Three
A Small Blue Book
Heavy breathing and a crash is what Mr. Carson awoke to. He maneuvered his way out of the knot his sheets had him in. He began running away from his empty bed and reached his daughters bedroom in what seemed like minutes not seconds. He opened the white door with the silver doorknob to find his daughter at the edge of her bed with her head in between her knees.
“Z-Zoey,” Mr. Carson slowly approached the back of his panting daughter and laid his hand on her shoulder. “What in the world happened?”
As she lifted her head while allowing her eyes to adjust to the new light shining in from the hallway she asked, “Oh, the room you mean?”
“Well yes, but I was also referring to you. You haven’t woken up in the middle of the night in years.”
“It started when um, I can’t remember, it just started up again.”
When we moved here,
That was the statement Zoey kept from washing out of her mouth, but she clamped her jaw to keep the sentence from flooding out. There was no reason to upset her father at—
“Dad um what time is it?
“Ugh, let’s see,” he said while checking the silver watch that was practically super glued to his wrist. “It’s nearly two in the morning pumpkin.”
“Really,” she asked while slowly stretching her back so it was fully upright, even if that meant it had to crack along the way.
“Yes, I’m fifty years old; I think I know how to read my own watch.”
“Dad your forty-nine, and in most worlds that means you’re not fifty yet, but clearly that rule doesn’t apply when it comes to our backwards universe.”
“Hey missy, I thought you loved breakfast for dinner?” Zoey couldn’t help but smile as she thought about a bacon and cheese omelet with pancakes on the side. “That reminds me, we’re getting a pool.”
“Goody, but in what way shape or form does that have anything to do with vanilla French toast?”
“Eh, I guess your right, but your mind can work the same way as me you know.”
“It could, but I try to focus on the fifty percent of me that is mom.”
If nothing else, that one cheep chess play Zoey had just used in her very own life made her more like her father than she wanted to believe. He always changes the topic whenever she was capable of slipping past that steel wall of his, making it possible to hurt him. Zoey hates hurting him, but she feels like she has to, I don’t know how to put it into words exactly, parents seem like a foreign concept to me.
“Well then, I’m happy you’re healthy. I was watching this show before I fell asleep, and this poor girl had to get a heart transplant, and—I’m just happy that’s not us huh?” He concluded his sentence while walking over to Zoey and gently kissing her forehead. He walked back to the door, said I love you, and closed it once again.
“That’s not an apology,” She said to the now visibly empty room. He was the type of person who could never say I’m sorry, because openly apologizing is admitting failure, or at least that’s how Mr. Carson viewed it. Zoey felt her body slowly fold into itself as she slid off the edge of the bed and landed on her fuzzy blue carpet. She wanted to punch her father, but at the same time she wanted to ask him why? Why could he not see how much pain she was in? Her physical pain would come and go, but her emotional pain never really left, it was as if it would take a nap in the closet of her mind, but the second it woke up, everyone in the world but her own father knew.
Zoey eventually stood up and walked over to her nightstand. She pulled open the top compartment and propped the bottom up with her left hand, while grabbing the very small yet thick blue book with her right hand. She slid the slab of wood back into place and plopped back into bed. She opened the front cover, seeing her very own message to the world that was scribbled so many years ago.
This book speaks the truth
Flipping through the old dates and headlines that gave a word or two that summed up the whole of her entries, brought back a flood of memories and some confusion. Whenever Zoey read anything that she wrote about her life she couldn’t help thinking that she was reading her best friends diary instead of her own. She understood that in some teenage worlds having a journal was juvenile, but she couldn’t help herself, she loved to vent onto a blank page. Zoey’s last journal date was June 19th 2010, the day they moved to Branwick, and she forced herself to re-read through the pain of her new found home. She had no idea that she would meet Jason two weeks later, discover the essence that is Chris, and feel a sledgehammer hit her stomach when she awoke that morning to face July 25th.
Now, I am not saying that Zoey is a step or two away from stability, however, she is not about to fling herself off a cliff. She’s lost, like me, at least, like I was. Then again, not to tell this story as if it were sitting on a tether ball, but what teenage girl isn’t lost? Although, get ready to swing in a different direction; Zoey isn’t just an everyday teenage girl with everyday teenage issues.
As Zoey felt the thick pages of handmade paper between her fingers, her head calmed, her eyes focused, and her knees unbuckled. This is odd, was the thought that crossed her mind and she flipped to the next clean page waiting to be entrusted with carrying yet another unique story. I don’t remember—
A chill traveled through the room.
The page practically unfolded itself, and the lack of a title intrigued Zoey that much further. Her eyes began scanning left to right before her mind could even process that she always titles her work, even if it is untitled, to her, it’s still titled, but no, this piece was very different.
I have never shown anyone how hard that is for me to do. Many people have seen my reaction after I realize what a big mistake I have made, but no one has ever experienced how I feel when I walk away. I seem fine and calm, like I really want this, and then, as I begin to feel my feet carry me in the opposite direction, I am so much more then upset. I feel an emotion that has yet to be discovered by scientists and I think I should be analyzed or put in the dictionary between realism and regret. I am more like my mother then I think I have ever wanted to be and I am not fond of that side of her. It caused me to move as many times as I have, to start from scratch, and once I walk away, I do believe that I never get over the person that I was having a successful relationship with. I fall harder and harder for them as time passes. And I get to watch them go on and be happy while I stay in the same place, as I was when I walked away from them, which is pain. I have no one else to blame, and I can see that. That’s right, be alone in the life you built, silencing the heart you would kill to wear on your sleeve, except now, all you do is worry about you breaking it, not him, it’s all you.
“Do you have any idea what this could mean?” She asked as she walked back and forth across the room.
“Detective Martin, she was a fifteen year old girl who felt misunderstood, and couldn’t talk to anyone. She has continuously blamed herself for every mistake that she has made, and that has just added more pressure in her life, and now, she just randomly announces this statement. I don’t see that as a coincidence, and I don’t believe in them either, so, how do we help her?”
“Treatment, medication, maybe a hospital she could recuperate in?”
“She said she feels dead, even though she’s alive. Not one doctor, amount of medication, or mental hospital could make her value her life again. Only she can make herself move on with the world.”
“So, doc, I need a plan. I will not let my daughter just have that weight on her shoulders, so what did I do wrong?” My dad continued rambling how everything’s his fault and how he wasn’t a good enough father. They all thought I was asleep and that I couldn’t hear them, even though they were in the same room as me, and I was wide awake. The detective, the many doctors who are “helping” me, and my crazy, worried out of his mind, father is trying to set a plan for my life. What happened was last night I fell asleep writing in my journal and my dad read my last entry, and was amazed at how emotionally distraught I was. So he rushed me to the emergency room, thinking I needed depression pills or something. Then my nurse changed me into a hospital gown, and noticed all the markings on my stomach and informed my father of my scratching. So that naturally, only made him freak out even more.
Now I am sitting in a hospital with my eyes closed listening to everyone else run my life for me. I feel dead and yet, I feel…nothing. And that’s the best feeling I have felt for a long time. Now I am just relaxing in my hospital bed waiting for my mother’s spirit to come and get me.
The confusion wouldn’t leave Zoey’s mind.
Who would do this?
No one knows about this journal, well clearly someone does now, but—
Who would leave something like this here?
More importantly—
Who would write this?
A mired of questions flooded through her head as she continued to re-read the journal entry that no one was supposed to read. A poor girl was living a demoralized life, undetectable. She had no more left turn for when nothing went right and she awoke shaking in her bed, on February 14th 1999, much like Zoey in the sense that her shaking body was having yet another fit. Zoey was unaware of my two realizations that night—
1. No one was ever supposed to read that, but I decided against my better judgment, and for the first time in twenty or so years, I feel no regret.
2. Zoey was about to learn of a broken girls past.
But that my friends, is a story I believe you are not prepared to hear, so, welcome to boot camp.
The real question that didn’t just appear in Zoey’s head, it banged through eight of her protecting walls to make sure it was heard, was less than five words, How did someone know? Zoey spoke these words aloud, nothing above a whisper, yet she immediately regretted placing that question in the open space of her four walled room, just a doorframe away from entering her very own house. Granted, a question wasn’t about to repeat itself to the world, but she wasn’t too keen on getting comfortable with speaking parts of her mind aloud.
As Zoey realized that she couldn’t shake the Goosebumps off her arms, she closed the book, placed it back in its secret home and crawled into bed. Only then did she think to check her phone, and to her surprise, there was two new voicemails from Jason and one text message. This text message caught her eye, not because it was filled with apologies, hearts, and care. No, this was something much more special, this was a blank text message from her very own brother, and she was not about to miss this.
Throwing the covers off her now warm legs, she turned the knob and pulled open the door in almost one second. Before allowing herself to step from the carpet to the wood she turned her head, noticing the piles of books, clothes and shoes that seemed to be reproducing in the middle of the floor. She took a look at her window that was allowing the cold draft to enter in, the widow she could have sworn she always closed before bed, the window that brought her world that much closer to mine.
Hey Teardrop. 
Okay, I have to say that this could've been fairly good, except I felt that your description was really awkward and your dialogue a little - no, a whole lot - unwieldy. While you refrained from exposition in your usual writing, you did so much of it in your dialogue it didn't seem natural, and I couldn't hear your characters' voices in that muddle...so you pretty much lost me quickly. Just use natural convo, okay?
Robyn.
Hey, Teardrop here! My nitpicks, and details are in the spoiler.
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