondering aloud, “Does it still rain everywhere you are?”