This piece, What We Owe Each Other, is one of the very first things I wrote when I started to get into writing more seriously. I was 19 when I wrote it, and I honestly still couldn't be more proud of this piece.
Reading through it now, I can clearly see everything wrong with it, the prose that drags on and on, the excrutiatingly slow buildup, the (to me, at least) unsatisfying end. But I dont care. I love this story for what it is. And what it was for me as I dipped my toes into writing.
I'm sharing it here both as a reminder for myself, and in the hopes that it might inspire someone else.
This time when the phone rings, I pick up. You’ve been trying to reach me for days now. All through the day, all hours of the night, first thing in the morning, the phone rings and rings and rings, and sometimes you hang up. Sometimes you leave long, spiralling voicemails, some angry and others teary, and most just you begging me to pick up, pick-up, pick-up Olive fuck please why won’t you just—Sorry, by the way, for not answering sooner. The thought of talking to you made me nervous; I thought it might ruin me. To be honest with you, I’m not sure why I picked up this time. Compulsion, maybe, or a morbid curiosity—poking a dead thing to see if it twitches.
Do you know what’s funny? Before I answer, before you say a single word, I know it’s you on the other side. There are, surprisingly, other people in my life, people that might call around midnight. Even so, I know it’s none of them. It’s always been you, even when I try to forget. And I have forgotten so many things about back then, some wilfully and some under duress, but I have never forgotten you. Sometimes your face will come to me in a dream, and it’s so clear and unchanged. The baby fat of your cheeks, the somewhat impish curve of your lips—yes, I’d know you in death, blindfolded, every line and scar and mark emblazoned in my mind.
“Hel-loooo?”
Nobody in the world has a voice like yours. It’s breathy and slow, still as the Dead Sea. Do you remember when your parents took us there? We were in middle school, seventh or eighth grade. Your parents liked me, or rather, they tolerated me always hanging around. Either way, I was your best friend, and I was allowed to tag along. We spent a whole week on the beach, dusting sand off our bathing suits and spitting up saltwater. I remember feeling small and scared; I was a weak swimmer, but you promised we’d be fine and explained that the waters were so salty and still that no one really swam, just floated along on their backs. You took me by the arm, and we held onto each other like otters, giggling and bobbing and staring up at the clearest, bluest sky either of us had ever seen.
After sixteen years of silence, your voice in my ear transports me back to the Dead Sea. Limp, tense, and holding onto nothing but the phone, I listen for change and find none. Voices are supposed to change over time; the vocal cords stiffen, and the throat is no longer youthful. Personally, I know that I don’t sound anything like how I used to, my voice all gravelly and phlegmy, a few octaves deeper from a nicotine dependency. You, on the other hand, sound the same. Just a single word, short on the ‘hell’ and a long string of o’s, and I can see you clearly, strawberry blonde, slim, and aged very little. I imagine you a little older, to suit the time past. I give you heaps of money and a penthouse far away from our Podunk hometown, gorgeous clothes, and sleek Scandinavian furniture. In my mind, you’re lounging in an armchair, idly swinging long, tan legs as you speak—no, not speak, purr—your finely curated collection of words about as carefully as a hostage negotiator easing a gunman’s trembling hand.
I wonder: which one of us is the negotiator, which one of us is a hostage, and which one holds the gun?
“Regina?”
"yeah, the one and only. Did I wake you?"
You did, and I think you know you did, but it’s not all your fault. My fiancé, Mitchell, thought it’d be ingenious to have landlines installed throughout the house. I don’t think you’d like Mitchell much. He’s not the sort of guy we tended to like back in the day. He’s stocky, a short and pale-faced thinker with a goatee and a minor in philosophy. He writes think pieces and op-eds and has them published in online magazines and local publications. Mostly, he bemoans the sorry state of today’s pop culture, how nothing is authentic, and everything is gauche. I can just see you now, rolling your eyes and telling me with no holds barred that Mitchell is full of shit, that he’s pretentious and snobby and full of himself. You’re right, of course. He’s all those things and more, and to add insult to injury, my prince of tweed is a deep sleeper. Each time the phone rings, it’s me, not him, who has to leave the comfort of our bed and answer the phone’s shrill cry.
Not that any of this is your problem. I shake my head and say, “No, no, I was already up.”
“Really?” You ask, dubious. “Since when did you pull all-nighters?”
“Since college. Being a full-time student doesn’t leave a lot of time for sleep.”
You ask what I’m majoring in and make vague complimentary noises while I describe my academic career. I commend you for pretending to care as I tell you I’m majoring in ethics, for not yawning when I say I’m studying for my doctorate and that I’m top of my class. I can’t suppress the pride I feel at the thought of all those letters and titles and accolades attached to my name. For a brief moment, I expect you to congratulate me, but you say nothing. You make a flat, humming noise to mask your indifference, and a chill shoots down my spine, a dull orangey feeling I haven’t felt since high school.
I clear my throat and say, “And how about you? What’re you doing up so late?”
“Check the sky, night owl. There’s a bad moon a’risin.”
My body tenses as I rise from my chair and draw back the curtains from the window nearest to me. It’s a blue-black night, bright with stars and brighter still with the hazy white light of a full moon. I quickly close the curtains and turn my back to the window.
I don’t know why I pretend. I know why you called, why you’ve been trying to reach me since early April. You think I’ve erased every trace of you from my life, but I haven’t. I can’t. Even now, there are several moon charts pinned up in my study, and my phone is clogged with astrology apps. I track the wan and wax as carefully as I track my own period —twenty- nine days, give or take, for the full moon to rise, for the blood to flow.
I fall back into my chair and close my eyes. “Regina, I don’t know why you’re calling me about this.”
“Don’t you?” You laugh, and the sound is ugly and wheezy and strained. “Don’t play dumb, Olive. You’ve never been a dumb girl.”
You’re right about that too, but I can’t do what I think you’re asking me to do. I haven’t thought about it in two decades. It’s not gone from my memory, never, but it is compartmentalized, stuffed away in a box on a high shelf in my mind. Those memories, those deeds, are someone else’s burden, the problems of a girl nastier than me and strong in ways that make me sick to think about. To go back there, to take down the box and blow off the dust, to return to her… God, Regina, how could you make me go back there?
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” and then, “I can’t do it. Whatever it is, whatever you want, I won’t do it.”
“Why not?” You ask. Your voice is cased in salt, unfriendly. “Too amoral? Unethical?”
Low blow, way below the belt, but I guess I deserve it. Shame floods me, red hot and rank. Tears sting at my eyes and strain my chest, and a lump the size of a peach stone settles in my throat.
Unable to think of any words to defend myself with, I beg. “Please don’t make me do this, Regina. There has to be somebody else.”
“You know there’s nobody else, Ollie. There’s never been anyone but you.”
In the brief gap of silence that follows, I hear the sounds from your side. There is no squeaky leather furniture, no roaring fire, no music playing. There’s only the sound of a busy street, police sirens, and wild dogs barking, howling, yipping. My stomach drops as I realize that you’re calling from a payphone.
“Listen, you have to be here in a month. One month, okay? I’m still at home, in Lawton, I mean. We can meet wherever and talk it out, but I need you to come, alright? I can’t do this one alone. It’ll kill me to do this one alone.”
“I’m nowhere near Lawton, Gina. I’m away, I’m…” In a whole new city, I think. A whole new place, far away from my past, far from that high school and those woods and that small town where everyone knew everything and nothing was a secret.
“Then come back,” you say. I hear the sadness in your voice, the tears pressing but not yet shed. “All these years, I’ve never asked you for anything. Never complained, never fought back, never wanted anything from you. Never said anything to you either, not even then. I won’t even mention it now if you want it like that. All I’m asking is that you be here with me, for me. Please, Ollie, I can’t do it without you.”
I think, oh, how the mighty have fallen. And then I remember who it was who knocked you off your so-called pedestal, who humbled you, who led the crowd to trample and flatten a girl already down.
“I’ll be there,” I say, and I mean it. I tell you we’ll see each other soon. Before you hang up, you thank me profusely. You say you’ve never stopped caring for me, that I’ve always been your best friend in the entire world, that even through the worst of it, I was the greatest thing you had. I bite my tongue so hard it bleeds.
When the line dies, I sit there for moments listening to it beep. There’s nothing else to say about it. No matter how much I try to twist and turn it, no matter how many times I bury that box and bleach the memory from my mind, I know, and I remember: I owe you, Regina. Big time.
Be it my closeted nature, shame, or a sister-like protectiveness over you, I choose not to tell Mitchell about us talking last night. I’ve told him some things about you—how we used to be friends, that I’ve been ignoring your calls for some reason or another. He thinks of you as your typical high school mean girl, a sort of harpy who, in turn, pecked at me and helped keep me safe beneath the wing of your cheer skirt.
I choose not to change his mind. What’d be the point? It’s not like the two of you will ever meet, and, anyways, I like to have some degree of separation from who I was then and who I am now. Mitchell doesn’t get to know or have anything about me. I’m too heavy f or him, my burdens backbreaking. If he tries to hold me, hold us, surely, we’ll all fall.
So, I carry myself, all the things I’ve done and everything I know about you. Mitchell asks if you called again, and I say yes, but I don’t say that I answered, and I don’t say that I promised to meet you in just over a month.
“Olive, we talked about this.” He sighs disapprovingly and comes around the table to stand over me. “You have to cut her out of your life. All she does is hurt you.”
He doesn’t know what he’s saying, and I don’t agree, but I nod anyway. According to Mitchell, you’re a toxic, draining person and the only way to deal with you is to cut you off. You, o weeping girl in the phone booth, are a menace, and until I learn to silence your tears, I will never be at peace.
Mitchell puts his hands on my shoulder and says, “You have to let her go. Sooner or later, you’re gonna have to move on with your life, even if she’s not ready to move on with hers.”
What does he know? He doesn’t get it, how people can change, how radically different people are before and after terrible things are done to them. Who I am now is not who I was in high school. They are such different girls, like night and day, water and fire. The Olive of today, Mitchell’s Olive, is in her mid-thirties. She’s charming and resourceful, mature, responsible, trustworthy, if not a little bit secretive. She likes to be needed; she likes to help others. She is easy to describe and likes herself for it. She is simply Olive, an ethics major, soon to be a wife, and soon to have a Ph.D.
Young Olive, she is not so simple. She is a beast, a wild and lightless creature that still lurks within me, sealed away by age. I try to be kind to her, to understand why she did what she did, but she is not something easily forgiven. She is hungry for attention, desperate for people to see her, need her, watch and admire her. In my mind, she is naught but a rabid dog washed in glitter and sweet pea body spray. I think at some point she might’ve been a very sweet little girl, but something happened, and she became this thing, more pom-pom and mindless ambition than human.
If I tell Mitchell the truth about you, about me, then I let him in on the secret of the girl I used to be. He can’t know this, this little secret of ours. He can’t know that I was bad because then he’d try to console me, shrink my ugliness, hold my face in his hands and say that nobody’s all good or all bad, especially not in high school. He’d wipe my tears and smile and say, “All kids are assholes, Liv. Their brains aren’t even fully formed yet. Everyone changes.”
Still, I know what I did.
Nothing can be done for the past. Our phone call weighs heavy on me, and I throw myself headlong into my studies so I won’t have to think about it. I hole myself up in my office with coffee and T.V. dinners and write nonstop. I leave only to attend debates, and I listen as others argue about forgiveness and kindness, innate good and evil. I pretend to believe it when they say there’s no such thing as true evil in the world, only ignorance, and ignorant people, when I know for certain that true evil exists as a seventeen-year-old girl running wild through the woods, spreading lies and withholding truths.
I push myself further and further still. I worry that if I stop for even a second, I’ll start thinking about high school, that the weight of my hypocrisy will crush me. I’ll think of you shivering at a payphone, or in a hospital bed, or oh so alone, and how I put you in those places. So, I can’t stop. I give up food, give up bathing. I give up joy and laughter and the comfort of being loved. I shun Mitchell; he reaches for me in the night, and I cringe at the feel of his skin against mine. I’m angry at myself, at him. Why won’t he just let me work? Can’t he see how important all of this is to me? Why won’t he let me suffer in peace?
After a week of nonstop work and school and studying, I am yanked from my stupor by Andrea, a friend from college. You might like Andrea, I don’t know. She’s bubbly and excitable, a sweet girl, but she wouldn’t have been in our crew in school. We would’ve mocked her stalwart individualism, her colourful hair and clothes. She says she’s come to rehabilitate me, to pull me from my stinking study and out into the night. I sense she’s been sent by Mitchell, who is suspiciously absent when Andrea kidnaps me. Though I’m annoyed that I’m being removed from my work, I have to give it to Mitchell for choosing Andrea for the job.
She’s good at these types of things—a hopeful social worker, she doesn’t seem to mind getting her hands dirty. Many others would’ve seen the state of my office, smelled me, saw me poring over the same texts over and over, and would’ve let me be. She’s not in the mood, they’d say, and they’d leave.
Andrea doesn’t care what I’m in the mood for. She cares that I’ve been sitting in my filth for six days straight without eating or drinking. She cares that I’ve been lonely, without friendship, that I’ve been obsessing over a spectre from my past that no one even knows by name.
Perfumed and prepared for a night on the town, Andrea forces me into a shower and brushes out my hair. She stuffs me into a pair of jeans and heels, wiggles a blouse onto me, and fills up a handbag with lipstick, my house keys, my cell phone, and a charger. She spritzes me down with perfume, makes me swish my mouth with mouthwash, clips dangling earrings into my ears, and pulls me out into the night.
Andrea takes me out to eat. She orders food I don’t want and watches me take bird- sized bites off each plate. I’m not thirsty (I’m parched, actually), but she orders several glasses of water and some ice teas and a bottle of wine for us to share. She waits until I’ve cleared at least two plates before leaning over the table and glaring at me.
“What’s the matter with you?” She asks.
I shrug my shoulders. “Nothing. I’m fine.”
Andrea shakes her head. “You’re not fine.” She points at me and says, “You haven’t left your house in a whole week. The only times I see you are when you’re sneaking in and out of debates. You were a mess when I saw you last Wednesday—that’s not like you, Olive.”
Not like me? What does she even know about me, save for the slivers I’ve deigned to give away? I scoff and pick at the edge of the table cloth. “It’s really none of your business."
“None of my business?” Andrea raises her brows. She pulls back a bit, surprised, maybe a little offended, but then she leans in real close, face full of shadows from the dim overhead light. “We may not be super close, Henley, but you are my friend, and I’m yours. I guess I should’ve been keeping a closer eye on you. I forget, sometimes, that to have a friend, you have to be a friend too.” She spreads out her hands and licks her lips. “I’m trying to be a friend to you now. I’m trying to figure out how to help because you’re falling apart.”
In a small voice, I say, “I’m not falling apart.”
She gestures to all of me and frowns. “Then what’s this? What’s wrong with you? Why are you acting so weird?”
There’s a bubble of feeling in my chest, tight and horrible. I want to cry. God, I want to cry, but I refuse to let Andrea see me crying. I hardly ever cry in front of Mitchell, so how am I going to start boohooing in front of Andrea, who thinks I’m decent and put together and who’s worried about me and who I’ve been so nasty to ever since she came to pick me up. A tear falls onto the table cloth, then two, until there’s a soft gray spot where all my sorrow’s landed.
“You wouldn’t understand.” I wipe my nose with my wrist. “You can’t.”
"Try me"
She looks honest, earnest. Something in her eyes makes me believe she can really shoulder the weight of it. The burden’s too heavy for Mitchell; he thinks too much of me. But Andrea, this other woman, this friend who I’ve barely treated like a friend, must know the way of little girls, how we can be sweet and sour, and difficult to rationalize. She looks at me, not as a saint or a sinner, but as a person—a single person with foils, weak spots, and strong points. Somebody who could hurt somebody else, if she wanted to.
So, I tell her. Sorry, Regina, if you wanted the past kept secret, the truth held forever in our teeth like cyanide capsules, but I tell Andrea what happened to us. I emerge from the sea; I spit up salt and glitter and cheap body spray, and I tell.
I start by saying that we’ve known each other for a very long time. You and I practically grew up together, down-the-street neighbours in a middle-class suburb. We were both only children, but we considered each other sisters. As kids, we compared our Barbie collections and played dress up in our moms’ closets. I liked your house better than mine; the sheer amount of stuff you had enamoured me, and I enjoyed ogling at your parents (still married, mine were divorced), your toys (all new), your dad’s home theatre, and the inground pool we played mermaids in.
Something in our dynamic changed between elementary and middle school. Suddenly, I wanted: I wanted your house, your things, your confidence, beauty, to be like you, to be better than you, be you, be with you and around you all at once. I was obsessed, and this obsession of mine, part love and part worship and part hate, made me sullen. In middle school, I mimicked the way you dressed, talked, and walked. I learned your mannerisms and repeated them until we were the same person. If you thought my fascination with you was weird, you didn’t do anything about it. Maybe you liked it, liked having a less-pretty shadow that fawned over your every word. Maybe you didn’t notice me at all.
It was worse in high school. You bloomed while I scrambled to keep up. People honestly liked you. Faculty, students, adults, kids; it didn’t matter. You had that sort of natural charisma that drew people in and knocked them flat, and everybody wanted a piece of you. You were student body president, captain of the cheer squad, and you had won just about every title our school had to offer. Crowns and sashes and trophies and bouquets filled your bedroom as you collected accolades; Homecoming Queen, Winter Court Queen, Peppermint Princess, Spring Cotillion Princess. Your room was like a shrine to you, all your accomplishments set up like votives at your light-up vanity.
As for me? I was the friend, the other. I was proud of you, or I was jealous, or I was happy for you, or so miserably angry that I could cry. You were everything that was wrong with society; you were pure perfection. You were the enemy, split-tongued and lip-glossed viper; you were my bestest friend in the entire world, and there was nobody like you. I hated you, I loved you. I wanted to break you, embarrass you, smash your nose and break your straight, white teeth; I wanted to wear your skin like a coat and crown myself with your flowing blonde hair.
I had my chance, and your (in my mind, rightful) comeuppance, on prom night. We got ready at your house, the two of us squealing over our reflections at your vanity. Even with the monstrous selection of awards and hot pink wallpaper, your room was still, at its core, a child’s room. There were stuffed animals piled high on your bed and an army of collector Barbies still in their boxes, posters of our favorited boy bands and a dollhouse that you swore you were going to get rid of someday but never had the guts to throw out. Earlier that day, your mom drove us to the beauty salon, and we sat side by side as we got our hair and nails done. We looked at ourselves in the mirror, blushed and giggled, embarrassed but enthralled with our curls and French manicures, the makeup lovingly applied to our face by beauticians twice our age.
We were very pretty. You, of course, more than me, but I like to think I had a special sort of sparkle around me that night. I broke my piggy bank to buy a fluffy blue dress made up of tulle and rhinestones; my earrings and bracelet were from my mom’s box of costume jewellery, the shoes second hand but clean. And then there was you floating along with your soft curls, face beauteous with blushes and warm pinks, dressed in that cream-colored slip dress that haunts me even now.
Suddenly shy of my slightly dated dress, I snipped that you looked like Sissy Spacek from Carrie right before they trashed her with pig’s blood. Tactfully, you laughed and swatted my arm, and we looked happy in the pictures your dad took of us in the living room.
Andrea tells me she wasn’t all that popular in high school. When she went to prom, she went with a small group of friends, then snuck off to eat pizza because they were bored with the music. It wasn’t like that for us. You were the It Girl, and I was your friend, which meant prom was our time to shine. I remember entering the gymnasium, the light off the mirror ball blinding me, the music loud and close and intoxicating. Our dates—a line-backer for me, the quarterback for you—brought us punch and cupcakes on dainty plastic plates, then danced us around the room to the Top 40. We spun in their arms, laughing when we made them blush and grinning at their jokes, which we felt we were too mature for.
You had a good time, I think. You and your date genuinely liked each other, but I was less comfortable with mine. I sensed that you had talked the line-backer into asking me out, a sort of consolation prize for not being your first choice. My line-backer kept peeking at you from the corner of his eye, ignoring me or paying attention only when I forced him to. He kept me at a distance as we danced and complimented me stiffly. Nice hair, cool dress.
To no one’s surprise, you and your quarterback were voted Prom Queen and King. The class president handed you a sceptre, a crown, a deep purple sash, and a bouquet of blood red roses. You waved to us from the stage, your loyal subjects, and I waved back at you with tears in my eyes, happy for you and angry and jealous though I knew I’d never get it.
With the formalities finished, the real fun began. You paraded yourself around the gym and teased your boy, teased the other cheerleaders (not wholly good -naturedly, but not quite mean enough to draw blood) for having lost to you. I smiled tightly. You let me hold your sceptre for a while, and I knighted my line-backer with it. The footballers decided the prom was lame and that we should ditch the party to do something cool.
“We should go to the woods behind the school!” My line-backer suggested. “Zack’s got weed and beer in his truck!” The zit on his chin, too small to see from far away, was glaringly red up close.
I looked to you for direction, expecting for you to pull away and mock his idea, but you smiled and said it might be fun. You told the boys we’d come with them to the woods, that you were sick of all this baby stuff.
I wasn’t so sure. The football team’s rowdy energy made me anxious, and I didn’t like to be out so late. I tugged at your arm and said we should probably stay in the gym.
You pinned me with your eyes and said, “Grow up, Liv. Don’t you wanna have fun for once?”
I protested some more, crossed my arms, and told you that you were nasty, but eventually, I was worn down, tired of being picked at and mocked by you, the other cheerleaders, and their dates. I threw up my hands, and we were off, the ten or so of us slipping out the side door and into the night, our only guides the strobes from the gym and the bright, full moon.
The “fun” out in the woods wasn’t that much fun after all. It was sort of boring, actually; a group of teenagers gathered around a slapdash fire, sharing cheap beer and smoking pot. The girls came down out of their high heels, and the boys loosened their ties, all of us subdued by our intoxicants. You puffed at a blunt, pretending you were some sort of aficionado though I knew for a fact you bought into all those D.A.R.E programs wholeheartedly. As the night got colder, your boy threw his jacket around your shoulders to protect you from the wind, and you leaned into him, eyes red and full of moonlight.
We were too distracted to hear the first howl. It was faint, barely audible over the roar of the fire and the boys’ boisterous talk. One of the cheerleaders snapped up straight, looked around, and asked, “Did you hear that?”
"Hear what?"
“That sound! That noise, it sounded like… Like a howl!”
“A howl?” The quarterback said. “You afraid of the big bad wolf coming to get you?”
He started howling, and the rest of the football team joined him, howling and yipping like wild dogs.
“Stop it, Todd, I’m not kidding! I totally heard something!”
The boys kept howling, yipping, barking, and then we all heard the it, high and terrible and too close for comfort. We stiffened in our seats. The hair on the back of my neck stood at attention, the colour drained from my face. I peered at you from the corner of my eye. You were gripping your quarterback tight, French tips digging into the meat of his bicep.
He laughed nervously. “Probably just somebody’s dog.”
“Go see,” you said, nudging him with your shoulder. “Just go check it out. Please?”
You were always great with winning people over. A smile, a tilt of the head —the quarterback looked around, working up the courage to go. We all plainly saw how scared he was, how much he didn’t want to go alone into the woods. In the end, he convinced the rest of the boys to go along with him, and they went off into the trees to find the source of the noise. We girls were left sitting by the fire, poking at the logs and picking at our nails. We couldn’t drink anymore, and none of us had a taste for the seedy weed Zack’s brother brought back from college. You looked down at your painted toes. I looked up at the sky and found Sirius, the dog star, winking at me.
It felt like forever in that clearing, each of us remembering fairy tales about wolves, thinking how cold it was now that the fire was dying and how we wished our boys were there to lend us their jackets. Suddenly there was a noise, pounding feet coming from the direction the boys went, running feet taking a body as fast as they could. We all turned, expecting the boys jubilant and playful, out of breath from running. Instead, there was the line-backer with his shirt ripped to shreds, chest and face a bloody mess, a nasty gash across his throat.
Gurgling, he screamed, “Run!”
At first, we did nothing, too stunned by the blood to do anything but stare. He yelled again, and this time we listened. Screaming like banshees, like stuck pigs, we ran. Two girls went to the east, two went south, and you and I clung to each other and barrelled west. Without our shoes, our tender feet were beaten by the undergrowth, thorns and twigs and pebbles embedding themselves into our soles. Tree branches scratched our arms and faces, tugged the curls out of our hair, and ripped our dresses. You lost your sash somewhere along the way, and your bouquet of roses scattered to the wind when we had to jump a creek. We didn’t know where we were going or where the others were. Still, we ran, breathless, dripping in sweat, until the only sensation was the wind blowing back on our faces and painful stitches in our sides.
Sorry, Regina, but I tell Andrea this next part too. I tell her how we were lost in the woods for God knows how long, that we screamed ourselves hoarse in hopes that somebody would find us. I tell her how we wandered in circles and came across the other footballers' bodies, mauled beyond recognition, more mush and pulp than human. I tell her how you only recognized the quarterback because of the scraps of purple fabric in the mess of meat. I held back your hair as you doubled over and vomited, cried, and screamed some more.
How surreal it all was! It felt like a vivid dream, the details too clear; the moon too bright, the smell of blood thick enough to taste.
I kept saying, “This isn’t real, this isn’t real, this isn’t real,” but my mantra was drowned out by the sound of low growling. You and I turned to one another, already knowing what we heard.
We turned in unison, and there it was—the monster, the wolf. It looked nothing like a normal wolf and nothing like the wolves we knew from fairy tales. It was far worse, a hulking beast that stood over seven feet tall on its bent hind legs. It stooped over as if its upper body was too heavy for it to hold, and its long, curved claws scraped the ground. When it opened its mouth, we saw its yellow teeth dripping with blood, its grey-pink tongue slick with spittle. It smelled like blood, like carnage, and its eyes, amber-yellow, watched us closely as we clung to one another.
I remember because how can you forget being seventeen, dishevelled, piss running down your leg as you beheld a thing out of your worst nightmares? How do you forget the need to scream, the fear that kept you bolted to the spot even as the monster lurched towards you? I thought that if I didn’t move, it wouldn’t see me, and if it didn’t see me, it couldn’t hurt me. The wolf circled us, sniffing at the hems of our dresses. It nosed your leg, and you whimpered, just once, and that was the end of you.
It happened so fast. The beast lunged at you, and you were on your back scrambling to get away. By the light of the moon, I saw its teeth and claws sink into your flesh. It was a hideous noise, the wolf devouring you, snarling and snuffling. I couldn’t bear it. I did the only thing I thought to do; I ran.
Even now, I don’t know what it was that pushed me. Was it fear? Was it self - preservation? I wanted to live, and if living meant letting you die, so be it. As I ran through the woods, I heard you pleading. You screamed no, you screamed stop. You begged and you prayed until all your begging and praying became wet gurgling, then silence.
By the time I reached home, it was light out. My mom was on the couch, worried sick and ready to lecture. How could I be so thoughtless? Where was I? What happened to me? Speechless and finally realizing what had happened, what I’d done, I fell into her arms and wept.
“Olive, honey, what happened? What happened?”
I couldn’t answer. I wouldn’t answer. Who’d believe me? A teenage girl, a little drunk, a little high, babbling on about monsters in the woods; it sounded crazy in my own head. I couldn’t let anybody else in, couldn’t let anyone think I’d lost my mind.
I convinced my mom not to call the police or take me to the hospital. She tended to my cuts in the bathroom and sent me to bed. The last thing I heard that night was her on the phone with my dad saying, “Something’s happened to Olive at the prom. I don’t know what to do.”
The guilt might’ve been easier to manage if the story ended there. If you ended there, dead in the woods, then I could go on with my life, move on as the friend who survived the vicious attack that stole your life. If you died that night, I could be the scared little girl, not yet seventeen, who did something stupid to save her neck.
You never did like letting people off easy, Regina.
The following week, you were back in school as if nothing happened. You looked fine; a little bruised around the face and dressed much more modestly than I’d ever seen, but alive. We didn’t talk for a while; I can admit, now, that I was avoiding you, too afraid to know what you might do or say if we were alone. I watched you from afar, trying to find meaning in the way you picked at your lunch and how you stiffened at even the most fleeting mention of the prom or the woods.
At the vigil for our missing classmates, we stood apart from one another. You were with your mother, staring blankly at the sea of candles and cards and Beanie Babies, and I was with what remained of the cheer squad, crying quietly over the quarterback and Zack and all the cheerleaders we’d never see again. On a whim, I said a few words for our fallen teammates. I caught your face in the crowd, wan and bloodless, drawn in from a lack of sleep.
The Monday following the vigil, you sought me out. Right after gym, you caught me by the wrist and pulled me into the furthest shower stall, rucked up your t-shirt, and carefully peeled back the rust-coloured gauze from your midsection to show me your bite. It was my first (and last) time seeing it. It was worse than I ever expected, all infected around the edges, puffy and oozing yellow pus from the puncture wounds. There was a sizable chunk of flesh missing from your side, and as you breathed heavily, new blood seeped from the gaping wound.
It had a rotten smell, like sulphur and eggs and meat gone off. I swallowed the sick that rose up in my throat and turned my head so I wouldn’t have to see any more of it.
“What the fuck happened?”
“My mom took me to the doctor. He said it was just a really bad dog bite. I had to get rabies shots in my stomach.”
"Jesus," I said.
When I turned back, you had the bite covered up again and were lowering your shirt. You leaned against the wet stall and wrapped your arms protectively around your stomach. “It wasn’t a dog.”
I felt the goosebumps rise on my arms, the hair on the back of my neck stand. Of course, I knew it wasn’t a dog, wild or otherwise. Even so, I shrugged and said, “What do you want me to say, Reggie?”
“I want you to say you saw it too.”
“Say what? That we saw a werewolf?” I scoffed and shook my head. I didn’t believe the words coming out of my mouth, but I didn’t disbelieve them either. “This isn’t Twilight, Reggie; those things aren’t real. The doctor’s probably right—you got bit by somebody’s crazy dog, and we were too messed up to realize it. You were drinking, right? And you smoked that shit from Zack’s truck.”
“That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen!” Your voice pitched higher, and some eyes travelled to where we stood. You pushed me further into the stall, slamming me back into the tile. Cold water soaked the back of my gym shirt, and my head spun a little. Lowly, so that only I heard, you said, “Dogs, no matter how crazy they are, don’t do shit like this, Olive. You know that. You saw it, too.”
Suddenly I was angry at you. Angry that you were pulling me back into it, angry because I was so close to being out and normal again. I pushed you back hard, hard as I could. I didn’t want to go into the woods that night, didn’t want to be around the rowdy footballers with their cheap beer and weed, handsy and over excited from the dance. It was your idea, your fault. I shoved you harder and shouted, “I didn’t see anything! You’re fucking crazy, Regina!”
I left you then, stomping out of the shower stall with my face flushed hot. I couldn’t breathe, and I didn’t know if it was because I was furious or ashamed.
Across the table, Andrea sits in stunned silence. Her mouth and eyes are red, the former with wine and the latter with tears. I spread my hands, unsure of how to proceed now that I’ve flayed myself.
For a while, she’s quiet, just looking at me. When Andrea speaks next, her voice is so low that I barely hear her over the restaurant's din.
“How could you do that? Why would you do that?”
I shrug, and the movement is pitiful on me. “Revenge? Survival instincts? I thought I was smart—playing the game.”
“Have you told Mitchell any of this?”
“I can’t. He wouldn’t get it. It’s too much, and he’s so good, I don’t…” I can hardly speak for all my crying. I’ve never told anyone any of this before, all the things I did to you. When I’m able to catch my breath, I say, “If he knew… If he knew I wasn’t good, he wouldn’t love me.”
Andrea’s eyes are on me as I cry. I can hear her crying, her sniffling, and clearing her throat. She reaches across the table and takes my hand. “You’re not too much.”
“I can’t fix it. I can’t… I can’t hold it all.”
“Then let me hold some of it for you.”
For the first time, I see Andrea, really see her. She doesn’t break her gaze, and there’s no disgust in her eyes, no hatred, no pity or disdain. I am no smaller or bigger than I was before, though I am different and definitely changed.
I squeeze her hand. I give her my burden.
Mitchell may not like the idea of me being gone for a whole week after a nasty breakdown, but he sucks it up because Andrea’s coming with me. Mitchell likes Andrea. He thinks she’s sensible, funny, trustworthy: essentially, the perfect woman to take your slightly unstable fiancé on a little impromptu trip to her hometown. He hovers around the car, hands in his pockets, as Andrea lugs the last of our stuff into her sedan. I watch him wave good bye from the passenger seat.
It’s a six-hour drive from New York to Virginia, more than enough time for Andrea to go through her entire road trip mix and then for me to play a smattering of songs from my own. I’m nervous about her hearing my weird mash of pop and electronica, but she’s kind about it, gently teasing me in that way close friends do about my taste in what she calls “drunk white girl music.” When we stop to pee at a gas station, she buys the kind of chips I like and makes sure I eat more than the crumbs from the bottom of the bag. Andrea doesn’t expect me to drive; most of the ride is quiet, not a single word exchanged, only cool air blowing through our braids and the sound of some indie music darling wailing out slow from the speakers.
When we arrive in Virginia, I’m not surprised to find that home hasn’t changed very much. It’s a boring little town settled between other boring little towns; the streets as unimaginative as the people. The scenery is nice though, with lots of mountains and trees as far as the eye can see. I ask Andrea to drive us by the old high school, and she does so without complaint. We sit on the hood of her car and drink sodas while our fingers throb from the cold, talking about things unrelated to the past like her psychiatric practice and my thesis paper, which is winding out of control. Birds fly over our heads in V-formation, going south for the winter, and I find myself watching their flight with jealousy.
Andreas found us a room at a bed-and-breakfast, and she takes us there right after. I call you while Andrea checks in, stomach oily with fear as you tell me where you want to meet.
The people who own the B&B are too new to town to recognize me, but they know your name and who you are. You’re a troublemaker, a bad seed —was I there, they ask, when she lost her mind? I keep my mouth shut, thinking it would be unwise to tell them I lost it for you.
Our room is cosy enough: a queen-sized bed, a nightstand, a huge old-fashioned television set, a landline, and a small ensuite bathroom Andrea calls “quaint.” Andrea sets her bags down on the right side of the bed closest to the window and radiator and apologizes beforehand about her snoring.
I take the bathroom first, showering with the B&B’s seashell-shaped soaps and rinsing out my mouth before changing clothes. I’m nervous while dressing. I worry about looking trendy, about trying too hard. I think of you and me at the mall, me trying on clothes and you shaking your head exasperatedly about how nothing seemed to look right on me. I fret over the cut of my jeans, my shirt, the expensive leather boots I’ve brought down from Brooklyn. Andrea watches me change in and out of clothes three times before picking out an outfit of her own—the jeans that made me nervous, the boots and a purplish turtleneck of hers.
“Are you sure?” I glance at myself in the mirror, tug the hem of the shirt. “It’s not too much?”
“It’s a turtleneck and jeans-you’re fine.”
Nevertheless, I take off my makeup, pile my hair into a bun, and remove all my jewellery.
We drive to our meeting place in silence. Main Street’s unrecognizable, so much has changed. When we were kids, it was one, maybe two good stores, a boutique, a package store, and a movie theatre that never played anything new. Now it’s slick, modern, bustling with artisanal shops. The café we’re meeting at is new but decorated to look old, all exposed brick and pipes, “industrial” furniture, and heavy farming equipment just laying around. Andrea’s a pro at places like these; she guides us to a corner table by the front window then orders some kind of floral tea. I get coffee, plain, which I drown in sugar and cream. Andrea glares at my non-meal, and I make it up to her by ordering a raspberry scone that’s much too sweet but good otherwise.
While we wait, I watch the people that go in and out of the café. Maybe our little hometown has changed more than I give it credit for, Regina. There’s a whole new breed of people living here. Somehow, someway, it’s become a hip place to live, a meeting ground for intellectuals and artists too sensitive for the big city. I look at the girls in their graphic t -shirts and the boys in their flannel and think of how we would’ve made fun of these people. I think about Mitchell too, and how he’s just like them.
I mostly think about you, though. About what you’ll look like, about how you’ll act. Are you as I dreamed you? Are you old, dumpy, and miserable? Are you lovely still, stunning but a little jaded after all that I did to you? Would I know you by sight like I knew you by sound? The bonds of our friendship have weakened, yes, but will I know you? Will you know me?
You’re late; it’s another hour before you arrive, and the wait’s made me jumpy. I hear the bell jingle and jerk my head up.
So much for knowing you in death—I don’t recognize you at all. All I see is a woman covered head to toe in loose-fitting clothes, barefaced, hair tangled and unwashed. She looks around the café, then her eyes settle on me. She smiles to reveal a set of yellowed, uneven teeth, the canines longer than normal.
Is this you? Honestly, I’m confused. All this time, I’ve been thinking of you as the girl I used to know, and I’ve been expecting her to come through the doors, not you. I wanted for your hair to be silky smooth and flowing, a gorgeous golden banner. I wanted your lips soft, your eyes bright, for your face to be clean and unmarred. I wanted you to be wearing designer heels with diamonds dancing on your wrists, some devastatingly expensive purse on your arm.
But you are none of these things. You are simple, plain. You walk into the café with a raised chin, but there’s something halting in your walk. You no longer smell of sweet pea body spray and mixed berries, but of wet dog and musk and unwashed skin, an animal funk that pervades the room. I wrinkle my nose.
You come to our table and say, “Olive?”
I want to shake my head, but I nod instead. “Hi, Regina.”
And then you’re hugging me, scarily thin arms wrapped around my neck and squeezing me so tight. Unsure of what to do with my arms, I keep them to my side, then, after a nervous moment, I hug you back. You’re so skinny! These are not the lean muscles of an athlete, whippet strong and powerful enough to jump, spring, and fly through the air. This is hunger, your ribs against my full belly, bony fingers clutching my muscled shoulders. When I pull back to look at you fully, I see the gauntness in your face, the heavy eyebags, and sallow complexion. Still, there are traces of my Regina there, around the mouth.
You push your hair away from your face, blushing, then you catch sight of Andrea. I see you retreat into yourself, your face turning stony. “Who’s this?”
“Oh! Regina, this is—”
Andrea stands and extends her hand out to you. “Andrea Perkins. Olive asked me to come.”
You don’t shake her hand, which embarrasses me, but Andrea doesn’t seem to mind. She settles back in her seat and says, “It’s nice to meet you, Regina.”
You snort. “What? You don’t trust me alone, Liv?”
I say, “You look very pretty, Reg.”
You cut your eyes at me, scoff, then say, “No. No, I don’t.” You drag a chair over from another table and settle it so you’re between me and Andrea. When a waitress comes over, you order plain tea and then spend the next few minutes ripping up napkins and rearranging sugar packets. Your tea comes; I watch you shake in a few sugar substitutes, then stir, the metal of the spoon scraping against the glass.
“So…” says Andrea. She spreads her hands against the table, opening up the conversation. “What now?”
“What now?” you repeat. “What happens now is that Olive stays with me for the duration of the full moon. It’s three days, tops—I need someone to watch over me. Check my chains, make sure I don’t run wild and do anything, you know, stupid.”
I start to open my mouth to agree to those terms, but Andrea butts in with, “Couldn’t somebody else do that for you? There must be other people like you out here. Can’t they look over you?”
The question: Why Olive? lingers in the air, but Andrea’s tactful enough not to say it aloud. I can tell she’s starting to aggravate you; you’re tapping your spoon against your China, drumming your overlong fingernails against the table.
“If you must know, I’m not exactly Miss Congeniality these days. I used to have a pack, but they kicked me out. Bylaws violated, infighting, petty shit like that.” You flash Andrea a nasty smile and say, “Like cheerleaders with sharper teeth and claws.”
You’re being mean, and I think you know it. I frown and wonder if you’d be so snippy if it was just me and you at the table. I’d say it’s not like you, but it is—you’ve done worse to people you don’t like. I’m only sorry Andrea is the subject of your ire, the one who has to get that patented Regina ‘tude.
I sit quietly as you tell us where you live (an abandoned apartment block near the woods), and what kind of things I’ll need to bring with me. Andrea’s taking notes. Our eyes meet at some point, and you roll your eyes as if to mock her.
“It’s not rocket science,” you say. “I just need someone to keep me safe, and you’re the only person I really trust, Liv.”
We finish our drinks, and Andrea generously pays for everything. I see you make a face behind her back, juvenile as ever, and it sort of makes me laugh. You hug me goodbye, say you’ve missed me so much, then you’re gone again.
Andrea and I sit in the café for a little while longer. I can tell she’s got a lot to say, but my mind’s too full of my own stuff to give her an opening. What am I doing here, Regina? You say I’m the only person you trust. Seriously? Really, after all the things that I’ve done to you? How I’ve ruined you? I think of how thin you are, how every clatter and sudden noise startled you, how you snapped and scowled at everything.
“I don’t know if I can do this.” I put my head in my hands. “Andrea, I can’t do this.”
“If you want to leave, we can leave, Olive. Something’s definitely wrong with her.”
Andrea catches herself, flushes at her phrasing, then says, “She needs help. Not your help, per se. A professional, someone who can, you know…”
"Fix her?"
“No, Olive, not fix.” She sighs, runs a hand through her box braids. “People can’t be fixed, they’re not machines. Regina’s traumatized, very hurt and some of her hurt has made her dangerous. She needs somebody qualified to give her care and attention and tools to cope.”
“So, what? I just hook her up with a psychiatrist and dip? Andrea, I can’t do that. I fucked her up, I have to make this right.”
Andrea furrows her brows, but says nothing else. On our way back to the bed-and- breakfast, she’s deep in her thoughts and I’m deep in mine.
That night, I dream of you as a wolf. You’re snarling, your yellow teeth gleaming in the dark like stars crowded together. You rend my flesh, and I let you. You tear my belly, and I let it happen, apologizing all the while.
Do you know why I study ethics, Regina? My mom thinks it’s because I want to be of use to humanity, to waste my people skills on philosophizing and writing research papers that no one will ever read. She thinks it’s a waste of time, that nobody needs anybody preaching to them about the merits and pitfalls of human nature. If I really want to be of use to society, she says, I’d abandon these lofty dreams of philosophy, take up a nursing job like her, volunteer on the weekends, or join a church. My fiancé, too, thinks I’m doing it because I want to add something to humanity, that I want to make the world a better place with pithy quotes and lectures, become great and remembered like Aristotle and Plato and Kant.
They’ve got it all wrong. I’m not studying ethics to be of use, nor am I doing it to improve the human condition. I’m not concerned with philosophy or the differences between right and wrong. I know right from wrong well enough to know when I’ve done good and when I’ve done bad. I know the power of a lie, even a white one—I know what we owe each other, the good of doing good, of kindness just for the sake of kindness.
Ethics, simply put, is my cross to bear. Some people crawl on rice, gravel. Others set themselves aflame, bodies crisped with their sins. Others still self-flagellate, cat-o-nine tails leaving hideous trails of blood down their backs, their skin a map of mistakes. Me? I read Kant, Book, Mill, and Stratton-Lake. I crucify myself on the words of Locke, of Plato—I go to my knees and crawl on the words of the ethicists before me so that I never, ever forget to weep for that teenage girl I left for dead.
On the night of the full moon, Andrea and I dress in our winter clothes and drive out to the edge of town. You live in the slums, the buildings tagged with graffiti and protected, uselessly, by a barbed-wire fence. A large sign claims that trespassers are strictly forbidden and that people should beware of the wild dogs on the premises.
We walk the grounds until we find your building then we tramp up the concrete steps to your apartment. I knock on your door, uncontrollably jittery, nervous of the howls I hear in the distance, the smell of smoke and urine.
There’s no answer. I knock again and again. I peer through the keyhole and see only darkness.
“Try calling maybe?” says Andrea.
I dial your number, and the line rings a few times. I hear your phone trilling inside the apartment, and wonder why you’re not answering. I knock once more, certain that you’re just in the back or in the shower. Andrea steps forward and nudges the door; it swings open, never closed.
Here’s what I learned from walking through your apartment: I don’t know you at all. Once upon a time, you were my sister, but you’re a stranger now, and there’s little of that girl I called friend in you. You’ve changed. I changed you. I thought, maybe, that I’d come home and we’d cry and reconcile, that everything would be alright. I thought I’d get my peace and you’d get yours. We’d say things we should’ve said long ago, apologies and explanations for the things we’ve done to each other. I’d invite you to my wedding, and you’d be my maid of honour, smiling for me, happy for me.
Me, me, me, and here you were, alone in this squalor, alone in this barely furnished place, living off of take out. Who even are you? I wanted you to pull me down from the cross I’ve put myself on and tend my wounds, but how could you have? I can barely make it through your apartment, the mess of it, some bags with trash and others with your clothes. It reeks of dead things, mice and roaches, mold and still water.
Andrea walks ahead of me, her cell phone’s flashlight a glaring bright spot in the darkness. She peeks into the rooms as I stand in what might be the living room surrounded by garbage bags and what might be a possum at my feet.
I hear Andrea gasp. It’s a sharp, cut-off noise, disgust and horror mingled. I hurry to where she is, at the far end of the narrow hall, but she yells at me to stay away.
“Don’t! Don’t come in here, Olive!”
But I’m already past her and standing in what looks to be your bedroom. There’s no time to appreciate your decorating skills, all your old crowns and medals and sashes and trophies crowded around the bed, your vases full of stagnant water and long-dead flowers. I would pay more attention to the dollhouse laden with dust and the sweet pea body spray lingering in the air if it hadn’t been for your body in the bed. You look as if you’re sleeping, your hands crossed over your chest and eyes closed ever so peacefully. I get close enough to see the blood blooming from your breast, the gun cradled against your skin, burning the flesh of your hands and chest. The smells hit me all at once, perfume and blood and rotted, singed flesh.
I’m swaying on my feet. The world spins around me. Andrea grabs hold of my arm and forces me bodily out of your room then tells me to call the cops. I dial 9-1-1 with shaky hands, but I can’t describe what I’ve seen, your chest ripped open and oozing, your molted and charred hands.
Good play, Regina. Really, you were always fond of long games, though I doubt you were being strategic when you turned those silver bullets onto yourself. Before I came here, before I knew what you were planning and before I saw your face, tired and defeated, I wondered which of us was the gunman and which of us was the negotiator.
A cop eases the gun from your hands, question answered.
Only when I’m back home in Brooklyn does Andrea grant me permission to read your suicide note. She thinks it’ll be cathartic for me and that there’s enough distance between me and Virginia to prevent me from doing anything stupid. I haven’t told her about the gun I bought, another one of our secrets, though I seriously doubt I’ll ever use it on myself. I hold it while I read your letter, feel the metal heavy in my palm as I take in your last words. It’s not what I wanted; it’s too short, barely a page long, and there’s nothing in it about forgiveness or setting us free. You talk about being tired, about this moon being the one to kill you, and how you wanted to go out on your own terms. You apologized for the mess.
Andrea’s already read the letter, but I tell her about it anyway and fall apart while doing it. Why didn’t you let me go? Why couldn’t you write a single line to exonerate me? Couldn’t you have said that it was okay? That you understand? That I was young and dumb, and that you would’ve done the same? Even if you didn’t believe what you said, even if they were false, couldn’t you have lied, just this once?
I go back into my misery, back to my studies, my hair-shirt of theory. A little tip from me to you, my dear Regina—don’t ever heal. It hurts too much, breaking the leg to mend it, and we’ll have to amputate it in the end anyway. Can we call it even, Reggie? And even if we aren’t, I can make it so by whipping myself for each year of silence, each cold look, each lie I told.
What woods? What wolf? What moon? What girl? Lash, lash, lash, lash. She’s lying! Crack! She’s crazy! Crack! You believe that loony bitch? She’s no friend of mine! Crack! Crack! Crack!
Oh, and you’ll be pleased to know, Regina, that Mitchell and I are no longer an item. Yeah, turns out I was right! Coming clean about my past had driven him away. Not steady enough, not enough salt in my water; Mitchell drowned in all the bad I did. I ate the Olive he knew and loved, popped her into my mouth and chewed her up like my namesake. Another death, I guess. We’ll carry the coffins of our past selves out to the woods and burn them, a funeral pyre for a couple of former cheerleaders.
A month after your suicide, Andrea shows up at my place wearing a black dress and a face full of makeup. She smells like tuberoses, body wash. Firmly but gently, she pulls me out of my bed and forces me into a shower, combs the tangles from my hair and makes up my face. I let myself be manipulated, stand quietly as she zips me into a dress and forces my feet into heels.
“I don’t want to be anywhere loud,” I whine as she clips on a bracelet. “I don’t want people looking at me.”
“No one’s going to look at you.” Andrea takes me by the elbow and leads me to her car. “We’re going to an art gallery; a friend of mine has an exhibit.”
Andrea drives us out to a huge modern building downtown that’s brightly lit and swarming with people milling about with wine glasses, gawping at statues and photography, murmuring to themselves about texture and composition. Andrea stays with me for a few minutes, leading me to a few friends of hers and the artist. The artist herself is a sullen woman, hunched over and prematurely grey. When I ask about her influences, she looks at me with pure shock, as if it hadn't occurred to her to be influenced by anything.
The artist brings me to a piece she’s fond of—the focal point of her exhibit. It’s a wall washed black and covered in mirrors, and square gaps in frames that show the next room over. I stand in front of this wall of mirrors and cloches, and watch myself move fifty, sixty times. Some people in the next room see me and sometimes I see them. Some of the mirrors are cracked or they’re scribbled on. The cluster I stand in are marked with quotes from ethicists and philosophers, a wall of judgment and moral proclamations all pointed directly at me.
“This is…”
“There’s more,” says the artist. I’ve lost Andrea, but I follow the artist to the next room where the wall is covered in words and it’s the mirrors that are painted. Some are black, some are grey and others are blueish. The ones that catch my attention are the ones washed a sombre blue. The artist presses something into my hand—a black marker.
“It’s interactive. Write anything you want on the wall.”
“Anything?” I say, stepping up to the wall. I uncap the marker and cap it again. I can’t think of anything poignant to say, anything important.
“It doesn’t have to be grand. It can be, you know, anything. A poem, a lyric, a joke,” says the artist. “Someone wrote a very interesting limerick in one of the corners. Quite funny.”
But I don’t write a joke, a limerick or anything else like that. I uncap the pen and write in small letters the words forgive me thrice. When I raise my head, I catch my reflection in one of the blue-washed mirrors.
The girl that looks back is weeping.