Page 23 of Easy Reunion
Chapter 10
Kelsey
Fat. Stroke.Cow. Stroke.Hippo. Stroke. Each time I swim, my brain does a dump of the names I remember being called, purging them from my soul. Some days, I look in the mirror and I still see the reflection of the woman who was so grotesquely overweight. I rarely see the woman whose body can go into any store and find an outfit to buy off a rack. I shy away from people who compliment me on my looks because I doubt they’re telling me the truth. After all, I know what lies underneath. Wasn’t I told by enough people that I was ugly and unworthy? That I should do the world a favor and kill myself? God, who does that to another human being?
And what’s worse is I contemplated it. I tried to carve King Kong onto my arm.
The top of theIremains to this day as a scar on my forearm from where I pressed the blade just a little deeper than the other letters as I carved the offensive words in before the sight of all that blood made me sick. As a result, in the summer between my sophomore and junior years of high school, I wore long-sleeved shirts to cover up the mess I made of my heart and my mind.
Of course, I was ridiculed for that too.What? Are you too fat to want to show your skin in the middle of the heat?My kick gets more forceful as I remember. I created a barrier around myself when I walked through the not-so-hallowed halls of Forsyth. That is until I met Ry in the second quarter of my junior year.
My creative writing instructor asked me to assist the popular junior in writing. She explained this would be a safe place for me. With my permission, she provided him with one of my writing samples and me with one of his. Immediately, I could see what one of the concerns was. Ry was holding back. Technically, his writing was excellent, but he was writing according to a textbook.
Not according to his soul.
When he came in for his first session, I was shocked when the handsome boy immediately said, “Your writing is beautiful. I was captivated from the first word.”
I stammered, “Thank…thank you.” Even now, even as my arms cut through the water, I feel my cheeks redden in memory.
As he dropped into a desk next to me, he asked me bluntly, “So, what am I doing wrong?”
I blurted out, “You’re holding back.” Pulling out his essay on swimming, I asked him one question. “Don’t tell me the mechanics. What is it you feel when you’re in the water?”
His jaw tightening, he refused to meet my eyes. “Escape. That’s what I feel.”
My stomach bumping hard into the tiny desk, I whispered, “Then write about that.” I gathered my backpack. “I’ll see you in a few days.”
His head shot up. “That’s it? That’s what your advice is?”
I shrugged. “Creative writing for me isn’t about perfection. It’s about letting loose the emotion boiling over inside of yourself. It’s the hardest and most rewarding thing I’ve ever done.” Swinging my bag over my shoulder, I tipped my lips to one side. “You have excellent writing skills. You just won’t let yourself go.” Without another word, I shuffled my way toward the door.
In my locker a few days later, there was a folded piece of paper.Great, I thought,another note. There were often notes, cruel, insulting pieces of trash I couldn’t bring myself to throw away. But this one was special.
It was a hastily scribbled-out copy of his revised essay. And it was beautiful.
Of all the things I threw out when I purged myself of my old life, I kept that one-page handwritten note on finding escape in the cool blue water, how the echo of nothing in his ears was more soothing than the waves of the ocean. That there was nothing to interfere with blanking out the pain. How weightless his heart, his mind, his soul could feel when there was something else to support it. Ry never knew it, but his description of water is what initially drove me to look for colleges near bodies of water. They just happened to be as far away from Georgia as I could get.
I shake my head even as I turn it to the side for a breath. I face back into the water and am swept into the memory of our tutoring sessions. After I’d read his revised essay, I met a very nervous Ry later that same day in Professor Wiley’s classroom. He was staring out the window when I first walked in and closed the door behind me. Before I could even greet him, he said, “I’m not entirely certain I’m comfortable with writing like that.”
“Not many people are,” I let him know quietly. “It’s a lot easier to read someone else’s words and relate to them than to write your own.”
He nodded, his back still to me. “Why do you do it?”
My heart stopped in my chest. There was no way he could know about the volumes of journals I poured my heart into at home, purging the toxic emotions out of my soul. My breathing harsh in the room, I answered, “Because if I didn’t, I would have no way not to fall to my knees under the burden that’s shoved down on me.”
Finally, he turned to face me. We locked eyes. We were half a room away from each other. “It’s wrong, what they do to you. I’ve tried to stop it.”
“I know.” And I’d seen Ry Perrault tell his friends to “knock it off” whenever possible.
“Don’t let them break you,” he’d said fiercely. And I fanned that flame of strength until it was too late. When one final moment snuffed out all the light—made it so I’d never want to take a shot at trusting another person with that deep core of myself ever again.
It was the moment he’d become one of them and broken me.
I ran off that stage into the waiting arms of my grandparents. Forsaking the lovely dinner out in downtown Savannah, Pop-pop made sure my old car was as fit as it could be for the cross-country trek I blubbered I was making that night. He topped it off with gas while Nana alternately held my heaving body to her breast, then helped me pack all my belongings. I was going to take everything with me to sort through once I hit the opposite coast. While I wanted nothing of Georgia to touch my life in California, I would have to take it with me and go through it there since I didn’t plan on staying any longer than necessary in Savannah.
Despite what happened on my graduation day, and the campfire grill purge of my past Angel and I performed with all of the old notes I’d accumulated, I kept that first essay from Ry. There was something so honest in it, more so than anything else he’d ever said or done.
And I found out he was right.
