It was none of his business! If he hadn’t butted in, everything would be all right now. No, not all right. Perfect. She’s angry. She’s angry with him, but angrier with herself. She hates herself. His name can’t seem to come to her lips, but his face is the only thing she sees. His smile with the slightly crooked front tooth. His shocked face in the last days when she swept by him in the hallways.162Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmlfFRpPfWN
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He’s the first person she’s ever shown her world. She let him come over and led him to stand under the person-sized rectangle in the ceiling. She jumped up and grabbed the screen, so the panel opened downward and a jagged ladder descended to them. She’d always liked that panel. It was a secret room, her secret.162Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpG2pPZIOe9
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She had to go first, turn on the electricity and see his reaction. She was apprehensive. This project of hers had become such a part of her that any judgment on it was a judgment on her. It turned out she didn’t have to worry.162Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTEu61HS43K
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The lights turned on in minute buildings that she’d carefully made herself. Realistic stoplights flicked from green to amber to red in front of cars that never moved. Electric trains whirred on tracks, through the little town, over miniscule bridges, around plastic trees and Lego people. He stood there, awed, his body still, but his eyes flickering, taking in everything. Then he raised his eyes to hers and smiled.162Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJO4dNlzdrb
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She never would have even done that much if she hadn’t seen him drawing a ninja in chemistry. He wrote neatly over the top “FUTURE JOB.” When she glanced back at his desk, the picture had vanished. In response to her quizzical look, he’d mouthed, “Ninjas don’t stay out in the open.”162Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ58gvn8LBJQ
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And that was that.162Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrehghK7353
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Although they’d gone to the same school since kindergarten, they had never spoken before. They were completely different. Yet after his first time in her house, when he saw her attic, she was filled with him. His butterscotch hair, his eyes like the foggy San Francisco sky. And all he wanted was to be with her.162Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡidsXm9qQp5
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He was the one who taught her to play the guitar, patiently showing her over and over until his fingers bled. Then he bandaged them and continued with the lesson until she got bored and moved onto something else. He was always doing things like that, just for her.162Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiw3tFK2Wdb
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She imagines she’s sitting in her attic, surrounded by her little world. In her mind’s eye she lifts a toy car and passes it between her palms. It was when she was in an airplane that she got the idea to make it – when she saw the sprawling city beneath her, aglow with the light of the setting sun. It’s comforting somehow to have a world that she can control. She’s the God of her own little world.162Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZnPjqXWddB
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“Dancing Queen” was written for her, according to him, which has always been strange to her. She listened to artists like Radiohead, Avenged Sevenfold, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Queen. But then she also started listening to artists like ABBA and Taylor Swift, just to hear what he heard and to try and see herself through his eyes.162Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdHDD66pF00
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She was up for everything, afraid to try nothing. He doodled and read literature, inscribing notes into the margins. They complemented each other perfectly, but she wasn’t as wild as everyone saw her and he wasn’t as quiet, especially not when they were in each other’s arms. They could lie for hours just taking in each curve on each other’s faces and speck in each other’s eyes as their breathing synchronized perfectly, their chests rising and falling in rhythm.162Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡR8a0iaOdcy
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He forced her to read the classics. She’d always had a sort of romantic notion about reading, but she was too lazy to do it and she got so easily bored. But he acted out scenes for her, brought in his favorite film reproductions. Her read to her in a British accent, a Scottish one, French, Australian. Or he read in his own voice and still she was mesmerized.162Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsG4RboFDEH
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If only he’d kept his nose out her business. She could have dealt. It was just two more years. She’d have been free.162Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTGe9EhwJKy
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He was the one who had found her that day and driven her to the emergency room, face pale, eyes lit and frightened.162Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrmriPXrrhN
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That had ruined everything.162Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpHKFAO6Sya
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How did it feel? Did you raise out your arms, begging to be carried away? Did you feel the wind sweep under your arms and lift you up? Did it hurt? Did the headlights blind you? Did you think of me?162Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡx4G1A1aoS3
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He’d met her dad once and only once. He had seen what everyone else saw. A mild-mannered single dad who was involved just enough in his daughter’s life.162Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡf25Mhn8v7W
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But then he’d seen the bruises on her back. She’d lied about them at first, the way she always had, but it didn’t take long for him to figure it out. When she was rammed into a table hard enough to break her ribs, his suspicions were confirmed.162Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUWTEER0aWe
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“You need to get away from your dad,” he told her, although she could see behind his eyes that he couldn’t reconcile the polite man he’d met with the purveyor of the bluish-purple splotching her back or stretching across her chest.162Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ24u3LaFu1G
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Thrown into sharp relief in her mind is the expression when she had collided into him just two weeks ago. Disappointment. Disbelief. Despair. Two weeks ago he had been able to feel all those. Now he can’t feel anything at all.162Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPGZ50XDI3H
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He was just trying to help. Was it really possible to love someone and still feel a vicious, vindictive pleasure when her classmates snubbed him? He had deserved it at the time. He should never have interfered.162Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡv6a85MpXnQ
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She didn’t need child protection services. She was sixteen, for god’s sake. She would be an adult in two years, go to college, and be free. She would have been able to put up with that bullshit until then. Her dad wanted her to go to Stanford. Every breath he breathed worked toward sending her to Stanford, but that was absolutely the last thing she wanted when she could see the lights of its football field out her window and hear the cheers. It was always more obvious when they were playing Berkeley, the air was more electrified.162Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEMSpO1W0RW
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He used to come over sometimes, during the football games and they used to try to guess from the yells which team it was that had just scored.162Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLRMiB5Qk25
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She isn’t in her attic right now. She’s in a foreign room in her estranged aunt’s house, feeling out of place. She doesn’t belong here. It isn’t home. There’s no home anymore. And it’s all because of him. It’s his fault – not for calling child protection services, but for being gone.162Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYXd1nIazDg
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She collapses backwards onto the bed, presses her palms against her eyes. She suddenly wonders if her dad smashed her world in the attic. The thought of that makes her finally begin to cry when she has been too numb to do so all this time.162Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡD9Jw7Oe7QW
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There’s a story she read once in the news about how a man flew home, to be welcomed back by his wife and daughter meeting him on the runway. He swept his daughter into his arms and into the air, only to have her head sliced off by the airplane’s propeller. The story has haunted her ever since she heard it. It comes into her mind sometimes and sits there, an unwelcome squatter. She could never imagine how anyone could live with that guilt. All he’d wanted to do was celebrate being reunited with his beloved daughter and had inadvertently killed her. How do you move on from something like that?162Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡg0XoVF7Xdb
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She was pulled out of class by child protective services, so everyone knew. It happened to be chemistry, so she yanked her backpack and shot him the angriest glare she could muster. She hadn’t spoken to him after that, not once. She hadn’t returned his calls, had pretended he was invisible when he came to her in person.162Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyzesM4KH5B
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She had warned him it would happen. He had promised not to tell anyone and she hated broken promises more than almost anything else in the world.162Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2vYnemQNYq
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Since she’d been pulled out of chemistry class in front of classmates, it wasn’t exactly a secret – everyone knew. Everyone also believed her adamant claims that he was wrong, everything was good at home. It was easier for them to ignore her injuries in favor the illusion of perfection. They hissed at him, tripped him, or booed him completely. At least in front of her they did.162Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkKXVZHtTzY
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She didn’t lift a finger to stop them, didn’t even look his way.162Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgJPgaO2Gxw
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He stopped calling after a while and she found herself lonely. She had been irked that he dared to call after what he’d done. Now that he’d stopped, she found herself missing his voice, even in the form of firmly non-apologetic voicemails.162Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfa7I87rtWW
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She didn’t know what bothered her more – that he had the nerve to confront something that many others had probably known about but had averted their eyes from, or that he had loved her enough to risk alienating her completely.162Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2OPj2DAYUK
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And then – and then the call. He had been hit by train, the conductor had called the paramedics, they were there, it was too late, he was pronounced dead at the scene, taken straight to the morgue instead of the emergency room. His blood alcohol level was precariously high, probably to dull the pain. Which indicated, of course, that he had committed suicide.162Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgjRWVlNlQk
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Suicide, they said, but she knows she might as well have pushed him herself. When the numbness goes away, how can she live with herself? His mother says he didn’t seem suicidal, but his mother wasn’t with him at school. She should have seen it in those eyes instead of looking down and away.162Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxBRrcKuT41
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It makes no sense to her anymore. Why was she so angry with him? It made sense at first, but then again, he’s the only thing that has ever made sense in her life.162Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpVvx4IHRvQ
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She is so fucking mad. She’s mad at herself for treating him like she did. She’s mad at him for thinking she’d never forgive him.162Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZ5AkvSAgXb
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She stands up beside a bare desk beneath the window. Other than her textbooks, there’s one thing on it – a frame, tipped over so the picture can’t be seen. She lifts it up and lets her finger slide down the reproduction of a face that she will never see or touch or kiss again.162Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtCDV27zd67
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She was wrong all along. This whole time she’s been thinking she lost her home once she was sent to live with her aunt and uncle. The truth was, she truly lost her home the moment he jumped in front of that train.162Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdSfkfawlMA
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