by Melanie Dawn
My eyes flicked toward her hidden arm, wondering what could possibly help me at a time like this.
“Here you go,” she offered, pulling the large, spiraled notebook out from behind her.
I glared at the object with disgust, a reminder of my past life.
“I thought you might enjoy doing some drawings. You know, like you used to?” her voice trailed after realizing the look of horror on my face. “I’m so sorry,” she chirped, pulling the notebook away and clutching it to her chest.
I knew that sketchbook like the back of my hand. Pages and pages of memories with Chloe, like her first carousel ride. I’d watched her throw her head back and laugh as she saddled herself on that pink horse and rode around and around, begging for another ride each time the carousel came to a stop.
Reaching out, I traced the edge of the wire spiraled notebook.
With tears in her eyes, my mom whispered softly, “I thought it would help you to remember her like this.”
I tugged the edge of the notebook, and she released it to me. Flipping through the first few pages, I immediately relived some happier moments. I knew then that I could never give up drawing. It was the only thing that would bring me closer to Chloe—a soothing agent for the searing pain of my grief.
Not today though. Instead of sketching, I watched the nature around the pond, taking in the peacefulness of it all. Birds glided low across the water, skimming the surface for food, then landed on a limb of a tree nearby. Ducks waddled around near the water’s edge. Fluffy, billowy clouds drifted through the bright, blue sky overhead.
I’d found a soft patch of grass to park myself for a while. Leaning back on my elbows, I let the sun warm my face. This spot was my haven, the closest thing to heaven on earth I could get. Somehow it made me feel closer to Chloe. I imagined what she’d look like now. She would’ve started Kindergarten this year. Would she still have her curls? Would she still have that angelic baby face? I closed my eyes, trying to create a mental picture of the way she’d look now. Instead, I was taken back.
“Mommy! Mommy!”
I rolled over in my bed, blinking my eyes to focus on the alarm clock beside me.
2:12 a.m. Ugh!
Pulling the blankets over my ears, I tried to ignore Chloe’s pleas.
“Mommy!” she called again, her voice distressed.
I listened for the sounds of my mother’s footsteps down the hall, but didn’t hear anything.
“Mommy! I need you!” Chloe’s voice sounded more panicked now, but I still didn’t hear Mom yet.
I groaned and jerked the sheet off me, rolling out of bed. I reached for my favorite pair of gray sweats and slipped them on. Opening my bedroom door, I stepped out into the dark hallway.
“Mommy!” Chloe’s voice shrieked.
“What’s the matter, Chloe?” I hissed, annoyed that she’d woken me up at this ungodly hour.
“I want Mommy,” she whined.
I creaked open the door of my parent’s master suite. The light in their bathroom was on, but they weren’t there. They must’ve stayed late at the Buchanan’s house… again.
I sighed, “Mom’s not here, Peanut.”
A sniffle came from Chloe’s bedroom. “I want Mommy,” she pouted, sounding defeated.
“She’ll be here soon. Go back to sleep.”
“I can’t. Duh scawy zombie will get me,” she sobbed.
I peeked into Chloe’s room. She was sitting curled up in a tiny ball, wrapped in her blankets for protection. She’d pulled them tight beneath her chin. From the light of her nightlight, I could see tears glisten her cheeks.
“It’s okay, Peanut. There’s no such thing as zombies,” I assured her.
“Uh huh,” she nodded. “He almost got me.”
I walked into her bedroom and sat on the edge of her bed. She looked up at me with those big doe eyes.
“It was just a dream,” I consoled her, ruffling her hair.
“It wasn’t,” she insisted. “I saw him,” she whispered, trembling beneath the blankets.
I looked toward the door. I just wanted to go crawl back into my own bed and slip back into my own dream, the one where I was making out with Megan Fox. I imagined Mom standing around, laughing and drinking with Charles and Grace Buchanan, pretending that she didn’t have a three-year-old at the ripe age of forty-eight. That she was like a normal forty-eight-year-old whose nest was almost empty. Not one who was forced to start over again the moment the doctor told her that it wasn’t menopause she’d been experiencing and instead labeled her as “advanced maternal age.” For three years, I’d picked up the slack for my parents, whose blazing light at the end of the parenting tunnel had shrunk ten sizes the moment the doctor delivered the news.
Don’t get me wrong. They loved Chloe more than life. They would walk the desert and back with no food or water for their baby girl. But at the same time, their friends had started to talk about traveling more often and about their first grandkids being born, while Mom was in the throes of colic and teething. It’s no wonder Mom and Dad often stayed, long after the weekly Friday night dinners at the Buchanan’s had ended, and drank a few too many glasses of wine.
I glanced back at Chloe, whose cherub face I couldn’t ignore. “You know, my bed’s not all that comfortable anyway. Can I sleep with you instead?” I asked.
A beaming smile broke out across her face as she eagerly nodded. She quickly scooted over and made a place for me beside her, motioning for me to share her pillow. I slid beneath the blankets and lay my head down on it. She curled her tiny self around my body, relaxing against me. I wrapped my arm around her and pulled her closer.
“Dat zombie won’t hurt me now,” she whispered as she relaxed in my arms.
I breathed in the lavender scent of her freshly-washed hair. “I’ll never let anything hurt you, Peanut.”
She sighed softly. With her head against my chest, I knew my slow and steady heartbeat was calming her because her body settled its weight on me.
“I love you, Peanut,” I whispered, knowing I was a few minutes too late. She’d already drifted back to sleep.
As her breathing slowed and her body lulled, I found myself relaxing in the stillness, never realizing that was the last time I’d ever comfort my baby sister after a nightmare again.
A giant splash jarred me from my memory. An eager Golden Retriever had barreled into the pond to retrieve a ball thrown by his owner. He raced for the ball, grabbed it in his mouth, and quickly swam back to shore. Tail wagging, he trotted back to a guy standing under a tree and promptly dropped the ball in his hand then shook his wet fur all over.
“Pedro!” his owner’s girlfriend reprimanded as she held her hands up to protect herself from the spray of water.
Pedro barked in response and commenced to licking her hand for attention.
I watched the interaction for a moment, wondering if Chloe was walking the streets of gold with a canine companion by her side. She’d always asked for a dog every time we’d see one. She’d beg for one of those little lap dogs, one you could push around in one of those little doggy strollers. ‘Not a yappy one. A cuddwy one,’ she’d say.
Of course, Dad always refused. “They’re too much trouble,” he’d insist. But not long after I’d gotten home from the hospital, I’d walked into my father’s office to a Yorkie perched in Dad’s lap wearing a bright, pink collar with a tag that read, ‘Angel.’
He’d glanced up at me with tired, bloodshot eyes. “For Chloe,” he’d blubbered.
I’d glared at him. Why the hell did he wait until now? When it was too damn late? Spinning on my heels, I’d stormed out of the room. I’d stomped up the stairs to my bedroom and slammed the door behind me.
For days, I’d ignored the puppy, pretending she didn’t exist. That is, until she whined at me in the middle of the night with those sad, puppy eyes. And when I’d reluctantly put her on my bed with me, she’d curled up beside me to sleep. I guess you could say she grew on me. I knew Chloe wou
ld be happy about that.
After enough reminiscing, I gathered my stuff and headed back toward my dorm. A bottle of pills was calling my name. I needed something to stall the flood of memories that were rushing back. I needed something to numb the pain—something to make me forget. The sleeping pills that had been prescribed by my doctor were my only escape. I found myself popping more pills than I should at a faster rate than prescribed, but I couldn’t stop myself. Often times I’d run out of pills long before my doctor would call me in another refill, and I’d be miserable for days. But, when I took a little more than the recommended dose, it felt so good to feel absolutely nothing, even if only for a few hours at a time. So those few days of misery were worth it for a few days of oblivion.
Once back to my room, I gladly tossed back a couple of tiny tablets of freedom. Swallowing them, I lay down on my bed. I put my phone in the dock and started my playlist. The abrasive, caustic music immediately hacked through the silence, while uninterpretable words pounded from the speakers. Staring at the ceiling for a while, I finally felt myself spiraling toward darkness, and I welcomed the feeling with open arms.
“YOUR MUSIC COLLECTION’S a riot,” Gia announced as she scanned through my box of CDs. My mom had started the collection when she was in college and had passed it down to me when I’d begun to show an interest.
I remember days when my mom would drag me into the music store in the mall and would pore over rows and rows of CDs to find just the right one. I couldn’t have been much older than six or seven. Unfortunately, that store no longer existed. It had been shut down when the age of digital music took over. Now people collected music in the form of playlists. I still hung onto my CD collection and listened to them frequently. In some ways, it was like another thread looped in the tapestry of my love for my mom.
Gia laughed as she held up a Tone Lōc CD. “‘Funky Cold Medina’? Really?”
“Don’t hate,” I giggled. “You know that song is da bomb!” I exaggerated my words for effect.
“Girl, you have something from every end of the music spectrum… from Hank Williams Jr. to Michael Jackson… from Tupac to P!nk… from Mannheim Steamroller to Mushroomhead.” She just couldn’t seem to wrap her head around my eclectic taste in music.
“What can I say?” I shrugged. “I’m a music junkie.” I didn’t mention the hundreds of songs I also had stored on my playlists. I also didn’t mention a certain someone’s Rites of Spring T-shirt that spurred a hunger in me to find yet another album.
“Okay. Tone Lōc I can handle, but this…” she sighed, waving a colorful CD in my face. “This is inexcusable.”
I caught a better glimpse as the cover flashed in front of me.
Gia shook her head. “Hannah Montana? Are you serious? I think you have a problem, Lexi.” She used my dreaded nickname to patronize me.
“It was the first CD I ever bought with my own money,” I defended.
She grinned, unconvinced.
“What?” I groaned. “I was five!”
“Yeah, right. And you were five when you bought this 98 Degrees CD too?”
“No.” I snatched the box of CDs out of her hand. “I had a crush on Nick Lachey. Haven’t you ever watched The Sing-Off?”
Gia cackled at my embarrassment. “Oh my god, you are so blushing right now.”
“Shut up,” I groaned and stuffed the box of CDs under my bed. “You are no longer allowed to make fun of my taste in music or men.”
“Fine. Just put a little Hanson on and we’ll MmmBop the night away,” she teased with a wink.
I chucked a pillow at her head. “You are incorrigible.”
She horse-laughed then and collapsed onto her bed. “You’re so easy to pick on. I’m glad we’re roommates.”
Smiling, I finally admitted, “Me too. How about a little John Legend?”
She closed her eyes and sighed. “I could go for a lot of him.”
“Me too,” I giggled, connecting my iPhone to my portable speaker and cranking up the volume. We spent the rest of the evening lost in our own worlds, writing papers and studying, while John Legend crooned his way into our hearts.
Right in the middle of our favorite song, someone pounded on the door. “Hey guys,” a female voice called. “It’s Brynlee.”
Gia bounced off the bed and swung open the door.
Brynlee stood in the doorway with a box of Gumby’s pizza in her hand. “I come bearing gifts,” she announced, holding out the pizza and a 2-liter of Coke.
Gia shrieked with delight and took the box from her hands. “You know how to do studying right!”
Brynlee laughed. “Well, you learn a thing or two after you’ve been here a while.”
Gia grabbed a slice and passed it to me. Brynlee plopped down on the end of my bed with her own slice in her hand. “So, how are classes going?” she asked.
With a mouth full of food, I garbled, “Pretty good.”
“Chemistry is gonna kick my ass,” Gia pouted, pouring herself a drink.
“Met anyone interesting?” Brynlee asked, waggling her brows.
Gia shook her head as she shoveled a bite of pizza into her mouth.
“That guy, Ryder, is in my Psych class,” I blurted.
Brynlee rolled her eyes. “Figures. He could stand a little psychiatric help.” Then she burst out laughing at her own joke. “You get it, right?” She looked at Gia, who stood there clueless.
I chuckled to appease her, but couldn’t resist narrowing my eyes. “Yeah, I got it.”
Brynlee stopped laughing, staring at me as if I had two heads. “Wait. Oh my god, are you crushing on him?”
I gasped. “What? Me? No!” I shook my head adamantly.
Gia piped up, smirking at me. “She already has a boyfriend. Don’t you, Lexi?”
I nodded, unsure of her tone. Sarcasm? Jealousy?
“Really?” Brynlee said, stuffing a bite of pizza into her mouth. “Who?”
“His name is Ian,” I told her, attempting to avoid the girly squeals and dramatic sighs that I felt sure would ensue if I explained him any further.
Gia leaned forward, humming the tune of “Hearts Don’t Lie.”
Brynlee gasped. “Oh my god! Ian Absher? You’re dating Hearts-Don’t-Lie-Ian-freaking-Absher?”
I nodded, sighing. What was the big deal? He was just a normal guy who could sing, who just happened to fall into the right hands.
Brynlee’s smile widened. “Are you serious? That’s insane! But crazy cool!”
I nodded again, biting the inside of my cheek. “Yeah, I’ve known Ian for several years. We’ve kinda been best friends until recently. I guess we’ve only been dating exclusively for several months.”
“Then why the hell do you even care about the psycho freak?”
I shook my head. Brynlee just didn’t get it. It wasn’t like that at all. “I don’t, I guess.”
Brynlee’s watchful eyes were glued on me. “Good. Because he’s all kinds of crazy. You need to stay away from him.”
Gia nodded, wide-eyed. “I agree with Brynlee. She knows what she’s talking about.”
I shrugged. “Maybe…”
I DREADED HAVING to walk into class again, with a Psych partner who’d just as soon stab his eyeballs out with pencils than work with me. But his silence still intrigued me enough to put one foot in front of the other and to slide into the desk beside him.
He averted his eyes and paid absolutely no attention to me.
Even when Dr. Atkins asked us to discuss topics with our partner, he didn’t acknowledge me. He refused to even look in my direction. I stared, gaping at him across the aisle. I’ll be damned if he is going to cause me to fail this class. I decided I would request a new partner immediately after class. This just wasn’t going to work out.
Then Dr. Atkins asked us to do something different, something that must’ve piqued Ryder’s interest because he actually participated. She passed a strip of scotch tape to each of us and asked us to put the sliver of tape ove
r our lips. Then we were asked to face our partners and have a conversation with the tape over our lips.
“Sometimes silence speaks louder than words,” she lectured, as she wrote the words on the dry erase board at the front of the room.
“Sometimes,” she continued, placing the marker on the podium, “silence can be profoundly healing.” She glanced at Ryder, who grimaced.
I wondered if the words she was saying were purposeful, for his benefit. The class turned in their seats to face their partner. Surprisingly, Ryder did the same, although his furrowed brows proved he wasn’t happy about it. I hooked a strand of fallen hair around my ear, concentrating on really ‘listening’ to my partner’s silence. He stared at me with harsh, angry eyes, clearly ready for this little exercise to end. I took a deep breath, really focusing on the stormy irises in front of me. I tried to ignore his clenching jaw and flared nostrils.
“Sometimes, people just need a minute to reflect, to appreciate a new truth or process a new emotion.” Dr. Atkins paced around the room, making sure each set of partners was actively participating in the exercise.
Ryder drummed his fingers on the desk, but his eyes never left mine. He sighed heavily, realizing the exercise was far from over. Shifting in his seat, he leaned against the arm of the desk, but his eyes still never left mine.
Dr. Atkins continued, “Sometimes silence is a way to cover emotion or to hide true feelings. Sometimes the bridge between emotion and language is so vast or so scary that it’s just easier not to cross it.”
I slid forward slightly in my chair, focusing solely on the bluest set of eyes in the room. I examined the way his eyebrows creased perfectly in the middle when he frowned. I observed the dimple in his cheek that puckered despite the scowl on his face. I noticed the small cleft in his chin, and the way he cocked his head a little when he realized I wasn’t afraid of him or his wry expression. And that’s when I realized maybe his anger wasn’t anger at all. Maybe it was fear. Or pain. Or sadness.
Dr. Atkins asked, “What is the meaning of silence? Sometimes it’s asking someone else to quietly sit on the edge of your grief, your fear, your despair, or your confusion, with you.”
