Prologue
“There’s no note Zoey. She was writing that during her last few days. She was on the medication and she must have thought that she wrote it already, but I can assure you that she didn’t. I know how hard that it is for you to hear but…it’s the truth.” My grandmother put her hand on my shoulder and I just fell to the floor crying in my moms semi walk in closet. “You have to move on Zoey.”
I woke up in a cold sweat and harshly out of breath. I yet again had that nightmare of one of my many worst memories for the second time that week. I sat up in my bed and looked around my dark room, trying to calm my breathing. I closed my eyes, already remembering the exact smell of my mother’s closet and clothes; it smelled just like she would, if she were to pull you into a close hug. I could see everything exactly as if I was sitting in that closet once again, rather then sitting up in my full size bed trying not to forget. While pleading silently to anyone who wouldn’t count the years but see the pain.
I pulled the blankets off of me and turned on my fan and the lights. I walked over to my computer and pushed the flashing red button to turn it on. The hushed hum of the computer reawakening from its nights rest always soothed me. It made me feel so much closer to my world of writing. No matter how I say it, it sounds stupid, but I keep “returning” to the place where I feel no one but myself can judge me.
I clicked the green start button on the bottom left hand corner, and then I proceeded to open a blank document and wait for it to load. I bent over and grabbed a baggy black sweatshirt lying on my floor and pulled it over my head. Once I saw the bright light of the lonely white page, I proceeded to fill it with the black words like I always do.
After I had filled a few pages or so of words that somehow always find a way to flow together, I dared to look at the time on the bottom right hand corner of my screen. 4:17 am. The time pierced my heart just like it always does whenever I see those three numbers together. I closed my eyes and took a breath. I saved my work then minimized it, and shut off my computer screen. I walked into my bathroom and turned on the shower. I stripped down to the buff and entered into the piercing hot water that was shooting down onto my back. I liked being in the shower, because nothing could be heard over the noise that the showerhead makes as the water is shooting down, not even the sound of my own crying.
After a twenty-six minute shower I wrapped a blue soft towel over my long black hair and through on a pair of jeans and a blue top and walked back over to my computer. I pushed the big blue button on the bottom right hand side of my computer screen and saw my deep blue background color with my picture being four symbols that were in deep red and perfectly centered.
. . . ?
Dad was going to kill me if I couldn’t get up for school…again. The time now being 4:49 am, I wasn’t sure if I should go back to sleep or just stay awake and gladly re-enter my world of writing. After some deliberation I decided to not go back to sleep. I preferred not returning to my dreams, because for some reason, my subconscious enjoyed tormenting me this month. The sound of the taping keys and the white boring unappreciated page getting smaller and smaller, always made me feel less stressed about any of the dramatic crap that was going on in my life; and there was always drama in my life.
Once the clock struck 5:43 am I decided I better start getting my house up and ready to face another long Tuesday in a sea full of weekdays.
“Dad are you up?” I asked through the door after quietly tapping twice on his double white doors. I heard a few seconds of movement and a click. Then I saw the light come through from the crack at the bottom of the door.
“Yea Zo I’m awake, can you get your brother up for me?” I heard my dad’s feet shuffling around his room. I also saw his shadow from the bottom of the door as he passed it.
“Sure.” I walked further down the hallway passing my brothers bathroom, which he hated because it wasn’t connected to his bedroom like mine and my dads were. I passed the linen closet and then lightly tapped on my brother’s door filled with danger signs in bold black letters with a bright blood red background. “Good morning sunshine, the world says hello. Okay I tried a nice wake up call, now get up, I think dad needs you.” I waited for a minute or so, receiving no answer. I opened the door a crack and was immediately engulfed with the smell of a nineteen-year-old boy’s room. “Come on Walter; get the hell out of bed.” Still getting no answer I flicked on the light. “Sorry bro but I think…” The sight of an empty bed interrupted me. I looked around to see that the whole room was empty and my brother hadn’t dropped dead from lack of oxygen in a corner or anything. I walked back over to my dad’s door and knocked twice.
“Come on in Walter.” My dad said in a harsher tone of voice than he normally has when he speaks to me.
“It’s me, Zoey, Walter never came home last night, at least I think he didn’t because he’s not in his room.”
“What?” my dad asked while opening the door and pulling on an old faded red short-sleeved shirt at the same time.
“He’s not in his room.” I repeated while my dad just stared at my blankly as if he didn’t speak English. I refrained myself from answering my dad in a sarcastic voice. I was trying to give him a break; I mean it was only six in the morning. “Walter is not in his room, so I am guessing he never came home last night, because I can’t remember the last time he voluntarily got up this early in the morning.” I said the first six words very slowly hoping that the news would be heard and understood by my dad.
“He didn’t come home…again.” Dad said it like a question but I knew he was just saying it out loud in the hopes that it would sound more realistic. I used to cover for my brother all the time, when he did stuff like this. He would climb out his window around midnight and then come home around three or four in the morning. As long as he was sober and not on some god knows what kind of drug, I was fine lying to my parents. It never struck me as a big deal for a seventeen-year-old boy to sneak out of the house.
That was two years ago though, since then everything has changed.
