Chapter 19 (post two)

Pre-read note: MERRY CHRISTMAS. My present to you is some explanation to Annika's death. This section is pretty long and is sad for a Christmas post, but it explains a lot. 

Enjoy.

Chapter nineteen, section two:

I started to talk in the car ride back to school, and I talked and talked until my mouth was dry and yet the words were still spilling out.

My life story came tumbling out in bursts. There were memories that had come back slowly since the day I looked out that window and then there were memories that came without warning in that car ride, the ones brought on by telling the others. I told him of the places I’d lived from age three, the cars my family had own since I was five, the family Christmas parties from since I was eight. There was the day my dad brought home my hamster, the day that that hamster died, the day I opened a noisy box to a small, furry kitten face. Then there were the days of hiding in my room while my parents yelled and screamed below my feet, the nights when my dad drove away and my mother hid in the bedroom with the door locked. The day they sat me and my sister down and told us what they had decided; the day I realized I was just another stereotype and statistic:  a broken family.

Here, the tears started again. Jake looked me with his eyes all big and his mouth crooked like he was biting his tongue. He glanced at his hands on the steering wheel and back at me. When he carefully went to place his hand on my knee, I shook my head no. He nodded and watched the road again. Then I covered my face with my heads and my mouth started moving again.

There were summers spent at my grandmother's and summers spent with the aunt who lived in the middle of nowhere. There were Thanksgivings spent with grandparents and Thanksgivings spent eating Chinese food around the coffee table. There were Halloweens collecting candy with friends and Halloweens spent with Beth, handing out candy and reminiscing about the good old days of childhood. There were snow days spent shoveling the driveway and snow days spent reading books in bed until five. There were Christmases spent with family and Christmases spent with friends families, feeling out of place, knowing that if my family weren’t so complicated we wouldn’t be surrounded by someone else’s.

I told Jake of the family I knew inside out, the family I only saw a couple times a year, the family I used to know and the family I’d never met: grandparents and their histories; aunts and uncles that would come and visit; cousins I’d met only once and cousins I’d never met at all. The complexities throughout the years I tried to explain the best I could. These people did this, these things happened, these people decided this and these people decided that, these people didn’t talk to these people afterwards. Repeat for the other side of the family.

When I finally wiped my tears from my cheeks and took a deep breath, I looked out the windows and noticed I had no idea where we were. 

Jake, who had hadn’t said a word for the whole trip, was watching the road in a determined fashion. He had been nodding and uh huh-ing occasionally, but he’d let me ramble, and for that I silently thanked him.

When I asked him where we were going, he replied that he wasn’t quite sure yet. I almost pointed out that I was supposed to be back in residence by eleven since it was Saturday, but then I remembered Jake normally bent this rule anyways. So I watched the city around me, the sun only a slight glow on the one side of the sky as the moon hung shadow-like on the other and the buildings casting darkness across the streets as they sparkled in the low light.

This reminded me of the city I had lived in, and the next thing I knew, I was telling Jake the history of my hometown. Jake smiled at the right details and nodded at the sad points, and I watched it all. His eyes were the road’s but his ears were all mine. I watched his hands on the wheel, smiling as I rambled on.

We came to a building with a parking entrance and pulled up to the entrance. The barrier stood in our way until Jake fished an ID card out of his wallet and swiped it across a black box. We drove down into the basement of the building, a large cement parking space without another car in sight. We parked in a spot closest to a heavy set of metal doors, which we headed through.

I had stopped talking at this point, but Jake still hadn’t said a word. He led me up stairs and into sterile white halls.

“Where are we?”

“Just wait.”

He swung open a pair of sterile green doors and we walked onto hardwood into a dark room. Jake found a light switch on the side and soon lights flickered on. Only a couple lights lit the room, as though Jake had missed some switches, but it was enough to light the large room to see where we were going. It was as big as a church, with fifteen foot ceilings and wood detailing. It was as if we’d walked from a hospital into a 18^th century university library. Bookcases lined the space in neat rows from one end of the room to another. They were dark and wooden, standing over eight feet tall. Jake silently led me down one of the aisles, almost to the very end. The shelves were covered in leather-bound books from about halfway upwards, and below were wooden filing cabinet-like drawers. We stopped and Jake opened one the drawers; I couldn’t make out the label in the low light. Past the shelves on the other side of the room I could see brown leather couches and a couple of tall, dark lamps, all lit by the moon light coming in three tall windows with thick panes of glass. When I looked back to Jake, he was shuffling through files. He slowly lifted one out, examining the date hand-printed on the corner. Then he handed it to me.

Thursday October 28^th, 2010

I opened the file to find newspaper clippings.

School Shooting, One Death

Schoolgirl Lost in Shooting

Tragedy at Middleton High

Teen Killed in School Shooting

Then in the low light I noticed the pictures accompanying each one: two young girls, the one with blonde hair loose falling past her shoulders, her smile large but fake, her dark eyes large and sparkling. Me.

I suddenly felt sick to my stomach and bent forward a little. Jake grabbed me and led me over to one of the couches, where he sat down beside me. I ran my hands down my face, the folder open on my lap.

“Listen, New Wings,” Jake said slowly, “I know this is hard. But at the same time...”

I looked at him, his green eyes catching mine. “What are you trying to tell me?”

“I’m not trying to tell you anything,” he slid his hand over my knee, “I’m trying to help you.”

I lifted the first newspaper clipping up. It was black and white, cut from one of those low-budget local papers from my city. I could make the words out in the moonlight coming in from the windows. My stomach twisted when I saw my name and skimmed that part of the article. Then I learned how I’d died.

The noise I’d heard had been a gunshot, set off by a grade ten boy. There had been tension growing between rival groups of the grade tens and nines. One boy got into a fist fight with another, then the one had pulled a knife. That’s when another member of the group had pushed their way through the crowds in the hall, and pulled a gun from his jacket.

I remembered the hallway, the way you couldn’t see through the people. There had been noises, noises that I now realized were the boys shoving each other against lockers and others yelling. I remember the way silence had hit the group of teenagers, the way it seemed to knock the breath out of everyone, even me, even though I had had no idea what was going on. I remembered the way that everyone had moved away from something in the hall, backwards, forcing me up against the glass wall. I remember the noise of the gunshot. He’d shot the window by accident, simply shooting upwards to try and frighten the boy with the knife off of his friend. I remembered the shattering of the glass and the way my stomach knew what was happening before my mind did. I remembered the weight of falling backwards, knowing that I shouldn’t be possible, that something solid had been there only a moment ago. I remember a rush of wind, then I remember nothing. Three other students almost fell with me, but they grabbed people and people grabbed them. They were saved. One other girl fell with me, and was rushed to hospital with life-threatening injuries. She'd been saved; it had been close, but she’d been saved too. It was me who’d fallen to my death.

I placed the newspaper article on top of the others and closed the folder on my lap. I sat still as stone, until I couldn’t take the tension inside me and I leaned over, placing my head on the folder on my knees. Jake removed his hand from my knee, then I felt him rub my back.

“New Wings...”

I didn’t answer.

“Oh, New Wings, I only wanted you to know it’s really over.”

The tension in my stomach rose to my throat, choking any words back. My eyes threatened tears again, but none fell. My head spun.

“Please, please just breath.”

I listened to Jake, taking a long shaking breath and pulling myself into a sitting position again. I looked over the dark room, the shelves casting shadows and the leather shining in the moonlight. Then my breath started to shake harder and harder.

“New Wings...”

The tears were falling again. I wondered how there could still be tears to fall, how they hadn’t already been all used up, but they defied me and my logic, dripping down my face.

Jake wrapped his arms around me, pulling me close to him. I sobbed quietly into his shoulder.

When I finally looked up, taking slow breaths and trying to stop shaking, Jake wrapped his hands around mine.

I caught his eye. “I never used to cry this much,” I sighed, wiping my cheeks.

He  nodded.

“I didn’t cry when my parents divorced or when my hamster died. I didn’t even shed a tear at my great-grandfather’s funeral.”

He nodded again.

I bit my tongue until I said, slowly, “I’m dead, aren’t I?”

“Yeah,” Jake said gently, “I’m sorry.”

The idea took a minute for me to process, and another minute for me to stomach.

Then I was shaking and Jake’s arms wrapped around me as the salt water soaked my face again.