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Sometimes he uses his words like weapons to chip away at my icy exterior and sometimes he can break through to the slightly defrosted layer beneath. But then again, sometimes he just hits solid iceberg. For instance, he knows what he’s doing when next he says, “And you should smile more too.” I look away, embarrassed. He has no way of knowing how sometimes it physically hurts to smile. How a smile can sometimes feel like the biggest lie I’ve ever told.
And I’m terrified he’ll see through the tough iceberg layer, and he’ll discover not a soft, sweet girl, but an ugly fucking disaster underneath.
And her big secret is really not such a huge deal anymore. It was all so long ago now, it practically never even happened.
I try to whisper in the girl’s ear: “Edy, get up. Just lock your door. That’s all you need to do. Lock your door, Edy, please!” I shout, but the girl doesn’t hear me. It’s too late.
“Face it,” she says, her words hard, “all you have to do to get over a guy is take a shower—that’s pathetic!”
He had to leave. Leave me here to rot.
I care only about this moment—about forgetting, about leaving myself behind.
I’m tough. I can take it. So what?
She cries. And then, because I’m such great friend, I just walk away.
But that missing something is something important, something crucial, something taken. Something gone now. Maybe for good.
But I don’t feel better, I feel empty, empty and broken, still.
Would anyone care? Would anyone even fucking notice? What if one day I just wasn’t here anymore? What if one day it all just stopped? What if? What if? What if?
“I’m just tired, okay?” I blather. “So. Fucking. Tired.
Don’t want to be held. Don’t want to be touched. Not by anyone ever again in my entire life.
He did it. Of course he did it. There’s no question about that. But, did I do it too? I listened to him, I kept my mouth shut, and then he went and did it again, to someone else. Except this girl, whoever she is, she was brave, smart.
He needed to make her feel worthless, needed to control her, needed to hurt her, needed to leave her powerless.
Did he know he was killing me? I wanted to tell him I was about to die.
“Look at me,” he whispered. “No one will ever believe you. You know that. No one. Not ever.”
I put both hands over my mouth, squeezed my eyes shut as tight as I could, and tried to fix my brain to disbelieve everything it thought and felt and knew to be true.
I always promised myself that if only someone would ask, if someone would only ask the right question, I would tell the truth.
“I cared!” I blurt out. “What?” “I cared about you. I always cared about you.”
“I guess I wasn’t okay.”
“But now?” I laugh. “Now I’m so far past not okay, I don’t even know how I got here. You must think I’m out of my mind. I might be.”
I had been waiting for three years for somebody, anybody, to say those magic words.
I move it toward him, along with every last shred of trust and faith and hope I
have.
“No, I never told anybody, and I didn’t go to a doctor, either. And no, I don’t think I’m okay”—my
I really don’t.”
“You won’t believe me,”
His hands, his arms, can hold the pieces in place temporarily, maybe even for a long time, but he can never truly put them back together. That’s not his job. He’s not the hero and he’s not the enemy and he’s not a god. He’s just a boy. And I’m just a girl, a girl who needs to pick up her own pieces and put them back together herself.
I wanted you to come and, you know, rescue me or whatever.”
“So let me,”
“You can’t, though. No...
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“That’s not true...
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And now he looks at me like maybe it’s the first time he’s really seeing me, too.
“They’ll believe you, don’t worry.”
and I start to understand something too. That this isn’t all about me. This thing, it touches everyone.
five minutes is forever. Five minutes is the rest of your entire fucking stupid life.
“Yeah. It’s all fucked up,”
“But I think it’s going to get better now.”
Maybe he’ll get what he deserves. Maybe not. Maybe I’ll never find it in my heart to forgive
him. And maybe there’s nothing wrong with that, either. All these maybes swimming around my head make me think that “maybe” could just be another word for hope.
