Page 48 of Warmer, Colder

My entire life I’d been praised for my intelligence, deemed by everyone a ‘smart girl’. Turns out I was a fool. A fool for throwing that party. A fool for withdrawing from the people who loved me—of whom there were many. A fool for ending my own life too early.

They say hindsight is twenty-twenty and they’re right. At that time, all I could see was the deep-seated shame that burned away my self-respect and will to live. Instead of doing the right thing, instead of seeing that there was an entire life left to live, all I saw was the comments every time I closed my eyes.Slut. Whore.Why would you even bother posting this? Nobody fucking cares about you.

All I heard were Nate’s grunted threats punctuated by the harsh slapping of skin.“If you tell anyone, you’re going down with me. I’ll make sure of that. I wonder if your family would come to visit you if they knew their perfect daughter helped hide a body. I wonder if they could look you in the face if they saw that video. When they saw you taking—”

“No. No. No. No,” I chant as I chase away the things I’ve worked so hard to forget. Just like now, it was coming from every direction. It was too much to endure. With each passing day that I had to live with the guilt, logic frayed and fell apart in my hands.

It could only last so long. False. These men had spent their whole lives making everyone else’s miserable.

They’d get bored of me. False. My silence was the only thing that promised their freedom.

It wasn’t so much what they said, it was that it never ended. I never got a break from the cruelty. Even simple joys like posting my breakfast on my story were met with comments like ‘Should you really be eating that?’ or ‘Of course you’re eating alone again’. Even worse than the public warfare were the whispers that caught me off guard while walking to class.You can cover up as much as you want, I still know what that ass looks like naked.

They stripped away any semblance of peace I had. They flayed the parts of my identity that I treasured most, leaving me stripped and raw, unable to protect the most vulnerable pieces of myself.

And with the jarring shock of Stasi’s body on mine, those memories were unlocked.

The unanswered cries were swallowed by the bass of the music and too many voices speaking in too small a space.I remember.

The tension in my knees, my hips, my thighs as I tried to fight back that first time.I remember.

The weight that kept me still, kept me down, kept me helpless.I remember.

The putrid smell of harsh chemicals and salty sweat that coated my own strawberry-scented skin.I remember.

I remember. I remember. I remember.

I remember and there’s no going back. There’s no fixing me. The doors hang off the hinges, my security gone. The fragments of my sense of self shatter like broken windows and cracked mirrors. My confidence was torn and tattered, drapes and fine silks cut through with a swift blade. I was forced into the mud, made into their whore.

Down there in the dirt, beneath his boot, becoming his to use, I lost sight of myself. Maybe Stasi was right. Hadn’t I had a choice? I didn’t have to let her get swallowed up in the dirt of it with me.

When I think of her now, I don’t see that sexy, commanding woman who pushes me to the brink of my sanity. I see her lifeless body that I can still feel beneath my fingertips. Platinum locks dark with wet soil. A pretty smile with lips gone blue. Her lush body once so full of life lying limp and vulnerable.

I let that happen to her. I let her sink down below so that I could keep my precarious place just above ground.

Jokes on me; we’re two drowned girls, she and I. Stasi’s anger is understandable, warranted, even. But I’m entitled to my grief. Aren’t I? We’re both victims of the same man,ofthesame world. The one that constantly seeks to destroy women who find a path for themselves and follow it. Some of us make sacrifices and bury the things that hurt the most just to ease the suffering a bit. It never goes away though, it’s the beating heart beneath the floorboards that drives us to madness—with the guilt of it, with the injustice of it, with thecrueltyof it all.

Victims are forced into silence. But we pay the ultimate price for it. The silence is never the peace or safety it should be; it’s a quiet destruction that eats away at us minute by minute or year by year.Infecting. Eroding.Eating us alive. Secrets kept against our will are parasites that become predators. And if you’re like me, one day they become too much to bear. The slow consumption is so excruciating that it’s better to get it over with in one fell swoop. Ripping the Band-Aid off. Or, in my case, slitting your wrists.

Somehow my ghostly form is unmarred by the final decision I made, but even though the scars are missing, I can still see it in all its gore. I hate what I’ve done to myself.

I need to exorcise all of this pent-up agony.

I crush my face into my pillow letting out a guttural scream that tears me up from the inside out. I keep screaming, and all those words I should have told Nate, purge themselves into the soft fabric.

It’s not enough.

My fists pound into the feathers. An ounce of tension leaves me. I repeat the motion again. Over and over, I punch, beat, and pound my hands until my lungs ache from the screaming that accompanies them.

I slip my arms under and bring the pillow tightly against my face; I scream some more. My teeth clamp down on the pillowcase, I bite down until my jaw hurts. The urge to rip it to shreds is there. I’d hate to make a mess, but then again, everything is already a mess.I’m a mess. My life is a mess. My heart is a mess.What’s a bit more? Indulging myself, I bite into it again and this time I thrash my head from side to side as I pull at each side with all the strength I can muster.

Rrriiipppp.

The sound cuts through the air and I freeze. A wave of guilt and panic rushes through me, but as the feathers dance aroundme and descend through the air, a laugh escapes me. A genuine laugh that sounds like someone else. Where has she been?

Like a kid watching fireworks, my gaze is fixed upward, taking in the wonder above me. It’s absurd, it’s juvenile, it’s mesmerizing. White and brown feathers drift around me, landing in my hair, across my lap, and all over the floor. It’s everywhere except for where it belongs.

I laugh and I laugh, there’s no stopping now that I’ve started. A small spark of joy has erupted into all-out hysterics. Again, I indulge it. Gathering up some of the feathers, I throw them up in the air. They rain down on me, but the novelty has worn off.

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