Page 11 of Haunt Me

Of course, according to my professors, I am excelling at everything, but that’s not true: I am excelling in everything but music. And I don’t care about anything but music. I feel empty all the time. I feel empty right now.

It’s just another normal day at school.

Well, as normal as any day at a boarding prep school can get. ‘Normal’ here is a day filled with bullying, grade-comparing and tedious, unnecessary classes. Meanwhile, all I want to do is play the crap music I’ve been trying to compose, but I have forbidden myself to do that anymore.

It’s the second week in October and already I am bored out of my mind.

It’s also two days after Dad’s funeral, and I’m back at school, more determined than ever to make him proud. It has not yet sunk in that there is nobody to make proud anymore. He is gone. He is never coming back.

I know that. Of course, I do. But I push it to the back of my mind and try to forget it until I begin thinking that he’s on one of his trips again, off to New York or Vienna, and that I won’t see him again until Christmas break, like last year and the year before that, and the year before that... Like always. Yeah, that’s easier. Why didn’t I think of this solution before?

Pretending is so much easier.

In fact, it’s so much easier that I end up having a panic attack during algebra.

My professor looks freaked out and just stands there, my classmates begin to snicker or, worse, look at me with pity—pity—in their eyes, and I run out of class, chest heaving.

I run and run, but there is no relief like usual. I run straight through the campus and jump the back fence, lungs bursting for air that won’t come.

I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.

I have to get away.

Get away, but go where? There is no place where my dad will still exist.

Still, I run.

Suddenly, I find myself inside the forest, running for my life with nothing but a book of Greek poems in my pocket. Poe and Lovecraft just don’t do it for me anymore. No one can talk about death like the Greeks; the Greeks understand me. So this morning, I stuffed the first cheap translation ofEleniin my back pocket on my way out of the dorm.

Now, as I stumble between roots and dead leaves, eyes blinded by tears, chest tight with a breath I just can’t draw in, all I can think of is that I need to find a tree and fling myself under it just to read a few lines about Helen of Troy.Maybe that will help me breathe.

I end up nearly dropping to my knees, the world beginning to fade. There is only so much time one can go without breathing. I sit with my back against a tree, my shoes buried in yellow-brown leaves, my head tipped up to the clouds. I try not to think about my dad. I try to breathe.

I fail at both.

I look around frantically, thinking that I might actually need help or I’m not going to survive this. And that’s when the world slams to a stop.

There is a girl sitting under the tree next to mine.

Her body is curled up in a ball, bent up at an almost unnatural angle, as if she is trying to make herself take up as little space aspossible without breaking any bones. I sit up, trying to see if she is alive. She is, barely. Her breathing sounds chopped and labored. I stand up to go to her, and everything nearly goes black.

I fight against unconsciousness, fight to clear my vision.

I see her, actually see her, and when I do, I take my first real breath. It’s as if time has stopped, giving me room to breathe, to exist. Or maybe it’s the shock that snatches me out of the panic attack.

Because the girl is crying.

The sound is so quiet, it’s almost silent, yet my ears, trained to discern the third violin in the midst of a crescendo that could shatter glass, can hear it. Her face is hidden behind a curtain of black hair, and all I can see, aside from that, is that she’s wearing socks too big for her and a skirt too small. Her narrow frame is swallowed by what looks like a man’s sweater.

Then I see the blood.

Her legs are gathered to her chest, and I try to peer past her long hair to see her face. That’s when I notice she is resting her chin on her knee, where blood is flowing from a deep gash.

“Hey! Are you ok?” I call out.

No answer.

“Are you lost?”

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