First, isn't this gif gorgeous? Ugh.



She really captured that. Gif (C) lifeisharder.

Well, here you go, folks. Not many scenes, but I got interested in writing Lily and Giry together, so there. Confusing part at the end. Or maybe not confusing at all, if you've been paying attention.


HE’S (@) THERE
Chapter 42 - Said & Unsaid
 
"You've given me the best way I can feel so miserable. It was only some time ago, a year ago, when I realized some things can’t be eliminated from the experience of life, and when I did, a philosophy that acknowledged everything brought back my drive to do something. There is nothing to do about pain. I can’t stop disappointing people, I can’t stop making them angry, and I can’t stop fighting everything. I’m in constant combat. You have no idea.
 
It was so hard to be truly mad at you when we fought, because our fights were so tame. I could see you trembling and I would’ve been excited if you’d hit me. You don’t know what it’s like to really hate me or what I live for. You couldn’t possibly look in my eyes with even half the amount of contempt as the real hater does. I had to live with those, and still do, but I used to let them be much closer to me, close enough that I was rotting on the inside. Nothing was ever good enough for them, and neither was it for me, because I wanted none of it. I saw my life as a trunk full of things I wanted to dump upside down, or better, from which I wanted to rip out every last content. I wanted to gut the thing. I wanted to batter it to splinters. I can’t seem to get enough of destruction. Do you like my clever metaphors? I have to be so vague with you now – someday I promise you’ll know details. I don’t know that the day exists yet, and it’s far away, but you have my promise.
 
I was always, always angry, but you were a ghost at my side once. Then again, and again, until I saw you every time I wanted to pull myself inside out. I’ve never wanted to kill myself, but I wished I could cease existing until, as I said, you kept appearing. You say you don’t fix me, but I’ve never experienced it before, wanting to exist so badly. Wanting absolute presence and sureness of that presence. I desire your time because I’m not finding myself occupied. If I could do everything for you, then whenever I hurt, I could be sure it was for you. I could turn the inevitable into a declaration. I know this now from experience, but I wouldn’t have been convinced in the past that something so despicable, which had followed me for years and years; so ugly and, almost, with a conscience of its own which hates warmth in a person’s soul, which sees it as an invasion, which never tires, which will kill warmth even if it bends all rules of the universe… that something such as that could be transformed into a servant for beauty.  I’ve outsmarted it. I’ve bent it backwards, into itself, and now it’s my tool, which I use to make you sure you’re in the care of your angel, and no one else. No one else will suffer this way to give you everything. No one else appreciates suffering, uses it like currency, and has an unlimited supply. I really would give you everything. I’d do whatever you wanted me to because I don’t have limits. The me who did died some time ago because he was useless. He was ready not to exist.
 
But your Erik wants to be here.
 
What a way to be before I lose at living, with a beautiful girl who sees me as the most important thing, ever. Erik’s work is scarcely done before it’s over. You may decide you don’t love him. But it was his best decision, as he had you for a while when he could’ve had you not at all. I’m a true optimist, maybe. We’re here to take chances that can go horribly wrong. You and I, no matter where we end up, will have the same nothingness when we’re dead. I had to be a little dead before I realized I could try for you. My head was swirling that night. Don’t you know about Erik? Love, even the illusion of love, which comforts others, makes his stomach turn, as mine does just writing. I can only imagine how much more violently yours does at the thought of it. You make me sick with admiration. If you find yourself feeling similarly, don’t stay where you are. You can come to me, and we can work out what is happening to us. Stop leaving so early. Why do you go? You have answers, but I can’t remember them. You use the same ones, you’re very sure about it, but I can’t remember them.
 
There was more, most definitely more and more, and more… but I stopped. I wanted to know ahead how much more of this there’d be, so I flipped and flipped, and the pages were numerous. I sat up and cradled my forehead in my hands, not sure if I was exhilarated by the same kind of flattering passion I had noticed in his recent messages, or if passion was about to eat me whole and I was just at the mouth of it.
 
“Lily?” I heard my mom through the door. The nerves in my stomach radiated, but I didn’t answer. “Are you putting away the dishes, or what?” She walked away and a breath expelled that I didn’t know I was holding. I glanced at the book and went to open my window, then pressed my hands around my face and gazed down into the yard, with shadows like ink blots. I was sure now, every time I ever thought I saw something, it was no imagination at work, but I couldn’t be a hypocrite at this point. Isn’t this wanted I wanted?
 
* * *
 
I agreed to meet him, again – it’d been three times this weekend – but I didn’t feel entirely ready. I’d eaten dinner, I’d done my hair, I’d told my parents I was at Giry’s – Giry, who I hadn’t heard from in a while – but my heart knew something my mind and my blood were ignoring for the time being. They were too interested in satisfaction to resist when he called, but I knew better. For the first time, it seemed too much to do what was always my thrilling secret.
 
We spent some time in the “observatory” and he kept standing right behind me. He was touching my hair and offering to get me things I wanted. He said he’d make the room mine. I refused the offering, “I already have a room,” I answered. The book didn’t come up. It was weird being in the presence of someone who claimed he was never happy without me, but wanted to do so much, and wanted to learn so much. There was general disorientation over knowing such negative things, however vague, about someone who kept their life outside of you a secret. If I’d told him I was unhappy without him, I’m sure he would have had a million things to say, but I had nothing to say, at least, nothing personal.
 
He would answer my questions about the books I found up there – the ones in boxes, the ones he’d read once before when I hardly cared about anything besides that he existed. I wanted to know if one could ever be aware they were insane. “No. Insanity isn’t self-aware,” but he thought it important to remind me “you need no mental illness to be insane, nor are you insane with one.” “It’s not a word to throw around. It’s a terrible state for anyone, and we all have to avoid it.”
 
I nodded. Then, later, I let him pin me to the bed. I lowered and he hit me like a tide.
 
* * *
 
On Monday, I read more.
 
“You very much like to omit certain words. You back-peddle and fix your hair and all kinds of silly things that a girl does when she’s overwhelmed by reality. I’m very certain we have the same one. You know you’re addicted to me, and further, that I’m addicted to you, but you pretend it’s not inevitable. That we turn away, that doors close, that somehow this is control over what controls you. You keep your heart in a cage when you must know a determined person could flatten it instantaneously. It was common practice of magicians with their birds, did you know? You’re not protecting it. It is already mine. You want it to be. But, while your transparency is reassuring, what I find reminds me what started any of this remains, to you, untaught.
 
It can’t be done further, this appreciation for our world, until I see you face to face with yourself. My circumstance is that I hate everything but you. Your circumstance is that you want a person like me to give you undivided love. You want attention for what you do. You write in your closet. Have you forgotten you told me that? But you want attention, almost as much as a narcissist, but I wouldn’t call you a narcissist because it’s not your fault you know you should be heard, and read, and known. I support everything you’re too afraid to say. Remember: when you’re honest, you’re perfect.
 
* * *
 
“She’s coming around, a little bit,” Giry told me. We were going to the movies on Tuesday night. She caught me very last minute and said she had free time and a guilty conscience. I laughed, but quietly, and suddenly had this great enthusiasm to see her. There was something about finding a female face at the door, and hers specifically, with her round pale cheeks and glistening grey eyes, that made a slightly tense feeling in my stomach subside. I didn’t hide her from anyone; she showed up in her big black coat and boots, leaned into the entrance room, and waved at my dad. They thought I’d made such a friend in her, but Mom still asked about Mariam.
 
“So is she talking to you?” I asked, watching the shapes outside the car as they passed.
 
“Mostly. The subjects aren’t that deep. We compared answers on our take-home quizzes yesterday. She’s asked me a few questions about looks Jeffrey gave her, but I’ve said it a million times already that he probably likes her. She won’t take it for an answer.”
 
“Girls tend to do that… Sometimes it’s kind of unbelievable,” I muttered.
 
“Well… sometimes it’s slapping you right in the face,” she finished. I crossed my arms and sort of smiled. “How’s Erik?” My clutch grew a little tighter.

“He’s… doing alright.”
 
“Anything interesting happen?”
 
What could I say? That on the same night she suggested he stop being anonymous, we…
 
“He stopped by my house the other day, with a cut down his leg, and he wouldn’t tell me what happened, besides that he encountered someone who wasn’t-“ I stopped and blinked a mess of times. “Very smart, apparently…”
 
“Why’s that?” She calmly asked while making a turn towards the mall parking lot.

“I don’t know. He probably retaliated.” God, this conversation felt awkward. “I think he’s trying to scare me or something, and make me think he’s fending off all these-… I don’t really know.” It was weird to only know someone was obsessed with you, and nothing more. She glanced at me with her face curled up on one side, like she was trying her absolute best to make sense of my responses, none of which were completed.
 
By then, we were slowly moving down the rows of the parking lot. The colored lights were hitting my face: first the right side, then the left. Giry’s hair had a red lining. She caught me admiring her and slowed the car. “I know I’ve been a little AWOL…” she tried to comfort me, as it seemed she thought I needed it for some reason.
 
“It’s okay. I’ve had hardly any time myself.”

“School, spending it with him…?”
 
“Everything. It’s getting a little ridiculous! And Shorts 7 is right around the corner! I’ve decided to do enough work this week to have a C- in math and then I’m stopping the tutoring.”
 
“Heh, you should just come back to easy-math. We could sit in lab together and talk the whole time.”
 
“I’d love that,” I said honestly. It would’ve made mornings so much easier. She squeezed the awkward, rectangular car into a narrow space in front of hedges and eyed herself in the mirror.
 
“Yeah, if the rest of my classes weren’t so easy, I’d be royally screwed, up the ass, twice,” she continued, though I’d never heard her say something like that before. “I could take my AP homework back by wheel barrel. I also have five scholarship applications due mid-February. I think during spring break, I’m just going to collapse for a week.”
 
I did a lot of smiling and she had a lot to say. We walked towards the glow of the theater front and she told me all about her quest for the right art school and how her parents were buying her a new camera for a graduation present. She was leaving, I thought. I hardly knew her, either, yet some part of me lamented that I never would so well, even though we’d had our times here and she was one of two who knew about something she could never guess was so serious.
 
I’d spent over a week away from her, and glad about it, because she couldn’t ask about what I’d decided to do, but when she was right in front of me, I had an urge to tell her everything, assuming she knew everything even though she was just a year older than me. She was Giry, to me; a ballet mistress in clunky, buckled boots that made her almost half a head taller than me; Meg’s mother, who met her in class, but would know just the way to bring her back to me; and, maybe, the Phantom’s friend, who had no idea who he was individually, but knew who everyone was somehow.
 
I knew she was none of it, but my life was a strange thing. I pretended because anything was better than feeling there was nothing to which I could hold on.
 
I looked up to her and wanted to say something. I had to laugh perfunctorily when she suggested some stupid movie none of us would ever watch willingly. The ticket-guy gave me a thoroughly friendly look before handing back our stubs, and we stood in line for a small slurpy, to share. “To think, we’re sharing a small,” she commented. I shook my head and replied: “It’s insanity.”
 
During all the previews, two guys seemed to be heading towards us. I lowered my head, figuring they were going to make themselves comfortable just to our side and spoil the whole movie with idiotic commentary. (I guess that’s a lousy assumption to make out of nowhere, but it had experience behind it.) Instead, they tentatively approached us on my side, and asked for “Paully”. She seemed thrilled. I couldn’t stop remembering the irony of what happened with her and what would soon transpire with Erik. It was a boy she’d liked for a little while but they were only friends. They hadn’t had time to hang out at all. He remarked, “that’s okay, we’ll make time.”
 
At the end of the movie, I saw Giry’s eyes searching for him somewhere within the mess of people, but he’d left. I was turning my phone on and she was too lazy to get up, so we stayed at the top center seats, appreciating the dim vastness of the room. “I’d give it a B+,” she finally decided.
 
“Really? I thought it was A-worthy.” I opened up my phone when its first message appeared.

“Where have you gone to?...”
 
I closed it and resumed. “Truthfully, it kind of gave me a headache towards the end, but still.”
 
“I reserve A’s for movies that don’t make me tired,” she said, grinning with her face upturned and her eyes closed.
 
“I think it’s because I’m starving, actually. …Are you hungry?”
 
“Ravenous. Let’s go to Shari’s or something.”
 
On the way there, I texted Erik and told him “movie and dinner with Giry,” and he gave me an odd response several minutes later: “Can we trust that one?” I suppose it meant we could no longer trust Meg.
 
Giry was talking but I began to hear a meaningless spray of words as I closed the phone in my lap. I’d been very obedient earlier. He asked that I forward the email Meg sent to me that I’d mentioned last I saw him. At the time, he didn’t seem interested in it, but he changed his mind, I guess. I’d asked why he wanted to read it. He said he was “curious” what she said to me. I told him it was nothing too different. He said he wasn’t expecting to be surprised. I said it wasn’t worth it. He said “but it is.” I was tired and running out of excuses, so I went to the study and sent it, just before Giry invited me out.
 
She paused when my gaze seemed to be out of focus, and I apologized. “Sorry. Just a moment.” I flipped open the phone again and typed “last I checked.” Giry stopped talking. He texted again before I’d even had time to start a new conversation.
 
“I replied to your email. I thought you’d answer. I’m very close, if you are where I think you are.”
 
I caught my reflection in the window, tilted, my phone glowing on my cheek. I didn’t know if he meant close to the movie theater or not. Giry was giving me enough privacy that I knew she knew I was talking to him.
 
“I’m sorry that I missed it. Should I call you later?”
 
I redirected my attention to Giry. “Just wondering what I’m doing.” Her soft laughter was interrupted by a beep.
 
“You should ask what he’s doing,” she said. I smiled and looked down.
 
“Then where are you? I’ll wait for you.”
 
I shook my head ‘no’, then realized I had done it. “What?” She asked. It was almost about to roll off my tongue, “he’s being a little abrasive”, but I swallowed it back down. I decided I wouldn’t answer his message, stuffed the phone in my purse, and rolled my eyes.
 
“He’s just being… himself.” She’d stopped us in front of the restaurant and finally opened her door, taking my answer as good enough. “He’s very good at it…” I trailed, doing just the same, but my eyes noted every shadow as we walked towards the doors. I don’t remember the details between watching for those shadows and Giry and I sitting at a booth with the menus in front of us. For a minute or two, I was thinking of how I might say something to her about our situation while acknowledging there was something colorful in front of me with a lot of words. Luckily, I didn’t have to do this all on my own.
 
“You’re being awfully quiet, kiddo.”

“Yeah, I guess I am,” I replied. It said all it needed to say.
 
“What’s going on?” Her question ended with a waitress appearing at my side with a voice much louder than I was prepared for. Some black tea for me, and Giry wanted a coke. As soon as we were alone, her focus was very direct. She had nothing before her but her own hands, with fingers crossed and all her rings. There was a big difference between Erik and her, however. Her gaze invited; his extracted. I took my time, raised my hand to my mouth, and pushed my lower lip in just enough to nibble on it. “Is he acting strange?”
 
“That’s nothing new, is it?”
 
“It’s new if you want it to be,” she said back, quickly, her lips red, perfect, but very straight.
 
“Yeah, it is,” I said to my lap. “I may have ‘egged’ him a bit too far.”
 
“What’d you do?”
                            
I didn’t want to say. I’d given him the last thing he was looking for, nearly; just the thing to imagine, which made space between us too frustrating to maintain. I far from regretted it, but out of context, it seemed I should. Worse, I knew, right at that moment, he would’ve liked to take me back there.
 
“Truthfully, I only had to engage him all this time. He wants to have a real relationship with me and his expectations are very high.” She thought about it a moment, glanced out the window, then played with her bracelet.
 
“What happened about finding out who he is?”
 
“I have some ideas.”
 
“Really?”
 
“Yeah, but we haven’t talked about them yet. I don’t really know how to bring them up. He’s very intense. Sometimes the only thing that’s relevant is what’s happening then and there, with him.” I smiled to the edge of the table and drummed my fingers just above it. “He’s always throwing something new at me – always commanding my attention, trying to see that I’m reacting accordingly. It’s like a tennis match.” We both shared a moment of amusement, but she stayed quite still. The only part of her that moved was her thumb over the grooves of the ring on her index finger.
 
“Ah, but Lily… that’s proof things have gone on long enough. You don’t want it to get more complicated before you-… well, do you consider yourself in a relationship? A real one?”
 
For a moment, my brow tensed up, but I leaned back in my seat and my forehead grew smooth under my hand. My fingers scrunched into my hair. I thought of combing his, of that look of utter detachment when I was trying to rush him out of the house. He was overboard, certainly, but what else explained this see-saw of discomfort and compassion? I had to be holding on to him all this time, rocking back and forth over the railing. There was a reason Meg and I weren’t talking.
 
“I really wish I could tell you why I can’t do what you think I should,” I answered. The drinks arrived some time during my musing. Giry hadn’t noticed it either, but she turned her face gently to the side. She took a breath and her lips parted, but she was quiet. Then another breath gave her the means to assert quite surely:
 
“I trust you have a very good reason.”
 
“What can you imagine… the reason to be?”
 
She seemed to seriously consider it a moment. “Maybe because he’s at his best right now and you don’t want to scare him away with reality. You’re having too much fun. Maybe you hope he’ll wind down and want to talk about this on his own. Hell, if I were someone’s Christine, I can understand the appeal.”
 
“That’s not quite it,” I uttered, and I found in my tone an urging for her to try again; to try as many times as she needed to get it right. To my dismay, she seemed to have only one answer prepared. “It’s more to do with him, let’s put it that way. It’s more about how he might interpret it if I said something.”
 
“He’s not ready?”
 
“Ready for what?” I prodded.
 
“To reveal who he is.”
 
“But he would ask, ‘for what’.” I explained, and she knit her brow.
 
“I don’t follow you, hon.”
 
“Or better yet, he would turn it around and ask me if I was ready.” She’d gone still as a statue and I sat up straight, smiling almost humorlessly. “Welcome to my world,” I finished, where words are tennis balls. It seemed too funny to say given how we actually felt at the moment. She was confused, and I was frustrated, but again, we laughed.
 
We made our orders, ate, returned to normal conversation, and I could tell my demeanor was sinking back into the way it was before we were so face-to-face, agreeing with itself that there was no one to explain this too, and only Erik could appreciate how entirely bizarre everything about us was. I didn’t yet recognize it as insanity, even as I worried what his next message would be, and as I worried what else was written but unread in that book underneath my pillow.
 
More messages came as she was dropping me off. “I’ve waited for you, my Christine.” I got out of the car and looked around, but Giry spoke my name.
 
“What?” I guess I’d snapped it. She reserved her comment for just a moment and replaced it with an expression all but suddenly fallen into concern.
 
“For a while, you’ve really reminded me of her,” she said. I knew, later, that it was exactly what she said, because I wrote it down as soon as I was inside.
 
“Who?” And after I said it, my eyes darted from shadow to shadow once again.
 
“Christine. …Of course.” She turned her face to her lap.
 
“…Is that good?” I wondered aloud. With Erik, infinitely good. With Giry, I didn’t know.
 
“Well truthfully, I always imagine her looking worried.” She paused. “You seemed so worried for a second.”
 
I was out of words the entire time. I’d begun two or three sentences in my head that were hardly concrete before she took a deep breath and glanced toward the road. “Well, this was nice. We really need to do it more often. You should just bother me and then I’ll remember to find the time.”
 
“I don’t like bothering people,” I explained, grinning. “You should get online more often. There’s my bother for now.”
 
“Right. I’ll do that.” Feeling closure, I closed the passenger door. Her car stayed where it was, but I began to walk at a snail’s pace; I got caught up squinting at the black trees across the street. Then gradually, it came to my attention she was rolling along beside me. The window rolled down and I stopped with my arms crossed.
 
“He’s not there, Lily. He’s at the theater.”
 
I wrote this down too. She gave me a smile meant to reassure, and her car went off into the night. I entered the house with my curiosity now of people rather than shadows.



Favorite Quotes
(Yeah, there are a lot this time. ;D)

You say you don’t fix me, but I’ve never experienced it before, wanting to exist so badly.

But your Erik wants to be here.

My head was swirling that night. Don’t you know about Erik? Love, even the illusion of love, which comforts others, makes his stomach turn, as mine does just writing.

“No. Insanity isn’t self-aware,” but he thought it important to remind me “you need no mental illness to be insane, nor are you insane with one.” “It’s not a word to throw around. It’s a terrible state for anyone, and we all have to avoid it.”

“Yeah, if the rest of my classes weren’t so easy, I’d be royally screwed, up the ass, twice,” she continued, though I’d never heard her say something like that before. “I could take my AP homework back by wheel barrel."

“That’s nothing new, is it?”
 
“It’s new if you want it to be,” she said back, quickly, her lips red, perfect, but very straight.

He was overboard, certainly, but what else explained this see-saw of discomfort and compassion? I had to be holding on to him all this time, rocking back and forth over the railing.

“Welcome to my world,” I finished, where words are tennis balls.