Page 7 of Dark Ink

I needed to find Mason or Conor or Aurnia. I needed to talk to someone. To get help. To stop obsessing over some girl who I was becoming less and less convinced was really real. I needed to get fucking high again. That’s what I really needed.

A student, a girl with a shrill voice stopped me.

“Aren’t you going to like, assign anything for us?” she asked.

“Draw her!” I shouted, pointing at the chalkboard. “Draw her and see if any of you can forget her!”

Because I couldn’t. But I had to. But I couldn’t. I didn’t want to. I wouldn’t. I would not forget her.

I’d find her.

Whether she was real or not.

Eithne

What frightened me the most was just how calm I actually was.

My big brother had just overdosed. He’d been rushed to the hospital. He’d been “this close to dying”. “This close” again. My big brother, the only family in the world that I had left. My big brother, the one who practically raised me. My big brother, who I cared about and loved and cherished and worried over more than anyone else. More than even myself.

I’d almost lost him. Almost lost him again. My big brother had a problem and it was going to kill him one day. It had nearly killed him this time. But I guess it had nearly killed him too many times.

Because what I felt wasn’t fear, it was numbness. It was emptiness. It was exhaustion.

The sight of him alive and smiling at me from the made-up couch in my living room that morning hadn’t filled me with relief like it used to. The smile I returned before hurrying out the door wasn’t natural anymore, wasn’t from a place deep within me anymore. The breath of fresh air I inhaled into my lungs as I ran to class made me want to cry. Because that was relief. That was happiness. Escaping. Running away. Leaving my brother behind.

That’s what frightened me. That’s what scared the living shite out of me.

I was late to Rian’s class because I’d been tending to Stewart non-stop after getting him back from the hospital. The taxi ride home was busy spent comforting a distraught Stewart and counting pennies in my purse. Then there was the usual post-overdose routine: making Guinness stew, Stewart’s favourite, to help him feel better, listening and nodding along as he went on and on about how he was doing better this time, how he really felt like he was on the right track, how if it hadn’t been for this or that he would have stayed on the straight and narrow. There was the checking his bags for drugs, checking the apartment for drugs, rummaging through the medicine cabinets and kitchen drawers and beside tables for anything he could use as drugs. Anything he could use to harm himself. There was more cooking, more cleaning. There was the taking of his temperature, the waking up in the middle of the night to make sure he was still alive, the rolling out of bed before the alarm because he was already going through withdrawal and needed the trash bin.

Sometime amongst all of that I happened to check my phone. Happened to see that Professor Merrick was teaching a third-years-only fine arts course. Happened to be feeling reckless enough to sign up for it, despite knowing it wouldn’t help me get a job after graduating, wouldn’t do me a damn bit of good.

It wasn’t exactly the best foot to get off on for a new class with a demanding professor: reluctance and tardiness. But neither was to be helped. Stewart needed me. And I wasn’t feeling much of anything those days. No anger, no joy. Just flatlining with no one around to revive me.

I arrived at the big lecture hall at the centre of campus breathless. Late. Very late. Cheeks flushed. My second-hand satchel was falling from my shoulder, my sketchpad slipping from my fingertips, my hair tumbling over my bargain-bin sunglasses.

But the lecture hall was completely empty.

I dumped my stuff on the closest chair with a sigh. Pencils rolled out of my satchel and my sketchpad slipped to the row in front of me. I ignored all that as I stared at row after row of empty seats, bathed in warm afternoon sunlight. I checked the big clock on the wall. I checked my email. I ducked outside and checked the room number.

“What the hell?” I muttered as I stepped back inside, hands on hips.

Then my gaze fell to the chalkboard at the very front of the hall. I squinted my eyes, squinted a little more and then said much more loudly, “What the hell?”

I hurried down the shallow steps, shoving my sunglasses atop my head, holding back my long black hair. I went straight to the chalkboard. Stopped right in front of it. Crossed my arms and stared at the image drawn there, taking up the full height of the board. I leaned my head back. Tilted it from side to side. Scratched at my neck. Moved back. Moved closer. I scoffed indignantly. I laughed in disbelief.

“What the hell?!”

It was me. It was fucking me. I was sure of it. Or at least as sure of it as I could be. It was my face. My face. Strands of hair were lashed as if by the wind across my cheek, concealing half my distant gaze. But it was me. I reached out and traced the line of the lips drawn in chalk as I mirrored the movement on my own lips. The chalk came off on my fingertips and I gazed down on it like there should be the red of my favourite lipstick.

But it was just chalk, fluttering like dust as I rubbed my fingertips together. I stared back at the image.

Strange. I recognised myself more in the hastily sketched drawing, lines rough, more like an outline than a finished product, than I did in the mirror. Recently it was like I was gazing at myself through a fog. Like the steam from the shower never quite evaporated.

But there on the chalkboard I was so clear. So present. So vivid.

I was there, captured on the chalkboard. All of me. Everything of me. For what felt like years I’d been trying to hold onto me, hold onto the girl I’d been, grasp at the fading image of the woman I’d wanted to be. But she’d been slipping through my fingertips like sand. I grabbed and grabbed and always came up empty. And yet there she was. There I was.

“What the hell?” I said, laughing this time. Laughing even as my eyes shimmered.

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