by Elle Nash.
You have to understand. I didn’t know he was going to do that to himself. I don’t know what to do. As if there were anything to do about this. Kids that grow up here seem to thrive with this college-town essence that I just don’t get. Christian didn’t seem to get it, either.
The thing I’m scared of most is that I can’t get outside of myself. High school loser logic.
I will never be like them: College kids. In a college town. I am a college kid but I am not. They are all of these things: Blonde. Beautiful. Typical. Their middle class pride. Their middle class pride made fun of my fire-hair as a child. A day-walking vampire English girl in the deep and dirty south.
I would go to parties and sit against the wall. My fire-hair frizzy, matching red plastic cup in hand. People watch.
The thing about starving is it shrinks your brain. When you look at people you don’t see them. You just see you, only better.
I wasn’t looking at Christian when he asked me out. Maybe he was looking at me but I was looking at the road. I was looking at the lines in the road pass by us. The lines, reflecting bright into the night, leaving streaks in my vision.
“Do you have a boyfriend?” he asked. I was the one driving. Him in the passenger seat. He fit into it, snug. Sunk down. Everything about him was soft. Soft brown hair. Soft brown eyes. Rounded nose, soft angles. Soft mouth. Soft voice. He even had a soft brown mustache growing right above that soft mouth of his. Philosophy major, soft science. Soft Christian, encased in himself. Himself encased in his soft leather jacket.
Christian and I were leaving a party.
“No.” I told him. “I haven’t dated anybody in almost three years.” I hoped he didn’t equate dating with fucking. I didn’t want to be a liar.
I heard him move in the seat, his leather bomber jacket squeaking a little. Brown like his eyes. Soft like his voice. He didn’t hesitate. “Want to start?”
I didn’t know it was going to be like this.
What we could have done is time spent wasted. Too good to play beer pong, we both studied liberal arts. He, philosophy major. Me, journalism and political science. Soft and lofty. What we could have done at those parties, us discussing things in a dialect of philosophical jargon that no one would get. Us, hearts beating panic rhythms because touch is truth instead of fear. I sat there in the silence instead and listened to the wind blow snow in rivulets across the road.
Between us there was aloneness. Aloneness that sinks into the skin like thick, expensive perfume. I tried, in the silence, to imagine what was going through his head. The thing I’m scared of most is that I can’t get outside of myself. Road going by, lines in my eyes.
After a while, I said, “You don’t want to date a girl like me.”
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I was not supposed to be a deranged eating disordered lunatic with strange hair, cratered skin and a protruding stomach. Everyone a mirrored version of your dreams, of you. Only better. The thing about starving. It’s a bit like sacrificing your family to Satan to get an A on a test. There are better ways to get shit done.
He was quiet. Laid his arms across his stomach, leather squeaking, like he was holding inside a guttural pain, the kind that seems to expand inside the stomach and leave you hollow.
Then I said, “I’m not a nice person to date.” High school loser logic. My ears burned red like my hair and pride started to well up inside of me, that I said no, that I let him down easy. I didn’t let it show. Asking for help is a cage set upon you against your will.
The leather squeaked again, this time because he took the jacket off. His only response. The car was full up with warmth, protecting us from the cold outside. My eyes on the lines, lines in road. Dizzy with snow. I’m not a fool about independence. I know I’m a symbiotic being. But all of this, creation, distance, academia, love. None of it means until we make it mean. It just fulls up the time. Our excuse to be. Fighting the good fight. I didn’t know he was going to do that to himself. Shoot himself like that. It hit home like a fucking grenade. The thing about starving.
I pulled up to his house. The snow fell soft to the ground and heat clouded up and out of the car door. Ding. Ding. Christian looked at me in the ding of the car door and its surrounding silence. Ding. He turned away and left quietly, without the leather squeaking, leaving his jacket behind in the backseat. Ding. Door closed.
The next day he was supposed to go into work, but didn’t. No-call, no-show. There were so many days I wish I never got up, all the days I pressed myself into the weight of the bed, the days I got up anyway because work was calling, because people depended on me. The days I wished I could pull the covers over my head. I’m not a day-walker, I’d say. But guilt would call shrill into my gut and I’d face it anyway, my pale white skin glowing purple in the bright sun. Guilt got me up because I had eaten too much and needed to run, because I had things to return. Like a jacket, soft leather and brown.
At the parties lately all those blonde, beautiful kids say things like, I can’t imagine what was going through his head. I turn my face away when they speak. The thing I’m scared of most. The thing I can’t get out of. A spark, gunpowder sweet. A flash of metal. Recycled into the air as a last breath. And then, the infinite quiet of the universe.
You have to understand. The thing about starving is every time I eat my insides burn with fire. Now I burn, but there is nothing inside of me.