And You Caused It

Well I’ve lost it all I’m just a silhouette

I’m a lifeless face that you’ll soon forget

                                                —Youth, Daughter

She dipped her hands in the water for a third time, splashing a handful onto her face. Her head bowed over the sink as her hands clasped the edges, the spare droplets falling back into the pooled water. The past forty-eight hours had been the longest of her entire life, hours that pulled at her body and at her mind. She had come here in an attempt to ground herself in reality instead of her thoughts, no matter how painful the present moment was. Her thoughts were traitorous. They turned against her at the strangest moments, drowning her in the weight of the past and the future. Her life was in shambles now. It had never stood on sturdy legs, true, but now was different. Now was forever. Now was lasting.

Her mind overlapped constantly. Colors and memories flashed behind her eyes even when they were open. It was the lack of sleep, she told herself. The lack of sleep caused her mind to recall the day her elder brother left home, screaming about how he didn’t want to live with his family, how he didn’t care about them. Tragedy wasn’t what caused her to replay the argument where her father’s wife cried for her son to stay home, the same argument where her father had nearly killed her brother; it was just sleep deprivation. Her grip on the sink tightened as she tried to ignore the thin line across the back of her left hand. It’s not real, she thought, but it was there all the same. The scar was there, the same one that reminded her of her elder half-brother, the one who didn’t know about these past forty-eight hours.

                She shuddered involuntarily, more stray drops splashing erratically into the sink. Red splashed behind her eyes, and she pushed it away only to find bright blue. It was the color of her father’s eyes—her eyes. She looked so much like her father it burned her. He had been cruel to his children and his wife, so cruel that when he decided to leave, his wife began to sleep with the old shotgun propped up neatly against the wall, fully loaded. To miss the man who had forced his wife to care for his bastard daughter would be insane, and yet he had given that daughter a life and people who cared for her. Was it too much to say she was grateful to him for that? She didn’t know. Her father’s shadow loomed too deeply around her, seeping into her skin like tar. He was never a good father. Never enough, never what he should have been, and yet she found herself missing him.

                She let go of the sink and lifted her face to the ceiling, sweeping back her hair from her damp skin. It was imperative that she stop these thoughts. If the thoughts were caught quickly, she had learned, they could be contained. But her hand had strayed too far across her face and brushed the smooth space between her hairline and her right eye, a place she was always so careful to avoid. That was where her father’s scar lived. It tugged at her vision, clouding it at times. In reality, there was no physical manifestation of the pain he had caused her. Any mirror could tell her that. It was only the feeling that haunted her, the feeling of his influence that had projected itself onto her body.

                A sob nearly escaped her lips, then. Was it so much to ask to feel something again? For so long, she had struggled against the unjustness of her situation. All she wanted was to feel. It didn’t matter what she felt, so long as it was something. The flash of red lingering behind her eyes shimmered and spun again, outstretching its hand to her. She longed to clutch to it—her lifeline, her saving grace—and yet she knew she could not. True, the spark had the power to save her, but she in turn had the power to quench it. It was this vision that kept her moving, and this vision that destroyed her. If she was certain of one thing in this life, it was that the spark could not die. It must be kept burning. That was the least she could do.

She moved towards the machine bolted to the wall and tugged on the fabric a few times before drying off her hands and face. At least for now, she would push away her traitorous thoughts and focus on where she was needed. Exiting the bathroom, she turned down the bright hallway and walked to room 408. Her younger brother’s room. They were only three months apart. That was it. They had spent every summer together at the beach, making up harmonies to the tunes he would play on his guitar, laughing when one of them missed a note. All of that was gone, now. She felt as though she had been flung from the sunlight into the night. This was a tragedy that would leave its own scar on her.

He was sleeping now. His breath was steady, and his mouth hung open slightly. Thank God he had been wearing a seatbelt, or he wouldn’t be here now. The bandages on his throat seemed to glow in the faint light from the hallway, emphasizing the cruelest twist life had offered her. The days on the beach were in the past now, their melodies fading fast. Never again would he miss a note, but neither would he hit one. His voice was lost forever. Gone. It was almost crueler than death. In death, words ring golden, but now his words were cold.

It was in this quiet, somehow more private than the bathroom, that she found herself back where she had started. Five missed calls. Twenty-two unopened texts. Same number. Same person. This was what she had been running from—the knowledge that she had ruined it. Everything had happened so fast in the seconds between him bringing out the small black box and the call she had received. She could only imagine what he was thinking. His red hair sparked behind her eyes again, and she felt tears well up in them. She was wild and reckless, relying on only herself. It was foolish to think she could ever be anything more. And he deserved so much more, more than she could ever be. He didn’t deserve what she did to people. The boy with the bright red hair, the one who made her feel like everything was possible, deserved to find someone who made him feel like anything was possible.

Her phone buzzed again in her hand, and with a last look, she put it back in her purse. She was damaged. Best not to damage anyone else further.