Spoiler
Alright, I know what you're thinking... the title is a total cheesy romance story kind of thing. But I didn't have the heart to post this in Romantic short stories just because, well, you'll see. The idea is from an older piece, but I wrote this from scratch as an entry for the None so Blind contest, although I might not officially enter it in the end. I hope you like it!
And here is
***
I love you.
I know your features by heart. You probably don’t know this, but your face always lingers at the edge of my vision. Your wise eyes are always there, carefully watching me, guiding me, giving me strength in times of need. I have never done it, but I know exactly what it would feel like to run my fingers through your hair, like delicate lengths of spun silver.
You are the only one who has accepted me for who I am. When I stopped taking my medications, you were the one who didn’t judge me. You understood why I couldn’t go on swallowing those little blue tablets. While the others raged and threatened and cajoled, you were there, comforting and serene.
In return, I accepted you. I accepted that I could only have half of you, never the whole. I understand that I have no control over you when you aren’t beside me. I don’t listen to all the people who frown upon our relationship. They call me crazy for talking to you, and they may be right, or they may be wrong – I don’t care, as long as I have you.
[i]I once heard a song on the radio. It was during one of those brief stints where they all managed to separate us. I listened to two lines before I shut off the pop culture monstrosity, but the lyrics were actually okay. In fact, they made me think of you, and I often think that helped bring you back.
They say that everything has a soundtrack; sometimes you just can’t hear it. If my life had a soundtrack, songs one through twelve would be your voice. No matter what you say, whether you placate me or insult me or incense me, your voice is musical and pristine. It is perfect in its melodious loveliness. Even when you scream at the top of your voice, your voice soothes my soul.
I don’t know what I am to you. You have called me ugly, worthless, and crazy. You have told me that I could never amount to anything, and I will never fit in. But you have also consoled me, told me that I am beautiful and intelligent and kind. You have comforted me and helped me realize that I don’t need to fit in; the world is made up of judgemental people afraid of anyone different from them.
***
“Sweetie,” she murmurs, running her hand through my hair. She thinks I don’t notice, but I see her as she surreptitiously wipes her palm on the sofa cushion. Surely my hair can’t be that filthy. “What have you done to yourself?”
I look at her. I look at her brown hair, interwoven with strands of grey and white, at her familiar features. Her eyes are closed as if in pain. I don’t say anything, because I know that if I do, my words will come out chaotic and she’ll just get angry at me.
“What happened to the person you were in high school? You had so many friends, do you remember that? You used to get perfect grades and work part-time. You used to be beautiful.”
Does she mean that I am not beautiful anymore?
“Look around you! How do you even live here?” I watch her as she lifts up a t-shirt covered in unidentifiable stains and a thin layer of muck on the bottom half. She kicks aside a fortress of books to expose half-empty cans and Tupperware containers of what must have once been food. I don’t quite remember.
The apartment was worse three days ago, but I don’t tell her that.
She sighs. I think for a moment she might hug me – her arms stretch out awkwardly – but then she draws away, probably sensing that I haven’t bathed in a few weeks. Is there really any point in taking a shower?
“It doesn’t matter,” she says finally, and actually smiles at me. I can’t remember the last time she smiled at me. Mostly she yells, or she just pretends like I don’t exist, and she only has three children, not four. “I arranged you a job interview at McDonalds. It’s for the position of cashier. Remember that, sweetie, cashier.”
“What time.” I don’t even have the energy to put any emphasis into the words and frame them like a question. They fall out of my mouth into my mother’s hands.
She seems to be struggling to keep the smile on her face, but she does it. “What time is it now?” She checks her watch – one I gave her when I was sixteen. Back when I was intelligent and beautiful and popular. “It’s twelve fifteen right now. You have half an hour. You can get ready and go in half an hour, right?”
“Are you leaving?” I hope she is, and the desire to have her out of my apartment gives me some strength and exclamation in my words.
“Well, yes. Lucy invited me over. You’ll go to that job interview, right?”
I look away. Don’t answer. What’s the point of going for a job interview?
She reaches over and takes my hands in her. “Please promise me you’ll go.”
I look down at our hands, interlocked. She grips my hands tightly, and I decide I’ll go. I’ll do her this one favour, because I admire her for touching me. I know she is probably squirming inside, waiting until she can wash her hands, but at least she touched me. I agree to the job interview and usher her out of the apartment.
After she’s gone, I go into my bedroom with the half bath attached. I don’t look at my reflection, just splash cold water on my face and then go to rummage through my closet for something to wear. Clothes are heaped on each other, forming piles on the ground. I grab a random pair of bottoms from the pile and the one thing that is still on a hanger, thinking I’ll get brownie points for wearing bright colors. McDonald’s likes bright colors, right? Look at their clown.
Half an hour later, I am actually, miraculously, seated in front of the manager and someone who I assume is their friend. They both exchange glances before they say anything, and I see the conversation unravelling between their eyes. Are they talking about me?
Finally, the manager clears his throat. “What makes you a good candidate for this job?”
I haven’t thought this far. I try to invent something on the spot that might make me sound distinguished and intelligent. I should have never agreed to do the job interview in the first place.
“Being the cashier at McDonald’s is a fairly simple job. All you need is people skills and a knowledge of money and how to use the cash. Like I said, it’s simple. Simple is good. It’s always better to keep things simple - I mean, you want to teach a kid addition, so you start with one plus one. Because one plus one is so much simpler than five hundred ninety three plus six thousand three hundred fifty nine. Can you do that in your head? I guess you could, but not if you didn’t know that two plus two is four. Or one plus one is two.”
The two men exchanged a glance, looking back at me. Well, I guessed they were looking at me; I could feel the heat of their stare, but I wasn’t looking at them, so I couldn’t be sure. I was fixated by the poster on the wall. It looked like a delicious meal. I started to count.
One chicken nugget, two chicken nuggets, three chicken nuggets, four chicken nuggets, five chicken nuggets, six chicken nuggets. There were six chicken nuggets and five apple slices. Six plus five is nine.
I turn back to face the manager, who is now staring at me as if I was some sort of species he had never encountered before. I clear my throat, thinking that if I talk more, they’ll be impressed. “And you can always build on it. You start with one chicken nugget, and then you have two, and then you have three. It’s like going from one plus one to six plus five. Or cashier to manager.”
The friend whispers something. The manager’s jaw works a bit before he is finally able to respond. “Thank you for your time. We’ll be in touch.”
No, I think. You won't.
***
When I went in for the interview at McDonalds, you told me that I was a fool for even thinking of getting the job. You reminded me that the world viewed me as an outcast, and no sane fast food restaurant would hire me. No one would hire me. You were right.
You are always right. You may have insulted me, but you have never lied. It has been over a year that I have been with you, and you have not yet told me a lie. You are the only one who tells me the truth, no matter how much it hurts. Everyone else says I’m normal. You know I’m special, and special isn’t always a bad thing.
Do you remember the day you first entered my life? Did it alter your existence, as it altered mine?
I remember it. The memories are crystal clear, perfect just like you. I was a bigger mess back then than I am right now. At least now I put on my pants in the morning. The day you came to me, I wasn’t wearing pants. I don’t think I wasn’t wearing much of anything, really; it wasn’t any sexual desire, I just didn’t want to put my clothes on.
You made me feel so bad about myself. You were so faultless, so lovely, and there I was, almost naked and with my face hidden under stringy lengths of hair.. Your speech was flawless and mine was jumbled and scrambled and long-winded. You were the type of person everyone wanted to meet, and I was the one they tried to shut up in an apartment, just so they didn’t have to look at me. I guess I’m still like that.
But I have improved! Although everyone says you just make me sicker, I know you’re the only reason I got better. I had no motivation until I met you. Now I strive to better myself, because if I ever go back to that miserable state, you will leave. I’m sure I’ll find someone else, but they’ll probably be angry and cruel and unforgiving. Not like you.
***
Sometimes I think it’s not me who is different, but it’s my mother. It seems like I have two mothers, not just one. There is the one who raised me, kissing my scrapes and making me hot chocolate with marshmallows and decorating cake; the one who cares, who holds my hands when they’re filthy and finds me job interviews.
And there is this one.
“What do you mean, you’re not going to get the job?”
I swallow, my brain scrambling to come up with words for her. “I mean... they’re not going to hire me.”
“I got that,” she snaps. “I knew it wasn’t guaranteed you’d get the job, but the interview took you all of five minutes. What did they ask you?”
“Why I was a good candidate for the job.”
I feel my sister’s stare on my back. Lucy hasn’t spoken to me since I ‘let my life go to waste and spent my potential on digging a deeper grave for myself’. Her words, not mine. I’m still not quite sure why I went to her house. I guess I wanted to let my mom know how the interview went, since she had gone to the trouble of arranging it for me.
“What else?”
I stare at her blankly. “That’s it.”
My mom gets up from the chair so quickly it topples to the ground. I chance a look at Lucy. My sister is standing near the wall, her spine straighter than a ruler, disappointment rolling off her in waves. Nothing new in that.
“That’s it? That’s it? They’re supposed to ask you more. Your credentials, your strengths, your weaknesses, what you’re afraid of.”
Why is she telling me this? The interview is over, and I already told her what the manager asked me. There’s nothing else for me to say, but she’s obviously waiting for me to say something. “Maybe I got the question wrong.”
She moans, burying her head in her hands. When she speaks again, her words are muffled by her fingers, the words escaping from the brief spaces between them. “Oh God. I don’t know what to do with you anymore.”
Lucy speaks for the first time. Her voice is razor sharp and as cold as ice. “I think it’s obvious, Mom. When’s the last time your darling took the pills?” I carefully consider her second sentence. I didn’t know anyone could make a word as bright as darling sound so demeaning and cruel.
The doorbell rings just then. Lucy goes to answer it and comes with my brother, Nicholas, in tow. In his hands are several small plastic bottles. “Asked and answered,” Lucy hisses, and stomps up the stairs. I hear the click of the lock on her door.
“You need to take them,” Nicholas says. “Look. These are doses from the last couple of months. There’s so many of them.”
My mother moves her hands from her face. I see bright hot fury in her eyes, and wish she would go back to the gentle, kind, loving mother she was when I was young. When I was normal. “You need to take them.” Her voice is hard, flat, and powerful.
Nicholas moves forward with the pills in his hand, and my mom reaches out for me. Gripped by panic, panic that is red as blood, I move away from her. She takes a step forward. “You will take them,” she promises, her voice deadly. She reaches out for me again and I stumble backwards. My foot catches on something and I fall down, my head catching the brunt of the fall.
The world spins in my vision. I reach up to touch the back of my head, and my fingers come away sticky with blood. The last thing I see is my mother towering above me, and a cascade of small blue pills, and then the world goes black.
***
You used to say my speech was too scrambled for you to follow. It irritated you how I jumped from topic to topic with no substantial transition between them. I’ve really been trying to keep a better check on my thoughts and focus on what I’m saying, just so you won’t get mad again. Of course, there’s always the fear that one day I’ll be so good – too good – and you’ll leave without looking back.
You must know this, since I say it so many times, but my biggest fear is that you’ll leave. They keep trying to make me better, but I refuse because you don’t want someone perfect; you want someone broken, like me, so that you can fix them and make them perfect.
If I am ever completely healed, it will be because of you, not because of Haldol or Risperdal or Thorazine.
They say that you’re just a hallucination, and hallucinations are bad, because they mean I’m not getting better – but what do they know? After all, they were the ones who tried to give me the pills in the first place. You say the pills wouldn’t help me.
And you are always right.
***
When I wake up, the world around me is white.
The walls are white. The lone chair beside my bed is white, but patches of it are stained, probably by coffee and tears. The blankets pulled up to my chest are white, and the bandages wrapped around my hand are white. I struggle to remember how I landed here in this pale and pristine world. My hand flies to my head, and touches soft gauze. There’s no mirror, but if I had to guess, the bandages around my head would be white too, unless there’s a blood stain on them.
The next thing I notice is that my hair is gone. All of its greasy strings are shaved away, at least the hair that once hung in front of my face and the hair on the back of my head. There’s a needle jammed into my wrist, connecting me to all sorts of tubing.
On the stained white table beside the bed, there are several plastic containers, full of the little blue pills.
I look around the room for my mother, who must be here. If not my mother, then one of my two brothers. But there’s no one here except you.
You’re standing in the corner. Your figure is blurred and foggy, but I just know it’s you. Your hair is like I’ve always imagined it, long lengths of elusive silver. Your eyes are a bright green, and your lips are curved into a smile as you look at me. Wth a contented sigh, I close my eyes and fall back onto the bed. This is the first time I have ever seen you, the first time you have been more than just a voice.
I open my eyes and you are above me, slowly drifting out of focus. You reach out and I watch as your fingers, long and slender and shapely, touch the side of my face. The sun is in your fingertips as you touch me. A feeling of warmth spreads through me, and then you flicker out of existence.
I comprehend that the IV has probably been feeding me Haldol, at a higher dosage than normal since I have raged out of control.
And it doesn’t matter. Now that I have seen you, no matter where I go, no matter how I change, you will always be with me. I realize you have finally done it: you have healed me.
You have healed me.
***
I think this is better... I certainly hope so! What do you think?
Here as requested!