Andy & Alice (I)

“Wanna do something tonight?”

“I’m tired, Andy.” She’s always tired these days, can’t ever go out and do something with him anymore. Not just sex. Anything. She can’t even hang out with him anymore because she’s ‘tired.’

He thinks he smokes a lot more these days, more than before they met. She used to hate him smoking, told him she wanted him to live a long life with her and their children. Now, they don’t really talk; he starts conversations and she kills them with a few words. Everyone’s calling her a loner these days; she kicked out her friends, shut him out…What next, everyone asks. Do they really care?

No, not really, he thinks. But he does, he always does. He loves her, God, how he loves her, but he doesn’t know if it’s enough.

He knows about her ‘blue periods;’ she used to sink into indigo seas, then fly back up into the crimson sky. Now, he thinks, she’s drowning. Her wings have gotten wet and she can’t escape. And no matter how hard he tries to help her, her thrashing pulls him away.

Sometimes, he thinks he should turn her in to the shrinks, but that would be rather hypocritical; he’s the school’s drunk, the pothead, the one most teachers hate. She was the normal girl, the sweet and kind one that hid her real self behind a façade of happy smiles. It crumbled, he thinks, and now her true face is out in the open, left to erode and collapse until she is gone. And he won’t let it happen, can’t, but what can he do? Smoke a few bowls before school, have a few beers before Mum comes home, call her and…what? He’s high, he’s drunk, he wants to help but doesn’t know how. And that’s the way it is, he thinks.

So he lets her slip away, silent and smooth and sad; God, so freaking sad. He cries sometimes, not that he’d ever tell anyone that. He’s supposed to be the tough one, the impenetrable fortress, but how can he be without her? Now that she’s gone like this, he feels like he can’t stand, can’t breathe, can’t survive. When he cries, it’s silent and smooth and sad. When he cries, he’s always so alone.

Not as alone as she must be, he thinks to himself whenever that happens. And wants to punch himself.

A while back, when they’d first gotten together, she cried to him, never saying why but nonetheless hurting him in the way she screamed and sobbed. He held her and asked her what was wrong and told her everything would be alright and that was when she pulled away. Quite literally, she walked out on him, smiling like a teacher to an idiot pupil; there was something so very melancholy in it, a something he couldn’t quite grasp. They talked the next day but she never said a word about anything that could have helped him understand. It wasn’t his place to pry, he thought, and left it alone.

Things like that run through his head now and he tells them to shut up, to stop bothering him, but they won’t. Or maybe they can’t; they are part of his own mind, after all. The pot, the booze, the drugs make the thoughts stop talking; when was the last time he was completely sober? Can’t remember, probably a bad thing…

Why can’t he help her, he wonders? When did she get like this? He’s seen them, the cuts, the fingernail marks on her skin, and wonders: Are they her’s? Are they someone else’s? In the end, he decides they are her own; he’s met her younger brother and he seems perfectly happy and normal- no strange marks or injuries.

He confronts her once and only once about it, asking if she hurts herself. And she looks tiredly at him, asking with her eyes if he really wants to know the answer. They never say a word but he knows it all, finally. Not why, never anything close to why, but he knows. The worst part? He doesn’t have the balls to say anything, to tell anyone. Maybe he respects privacy a little too much. That could be it; after all, he himself is most likely a little messed up. He probably should say something he thinks from time to time, but then the liquor clouds his thoughts and the green makes his mouth laugh until he can’t breathe. When he’s shitfaced out of his mind, he doesn’t even cry anymore.

Down the tube, their relationship is down the tube. He cares too much to think anymore; every second he’s not doing something, he wants to scream for someone to help her, Goddamnit. Please. He’d do anything for her to laugh and smile and be happy again.

His supplier shows him heroin, shows him meth and acid. He accepts it, accepts everything if only to forget those slices on her wrists. Forget her soul-wrenching cries. And he wants to help her, he really does; it’s all he wants to do anymore. On the internet, he reads about depression and bipolar disorder and cries a little, but only a little because he’s still high from a blunt he smoked earlier.

And the smack does wonders, even when it makes him shake and jitter and freeze and burn, because then he can’t worry himself nearly to tears, like he used to. He wants to be strong. Is this the only way? he thinks. To him, it feels like the best option he’s got.

~

Author's Note

andy's part. the first chapter.