Emily Brunner stared with disgust at the figure standing before her, unable to take her eyes from its features. Its face was gaunt and nearly paper-white, its dull brown eyes protected by semi-circular moats of purple shadow. Its hair, brown and straight, fell haphazardly down its back, stray strands dangling here and there over its face. It curled up its lips and blew, banishing these hairs from sight, and sighed.
Finally, Emily ripped her eyes from the mirror. She may not have liked what she saw there, but she had long ago given up on the fantasy of doing anything about it. She had enough in her life to deal with without also concerning herself about her appearance, which seemed like a full time job to many of the girls her age. If she made it through the day, that was enough for her, appearances be damned.
She crossed the small room to her bed, which was made fairly neatly with plain, solid-colored blankets. On it sat her phone, a small specimen which had been considered outdated by the general public for a couple of years. She flipped it open, revealing nothing more than a standard number pad and screen, and accessed her most recently received text message. It was from a boy named Aiden, who was not only her best friend, but also her only true one. They had met in Kindergarten, and had become inseparable almost at once. As the years passed, Emily’s other friends grew more and more distant. By the time her father died in seventh grade, she only had a few left, and her subsequent descent into depression drove even them away. Aiden was the only one that remained, and for that she was eternally grateful.
Emily read over the text message quickly. Hey, why don’t you come over and hang out tonight? it suggested. I’m attempting to make some dinner. We can share! Aiden would often invite Emily to come over in the evenings, which was yet another thing for which she was grateful. He knew that she hated being in her own house nowadays, and his parents and younger sister seemed to view her as an honorary member of the family, so he never had any opposition to such proposals. Emily honestly didn’t know what she would do without these evenings with him; they were the only things that kept her sane.
A brief smile played across Emily’s lips as she read the text message, and she promptly closed the phone, stuffing it into her jeans pocket. She grabbed a hoodie from where it lie, draped across the back of her computer chair, and threw it on over her tee shirt, crossing her room in the process to her dresser, on which sat a simple wooden incense burner. She lifted the incense stick from it and blew it out, a thin wisp of fragrant smoke jolting out of its lazy path at the touch of her breath. She placed the stick back inside its holder, taking a deep breath of the lavender smell which remained in her room. She loved incense, not because she held any predisposition toward meditation, but simply because it allowed her to make her room smell of any substance she desired. Her room, this small block of territory, she could control, and she found that comforting.
Finally, it was time to leave her sanctuary, and she opened her bedroom door. As she stepped across the threshold, closing the door quickly behind her to avoid contamination, her senses were immediately bombarded. Her nose began to burn with the scent of marijuana, which eternally hung in the air, while simultaneously she was psychologically attacked by a cavalcade of obscenities. She knew the source of the madness – her mother’s boyfriend was watching television and getting high again. The occurrence was nothing out of the ordinary, as it happened on a nearly daily basis. However, she would never cease to be disappointed at the discovery.
She made her way quickly down the hall, breathing as little as possible, and slipped past the living room doorway and into the kitchen as quickly as she could. An older woman was bustling about the kitchen, beginning to prepare whatever she had planned for dinner that night. She was a little pudgier than Emily, though both females had builds that could be deemed average, and she shared the girl’s straight brown locks.
“Hey, Mom, I’m going to Aiden’s for dinner tonight, okay?” Emily said.
“You sure you don’t want what I’m making?” her mother asked in return, never once raising her eyes from what she was doing.
“Yeah, I’m sure,” Emily responded. She had no idea of what her mother was making, but she knew that whatever Aiden decided to burn in his oven that night would be better, if for no other reason than the company involved.
“Okay, then.”
Emily sighed and turned around. If only getting out of the house was that easy, she thought, and she made her way slowly from the kitchen. She braced herself in the hallway, taking a deep breath, and stepped into the living room. She moved with quick determination, keeping her eyes set on the door before her, trying her best to ignore the useless lump on the couch and the obscene filth on the screen across the room from it. At least he finished smoking, she thought grimly.
“Where’re you goin’?” the buzz cut bearing monster asked her as she crossed the only field of space which mattered to him—that between himself and the television.
None of your business, Ken, she thought, but stopped herself before the words came out. “Aiden’s,” she said instead.
He grunted in acknowledgement. “You spend too much time over there at your boyfriend’s,” he said, his eyes returning to the television show before him.
“He’s not my boyfriend,” Emily muttered, bending over to put her shoes on.
“Yeah, sure,” he scoffed, taking a swig from the beer bottle resting in his hand.
Before any more conversation could come up, Emily grabbed her mother’s keys off of the end table and hurried out the front door, closing it quickly behind her. Chilly autumn air met her on the other side, and she took a deep breath of it to clear her senses. Sometimes she felt like she was suffocating in that house.
As she made her way down the stairs of her front porch and toward the old, silver sedan that her mother (and consequentially, she as well) drove, her mind replayed the argument that had transpired between herself and Ken. Though she had never outwardly stated any sort of romantic feelings regarding Aiden to anyone, Ken’s assumptions were not as far off as she portrayed them to be. Perhaps in no small part due to how well he had treated her over the years, Aiden had grown in her mind’s eye to something more than just her best friend. He was her ideal. The thought of him was what got her through the day, and she often found herself thinking about him in ways that a mere friend shouldn’t. However, this secret was one that she planned to take to her grave. Though she had always fantasized of him one day asking her out, she did not expect it, and she was adamant on never revealing her feelings to him herself, though not just because she was shy. While her life continued to be miserable, the risk of a romantic entanglement ruining their friendship remained rather threatening. If she lost him, she would lose everything. Life’s last glimmer of hope would be snuffed out, and she would descend into blackness forever. That was one eventuality which she could not stand to face.
Her thoughts of this continued as she got into the car and pulled out of the driveway. Emily lived in a fairly rural area, and the general lack of traffic and other such distracting driving elements allowed her mind to freely wander during commute. But what if he asked me out? she pondered to herself as she drove toward the bridge which separated the loose distribution of houses in which she lived from the slightly tighter cluster in which Aiden resided. Would you say yes? she asked herself. The scenario had always seemed so improbable that the way in which she would respond had never truly occurred to her before, and her mind faltered as she tried to imagine it. Aiden’s face, flashing a hopeful smile, appeared in her mind’s eye, and she tried to picture herself before it, opening her mouth to answer him, listening for what she would say.
Then, just as suddenly as the image appeared, the piercing sound of a loud siren jolted it from her mind. She jumped, and her eyes caught sight of something that made her stomach turn over. Looking in the direction of Aiden’s house, Emily could see a thick cloud of black smoke behind the treetops. Immediately, Aiden’s text message ran through her mind. I’m attempting to make some dinner. We can share! he had said. She began to recall Aiden’s history with cooking, or lack thereof. It was rare for a night to pass when both of his parents were away. When this did happen, his younger sister would demand they order pizza, a request which Aiden had always been happy to oblige. In fact, now that she thought about it, Emily couldn’t once remember seeing Aiden cook anything more complicated than perhaps some microwavable popcorn.
Adrenaline rushed through her system and she clutched the wheel with sweaty palms. Dread was pounding in her temples as she maneuvered her mother’s car off of the bridge and around the short series of bends that would slowly but surely reveal the beginnings of what one might say was Aiden’s “neighborhood.” Please let him be okay, please let him be okay, she chanted internally over and over, and soon the entrance to his short, tree-enshrouded gravel driveway sprang up before her. She turned into it, breathing an intense sigh of relief. His house sat before her, perfect and untouched, while the smoke continued to pour from some other site still beyond the trees.
She parked her car and sat back in her seat, releasing the steering wheel and closing her eyes. Relief pulsed through her body, replacing the adrenaline, and for a moment she felt drained of all energy. Then she heard a distant, muffled voice, which brought her back to the present and caused her to open her eyes.
“Are you okay?” it had yelled.
She leaned forward and peered up through the front windshield. Aiden’s house was built on a hill, and from the driveway, its wooden front deck seemed fairly high up. Despite this, she could still see the figure of Aiden leaning on the deck’s railing, looking down at her with concern in his eyes. The sight of him was enough to rejuvenate her, and she quickly unfastened her seatbelt and leapt from the car.
“I saw the smoke and I got scared,” she told Aiden as she hurried up the stairs to join him. “I thought it was you.”
“You thought it was me?” he echoed, raising an eyebrow as he watched her curiously.
She made it to the top of the stairs and threw her arms around him in relief. He hugged her back, mildly concerned.
“Well, you said you were making dinner yourself tonight, so I thought…” she began to explain, her voice trailing off. They broke apart from their embrace and her eyes lowered from her attempted explanation.
He smiled at her playfully. “Wow, you have absolutely no faith in me whatsoever.”
