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.878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUv7llyrnJo
878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXI823Q64sd
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.878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDhkWY7M22G
878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDtG0952F6Q
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.878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBsAVAvCqjY
878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcgDoKdjfPn
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.878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAkmMuwEaQo
878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡklnN1b25vb
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.”878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡScbu6ObJzc
878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ75qmBhSZtz
And that was that.878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVhLRBXJuEb
878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQIdzo6APYY
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.878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWWEqJz3wV6
878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡg6LFydKtHS
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.878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqdJcTCtEZY
878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡe4h7muzwhS
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.878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwKAeQnBRTo
878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKCPWBefuI2
“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.878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRZAh3jrIxV
878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9yYO8wOY8V
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.878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQZ85hq7QUE
878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmmV8l15KO8
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.878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmuo9eVu03m
878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaqOFroJ0jS
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.878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwX6rFTmnMy
878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZTFTb5fNpq
He was the one who had found her that day and driven her to the emergency room, face pale, eyes lit and frightened.878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjgFgjnvVCN
878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFtggrqv9od
That had ruined everything.878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡI5Uo6LLD8y
878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHqdtkZY2SD
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?878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLDsiEEzbCg
878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUeqHilaY4c
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.878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCOowrV7zHh
878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡadH5oZaEC7
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.878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaCRGdj9ysC
878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJZLbnGJbw2
“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.878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmj9VglzPCo
878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWxTceGs5KC
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.878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvbSK0ZUmF5
878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrSIpc0FHIQ
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.878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRjW3ziSZQR
878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtDxHTOv7zW
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.878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpBPWewjWMr
878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFXX3M364j5
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.878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJcPdA26oX9
878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrEN8AiPvVt
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.878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXDz97WkgFc
878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBGctAhtbwW
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.878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2Zleof4rll
878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPQzZKMt8gC
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?878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1kaPRDeyJC
878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9rkqCbVLkW
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.878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0VC8OH55XK
878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡp2pa6cBPvJ
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.878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNZqmq3lPi5
878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXOsgkYo5GG
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.878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7YJvtrAFYI
878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3xqEEfYKde
She didn’t lift a finger to stop them, didn’t even look his way.878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMXuwlLaSCh
878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9yU7V3LLcH
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.878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlgDNGIld80
878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVdN2xnWISI
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.878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGX6Ef2zVty
878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡY8gL7g7Fev
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.878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡktmAeF8ZdH
878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbTBtRhcLpR
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.878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡY1oxQWxcBH
878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjm9bjOaGQi
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.878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3hqC6GCcGe
878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5XdMtdhpBu
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.878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhy9S1oXemL
878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4iq2jCcouH
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.878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWMk1PDfajS
878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOVXLM0hoSW
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.878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡecOdCFigH3
Penana
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