Saving You

A Story by A.T.

How do you save someone, when that someone is you?

I stared into his dark, dark eyes. "Can you?" I needed something. I needed him to ask me to stay.

"How the hell can you just stand there and ask me that?" He was breaking. I break people.

"Just answer the damn question."

"This is-"

"Fucked?"

"Not quite." He rubbed his eyes in disgust or irritation, I couldn't tell.

"Evil?"

"That doesn't even begin to describe it."

"I could make you hate me." I hated this.

"Don't you f*****g dare," he growled, but kitten-like. Weakness. The one thing I would always be good at.

"Things would hurt less for you then."

"Stop it!" His eyes held nothing of his fierce need to keep me. "Don't ask me to live without you!"

I couldn't look in his eyes. His eyes held nothing. "I never loved you." Those words were a stab in his back and a stab in my heart. I needed him to see through this. I needed him to save me. One step further. I was never good with boundaries. "I slept with Nick."

"What?!" His mind was a swirling mess.

While mine was calm for the first time in days. "And Caleb. And Matt."

"You b***h!" He glanced away, hearing the words fall sharply. I sucked in as sharp as his words. "Babe, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that-"

"Mitch!"

"-Just don't do this; don't walk away."

"Mitchell." My sad whispers barely made it past the cold air between us.

His voice dropped to my level, "How can you just walk away?"

I scratched at the scabs on my arms. They never went away. "I'm just so tired."

"You're always tired." This time was different and I couldn't look at him as things changed. "You're just going to leave? You are just going to say s**t and leave?!" He pulled at my arm, pulling me into him. "Look me in the eyes when you tell me we're over!" I bit my lip as his grip hardened. "Do it!"

"Ow. Mitch, let go," I whimpered softly.

His jaw clenched. "Why?!" I tried to pull away as he ripped at my sleeve. "D****t! Why?" He was so much stronger; I was so weak. He looked at the scars and wounds quickly before shoving me away. "You disgust me."

"Mitch, babe." My fingers trembled reaching for him.

"Get out!" He ran his fingers through his hair. His hands were shaking. "I told you not to. I told you I was here. Now you wanted to leave. So get the f**k out."

"You told me you loved me."

He shoved me, "And you're proof it meant nothing."

I regained balance, looking at him in shock. He needed to help me. Help me! "Help me, " I mumbled. My body felt weak, my toes numbing.

"I tried." His voice was slowing down, distorting.

"I have to, I have to-" Bathroom. I needed to get sick. I needed to throw up.

"You need to what?!" His voice came through harsh and loud, shaking my organs.

He hurt me. He hurt me. I was dying because he hurt me. Mitch didn't know he hurt me. He would hurt me if he knew I told.

I stumbled, my eyes blurry. The light, the colors were dimming. I couldn't keep a straight line. I fell into the wall, barely able to hold myself up. They were taking my breath, my life. I couldn't turn back, I couldn't purge the dark drugs from my body. My eyes were droopy, my legs weak. The calm I had forever been looking for.

***

I ran my fingers through my hair. The windshield was shot out, all the windows broken and jagged. I looked over. It wasn't him. He didn't run to save me.

He didn't save me.

They didn't work. I wasn't supposed to be here. I counted them out, hands shaking. The brakes were hit suddenly, catapulting the pills out of my hand and throwing them across the car. "S**t." I looked at her blank face. Her hair was similar to mine, black and long and choppy. Her face was delicate as porcelain. Her makeup was dark and harsh. She didn't fit together. She had wraps on her wrists, grungy and stained red. She was suddenly intriguing. "What are those?" I whispered, suddenly out of breath.

"Mistakes."

"Mistakes?"

"Failures." She breathed in softly. I could see her remembering. "How could you leave someone who you love so dearly? How could you leave someone who loves you so dearly?"

"I wasn't-"

"He was leaving you, right?" She had a sarcastic tone.

"No, but-"

"He gave up too, ya know!"

"Don't you dare!"

"He just didn't look at you the right way. Or say just the right word. Right?" She rolled her eyes, "He gave every breath for you and you judge him for finally saying no more?"

"You don't know s**t."

She slammed on the brakes, forcing cars to whirl around her in anger. "Fact: You checked out first. Fact: You broke his heart. Fact-"

"You broke equal many." I snapped.

She glanced at the bandages around her wrists and fell silent. We both had broken time and time again. This should have been even ground. "He would've died for you. And you. You die for you."

We drove in silence for a couple minutes. "Who do you die for?" I asked softly.

"My sister."

My sister, my sister.

She pulled into a rocky driveway and a house with mud as grass. The house itself was beautiful, but reeked of darkness. It's windows shined, but she. She changed the instant the wheels hit the drive.

She became timid. Jumpy. Sad. She was always quiet, but this was different. This quiet was ominous. This sad was the sadness of ending. She tentatively stepped out and I followed. I didn't remember us ever having enough rain for this deep of mud. She looked towards the woods, as if expecting something before going to the back of the house. These woods. Something happened in these woods. But she didn't go in. She went to a panel of wood in the ground, stained dark and pulled out a key.

"This is where you live?"

She didn't answer my question. She pulled open the door, jumping down, silently asking me to follow. I fell down the rabbit hole into a dark black room with a simple bed in the corner. She shivered. Her eyes held no emotion. Just nothing. Numbness. "Why are you this way?" she asked.

"I don't know how to be anything else."

She clenched her fists, it was like the pressure of someone seeing her reality had suddenly broken her.

"Kate!" The voice was low, hateful. And the instant she heard it, she went limp.

"I have to go." She went out the door, and because there were no windows, I made a point not to see where she went. She came back a couple hours later.

"I was- I never seemed to get over it. And my insides, they just ache. I wanted to end this constant war," I told her quietly.

She turned to me, and I looked at her. Her shirt was ripped and her eyes crazed. She saw me looking. "I'm fine. It's okay." She sat on the bed, trying to change her clothes through her shaking.

"Are you okay?" She wouldn't answer. "Kate!" I reached for her shoulder.

She whipped around, snarling. "Don't touch me!"

I slammed backwards, staring wide eyed at her. That shirt. That tear in the right side where I ripped away from him... That was my shirt. Mine until I threw it away. The edges started getting hazy, lights pulsing like a heart. I heard the beating softly in my ears, slow in death. My mouth was dry, almost too dry to speak up. "Do we know each other?"

She froze. Her image stuttered like a scratched movie. And then she moved smoothly again, over the wound in the disk. "No," she said softly, sweetly. Fake.

She knew me. But where was she from?

I looked at the walls. I had this crazy insane idea, that I was going to save her. I was going to be everything I hoped he would've been for me. "Can I take your car? You can come too?"

She looked at me with curiosity, far from her reaction to my words a couple seconds ago. She opened the door, heading out silently. I followed close behind, taking her usual spot in the drivers seat. I fumbled around the controls until I got the car moving.

"My parents told me to get over it."

"What?"

She combed through her hair with her fingers. "The ache."

"That's terrible."

"I would be in the hospital with my wrists falling apart and all they ever were was nothing." She paused. "It never goes away."

I bit my lip, looking into her sadness and contemplating how someone could hit that low. I guess I should've known. I told her to hold on, jumping out and running into the 24-Hour Walmart. I grabbed glue. Bottles and bottles of glue. And with the last scrap of my money, I bought glitter.

"What's that for?" Kate asked when I dropped the bags in her room.

"Those walls, that room. It's going to shimmer. Just as much as you do."

And suddenly, she was deliriously happy like a child. The thought of me painting her room made her smile, made her happy. I mixed glitter into the glue, glitter into glue, glitter into glue. I painted her walls. And she danced, Kate danced, she laughed. She was so happy.

And then I came to the last black wall. I reached out and touched it before snapping my hand back. It was burning, a hissing snake. Rubbing my burnt hand, I saw no marks. Thoughtfully, I spoke in hushed melodies -not to harmonize with the darkness, but to beg its silence. "I want to paint this wall white. To let the light in."

"I don't have white paint."

"There has to be some in that big house. It's huge. With white trim."

And she stopped dancing. Stopped laughing. Stopped smiling. But this had become an obsession. I couldn't save myself, but maybe I could save Kate. I walked, stomped my way through the mud to the house. Kate followed timidly behind. "We can't go there," she cried.

I couldn't stop. I wasn't sure if I was doing this for her, or for someone who wasn't her. I walked through the door silently, slowly making my way through. I found white paint. Beautiful white paint. "We can go now."

We both turned, and Kate squeaked. "I'm sorry," she whimpered before darting out.

I looked at the two people standing before me for a moment before realizing they were her parents. And I felt so much anger, just hot rage. "How could you do that to her?! She needed 'I love you', not 'get over it'! If you have lost anyone, not to mention a child, you would never have been this way!"

Her father was quietly sobbing and her mother just hissed two words: "Katelyn Todd"

I swiveled on my heel, returning to Kate. But when I was at the shed's door, sadness slammed into my chest. Paralyzing sadness.

Kate.

I whipped open the shed door to find Kate in the corner, crying and cutting her wrists open. She was crying, "I don't want to feel like this anymore. I don't want to feel like this."

I couldn't touch Kate; I couldn't comfort her. She was fading and all I could hear was her crying and my boyfriend banging on the door, screaming for me. "Kate, don't do this! I love you! Get out of the bathroom! Please stay."

Stay.

I just listened to Kate, crying, and painting this wall white.