I'm so happy!!! I got on my older laptop to try connecting it to the internet and it said it was resuming Windows, and the first thing that pops up is my copy of HT's Chapter 24. So I read it and afterward I felt ready to finish it. I don't think what I wrote is what I had in mind back in November, but that's okay. It's August 2009 now and I have new ideas about how to develop the plot too.
I'm honestly excited. I want to figure out what I'm doing with this now.
It's going to be posted on ff.net right now! Because I can't wait any longer. I haven't addressed my readers in months and months and their sticking by me means a lot. I can give them something to read AND let them know that I'm trying to get my shit together.
Anyway, it's also mandatory that I post it here. For Sara, and stuff. ^^; I wonder if at a certain point you can tell it's not-so-recent writing and fresh writing. Actually, I wonder if you'll even like it or if I'm just making the characters say nonsense. :P
. . .
Here are some of my favorite quotes. :3
Without further ado,
HE’S THERE
Chapter 24: A Shame
The last day before Winter Break was predictably rowdy and free-spirited. Some of the jocks decided it’d be funny to put on Santa hats and carol for some of their favorite teachers in a very inharmonious fashion. They also did one for Mrs. Nakamura, the Japanese teacher, mainly because it’s funny to see her surprised.
What can I say, I wasn’t quite as pissy myself. Not that the circumstances with the roleplay or my grades had gotten any better (I’m pretty sure I blew the Scarlet Letter test), but because I could at least deal with my problems without being interrupted by that obligation to walk up the street five days a week and be gone for seven hours at a place that just grinds at my nerves.
I felt worst for Giry, who was there for the first half of the day, as she had scheduled any tests she had before noon so she could return home. She looked like she’d been hit by a bus, with a lethargic dead expression and a scarf around her neck to protect her from the chills.
I was going to visit her now that school was out and bring her an awesome flavor of tea I had found at the store now that she had me hooked. If only I could get through the swarms of students waiting for the buses and talking about what they wanted their parents to buy them for Christmas…
I had not yet even thought about what I wanted for Christmas. Laugh at me for it, but peace on Earth was generically good enough for me at this point. I just wanted to get along with my damn “boyfriend”.
Well… no… I think I’m actually lying. The walk home was enough time to develop a huge mental list of DVD’s and books.
~ ~ ~
Mom pulled up to Giry’s driveway for the first time and studied the nondescript chestnut colored house as I stepped out of the running car with tea-box in hand. It was intimidating coming down the walkway knowing that I would be meeting one of her parents. I cautiously pressed the doorbell and heard it reverberate behind the closed door, then a woman swung it inwards and stared at me a moment. She looked so much like Paulina. Then I realized I had never actually announced that I would be coming.
“Uhh. I’m a friend of Paulina’s, I was wondering if I could give her something, I-I know she’s si-“
“Ok, yeah, she’s downstairs,” she sharply answered. She hurried to the side and let me in, then slammed the door shut and returned carelessly to the upstairs. I darted my eyes around and approached the dark downstairs hallway, remembering how difficult it was last time to balance myself on the steps. I could hear a television in the room where we usually talked and hers appeared to be open and unoccupied, so I appeared at the doorframe and saw her lying on the couch with a coffee table to her side invaded with crumpled tissue paper.
“Hey, girrrl.” I attempted.
“Huh?” She asked without moving her head from her pillow.
“It’s me.” I came to the side of the couch and waved modestly.
“Oh, hi…” She was smiling, but I could tell she didn’t know why the hell I was there.
“I brought you something.”
I emphasized the tea box.
“I-Is that the-“ She began excitedly.
“Yeah! I thought you could use it.”
“Thank youuu…” She closed her eyes and squeezed some hair over her forehead.
“Are you doing okay?”
“I’ve got a really bad headache.”
“Still?”
“Yeah, I know, right? I already took three aspirin, too.”
“Damn… well how long ago?”
“Hmmm… half hour.”
“Then it could get better.”
“Heh, maybe…”
She laid there a bit and I stood there awkwardly. Eventually, she pulled her legs out from under the blanket to cool herself and revealed a pair of snowman pajama pants. They were adorable. I wanted some.
She saw me staring and shook out of her thoughts.
“Go ahead and sit down.” I obeyed her and went for the rocker where I usually sat. “How were your tests?”
“Myeh.” I didn’t really want to go over that I had bombed. She would feel bad about it, and my apathy on the matter would just make me feel guilty for being apathetic. “How were yours?”
“I had a math and English. They weren’t that hard. Math was easier. English…it’s like… blah… I don’t want to write a short essay analyzing anything right now, do I really look like I’m ready?” I giggled.
“It’s just terrible timing, isn’t it.”
“Tchhh… you’re telling me.”
“Heheheheh…”
“…So… your mom.”
“Yeah?”
“Not a very social creature?” Giry looked amused with her eyes shut.
“So many people come by here, the novelty has worn off.”
“Hah! … I actually don’t mind. At Meg’s house, I have a second set of parents. They ask me how driving and school is going and stuff and sometimes her mom will insist on making me something to eat, even at the cost of Meg getting impatient.”
“Cute.”
Another awkward silence.
She went for the juice on the table and sipped carefully. I knew what I wanted to ask her, but hesitance got the best of me. No, maybe this wasn’t the time… She didn’t even feel good.
“I should probably go now… I just wanted to tell you I hope you feel better and hopefully next week we’ll both be free to do something.”
“Thanks.” She smiled. “You don’t have to go if you don’t want to-“ Maybe she was able to talk to me.
“Well, my mom’s waiting in the car… She said she would wait around, but I don’t want to take too much advantage…”
“Oh, yeah…”
“And I have work at 4:30…”
“Okay…well see ya…” I guess she couldn’t.
“See ya…”
I stepped away from the recliner and came back to the doorframe. She seemed content rolling over and going back to sleep, so I hurried off.
~ ~ ~
Mom dropped me off at work after I came back to the house to get ready and have a bite to eat. Being in the back room, ten minutes early, I had nothing left to be distracted by. School was over, the test was over, Mariam and I had no struggles and I wasn’t planning to see her yet… Giry was sick… It was just me and the fact that the Phantom and I needed to talk. And I hated that I had to talk to him. I hated that I wanted to know more, but he had said clearly that he was not going to ‘fix’ anything. I also hated that I was so hot and bothered when it happened, and then now suddenly I was just ready. Like withdrawal had killed my sense of right and wrong. He did not deserve this at all. He deserved to have to chase after me for at least another week before I would let another word pass his lips. And yet…
My text message was quick and to the point: “I want to see you today, please.”
I shoved that damn phone into my bag and put it in its cubby.
Lastly, I took one look in the mirror, in my collared shirt and “Lily” name tag and did an enthusiastic double-point at myself like I was having the best day of my life. Then I came out to the counter to serve people ice cream for three and a half hours.
~ ~ ~
About two thirds of my shift was watching the clock and looking out the window. I mean I guess when you think about it… people don’t want the cool refreshing treat that we’re selling when it’s snowing out and the roads are icy, and it’s the evening. One of the older employees had seen all four seasons and said that’s just how it is during December.
But I’m the kind of person that sort of prefers to be busy. Then I am not standing blankly by the register, thinking about self-injurious men that I have texted in request to rendezvous. And it was funny, because apparently I’m not good at keeping a poker face. I always thought I had the ability to look like nothing was on my mind, but my coworkers kept asking me what I was thinking about, in sort of a suggestive way, whenever I gazed into the floor tiles by the entry mat.
I didn’t care at this point, though. My shift was over, and all I wanted to do was check my phone, fumbling through my stuff for it in an unnecessary hurry… thinking maybe, despite the time, the time which said it was far too late to venture out to meet said self-injurious men, that he had responded… but there didn’t seem to b- 1 new in my inbox. I went for it like a vulture.
“I don’t know if that would be possible. I’m busy.”
I felt my shoulders shrink.
I was finally pumped up and ready to talk to this creep, and the creep himself wasn’t ready.
I sat at the table by the door and looked out the window. One of my parents should’ve been on their way. 8:43, the phone read. So late. Too late.
Before I knew it, my finger, without permission, opened up a new text message form for “The Phantom”. Totally without my consent, it clicked “I wish you weren’t.” Something mushy, and stupid, that I would never say to anyone, and there it was, sending and saving itself in my outbox. I stared at the ridiculous, longing words for another ten seconds before a pair of brights hit the parking spot in front of the shop. I glanced towards Andrea from behind the counter and smiled goodbye.
Mom didn’t say anything. It was bloody cold out and the windows were fogging up, and my legs hurt from all the standing around. I could not think of anything at all besides what I had sent to the Phantom and if he was going to give me any kind of response. Though I see no reason why I would be important enough to change his plans… he was… busy… after all. Busy what… busy what? … Ruining another part of his body? Please don’t do the fingers… Not that in my opinion he had nice fingers…
So what if he had a nice hand? That does not make him a good person. Being attractive at all does not make someone a good person. It does not make them trustable, or admirable, or worthy of your respect or time. I should have still been furious.
The offensive beep of a new text message broke up the awkward silence in the car. Mom arched her eyebrows at me as I got the phone from my bag, reading it carefully with my side turned into the window end.
“In an hour, then. Front of theater.”
I had to read it about 10 times over to register that he really was offering to see me.
“Ok.”
~ ~ ~
The only way to get out of the house and feel sure that my parents wouldn’t come knocking on my door was if I faked being tired. We talked a bit in the dining room while I grabbed a snack and then I planted the lie- that I had trouble sleeping, woke up extremely early that morning and thought I’d hit the hay, especially after four hours at an ice cream shop.
I promise you, I didn’t enjoy it. I don’t like to lie. I’ve had to do it a lot for the Phantom, and each time, it makes me guilty….
The clock said I still had forty minutes to kill when I fell back against the closed door. I decided to take out my ipod and pace quietly about the lonely, dark cube that was my bedroom, glancing over and over to the stubborn, slow as molasses digital numbers on their hike for…9:48…that was an hour away from when his last text arrived exactly. I noted this when I picked the phone up from the desk and started going through our previous stuff.
… I can’t believe I’d tried to say stuff like “I wish you weren’t busy.”
What was I thinking?!
How clingy does that sound? Everyone knows you’re supposed to sound like you’re really cool and have a million better things to do when the person of your affection is too busy to see you.
But… if he really didn’t want to see me, he would not have cleared any time at all for us. He obviously sensed this was important, like he senses everything, because he must think he’s on a role and he can just tell me he isn’t going to stop doing psychotic things and I will eventually tolerate it.
Or maybe nothing he has ever done has been because he’s having these thought processes.
He’s a guy, after all. I keep hearing that guys rarely think or remember what they were thinking, if they were. That everything is basically instinctive, and the Phantom is instinctively a brain-twister that makes me melt into a puddle.
~ ~ ~
The thick black coat or extra layers of shirts I wore in precaution were never enough to keep a chill from wandering its way in and making the first step outside seem prologue to a very uncomfortable walk.
I looked up the shadowed street and all the places under streetlights that I would reach on my way to the theater. There didn’t appear to be a moon, or many stars. I guess a few. This really wasn’t the time to focus on how cold it was. I had to meet him.
Passing the park, I thought to myself how funny it would be if Mariam was “out getting the mail again”. This was not the ideal time for her to wonder what I was doing. She hadn’t yet known that we had ever met this late, even on that night after the plays.
I wondered if he was already there.
How he handled the cold.
He was probably in his usual three-piece, maybe a coat.
If I weren’t supposed to be mad at him, I would’ve preferred to run into his arms.
Agh… the temperature was brutal. I could already feel my fingers numbing. I slid them in my pockets. I wonder if he thought I was an idiot for even asking to talk when I could have just waited, in the comfort of my warm, safe home, until tomorrow, or.. something.
Eventually I reached the top of the theater’s street. Every inch of me confronting icy air, no matter how tightly I clutched to the flaps of my coat. Every step that brought me closer to that ominous rectangular silhouette had me wondering if the black mark along the edge of the balcony was a figure. Then finally it moved. Its top glimmered just a little as he watched me approach, and my teeth chattered, and something about it was completely uncomfortable.
Like we had had no fight at all, he noticed that I was trembling the entire time I came to him and tried to hold me before my arms rose, but I felt so much conscience in the action in pushing him away, like I knew I was supposed to be mad and would reject even those offerings which gave me comfort. The offering, however, was jumbling my recollection of what I was first supposed to say to him.
“We’re not reconciling.” I muttered to him.
“All right.” He coolly replied.
I hadn’t prepared myself for such apathy.
“Then what are we doing, Christine…”
I hadn’t an answer. I ended up staring at his shadow against the railing, his stiff suit jacket, moving as he breathed. The more I studied, the more I realized that the bastard himself was shivering.
“We’re talking…. Because we have to… because I can’t just ignore you.” He continued to try, and fail, at remaining completely still. “Because no matter what you do that bothers me, I keep thinking you deserve a chance.”
“That makes two of us.”
“I’m trying not to judge you.”
“It’s hard, isn’t it?”
“Sometimes.”
“I don’t condone what you do. … I know so little about you. I’m just… trying… to get it. I’m trying to get how you think and what’s behind your behavior.”
“Why do you send me on such a rollercoaster?”
“…Why is it that things start going so well and then suddenly, you want me to see such a strange side of you, if it’s even real.”
“Maybe it’s how I forgive you for your own things that bother me to no end.”
Okay, that made absolutely no sense.
“But. But I don’t get it.”
“…What are you trying to say? That… that… that this is punishment? That you’re trying to have me live up to my side of ‘the deal’ because you’ve… gotten to know me and are such a saint that you accept my problems…? Therefore… I should accept all of yours? All in a row? None of which have any similarity to mine?”
“…This is splendid. I hoped you’d figure it out.”
“Oh, okay. I was right.”
“You’re always right when you actually take the time to think about what’s happening to you.”
“I… okay?”
“You calculate just like I do, but only when you put in the practice. That’s partly why I’m talking to you right now, Christine. I want you to wake up.”
“Wake up from what? What do you think I’m doing right now?”
“You need to wake up from the delusion that everything is what it seems and you’re just a nothing. You need to realize why your life is important, and why you have potential… And why we need to be together…”
“Okay, y-you’re kind of. You’re kind of scaring me. I don’t know how this has anything to do with the fact that you’ve been scaring me half to death and cutting up your face.”
“Hah! It…” (did he just go “Hah!”?…) “A long time ago one of the things that really made me like you, one of the reasons I still really like you… is that you will actually have a discussion with someone that you think is believing or acting on a completely outrageous level. You always leave room to go back on your opinion.” I crossed my arms, fighting back an intense interest in what he was saying. “I think it’s because… you’re fighting to think, as I said, just like I do.”
“But I don’t think like you at all! If I did, I wouldn’t constantly be upset about what you do.”
“And then you beg for a correspondence and find out your conjectures were correct.”
“…Godamnit.” I uttered without thinking. He paused. “…Sorry. Reflex.” “…Okay, maybe that’s the wrong word. But I don’t appreciate being predicted so easily. I mean… can’t I make you upset every once in a while? Can’t you think ‘oh man, Lily, I can’t believe she did that. How am I going to deal with this?’”
“It happens all the time. I guess I’m just…” He stopped mid-sentence. I could still see him shivering. “I just want to make you strong enough to meet the potential I’ve always seen in you.”
I didn’t know if I loved or hated the phrases he used to justify cornering me in a room with blood on his face. Or stalking me at all, actually.
“You’re a piece of work. Why the hell am I crazy about you? Really.”
Without my knowing it until a few seconds in, I began to pace the theater’s front porch.
“You’re nuts! You’re completely nuts!” From behind me, I heard a chuckle. I turned in his direction. “Don’t you laugh over there. I am angry with you. Really, I am. You sound like a freakin’… bad novel. I-I-I’m curious-“ I said to the dark figure at the other end of the planks. “When I ask this question, I just want you to know that I’m serious and not shitting around.”
“Okay…”
“…Do you script what you say to me?” This really got him into a chuckle-fest. I felt the corners of my mouth rising. “Were you practicing these lines before I got here? I’m serious.”
“…No, I was not.”
“…Okay..”
“But I do admit that some of the ideas I expressed were done so pre-meditated.”
An amused ‘Pfth’ escaped from me.
“…Am I finally saying things that make you happy? What a change. I thought I only brought pain and misery to your life.”
“Well! …I do admit that pain and misery are definitely involved, but…” He did not chuckle. I resorted to pacing again. “I don’t know what I’d be doing without you. Truthfully… I’m not near ready to say goodbye, either.”
“I said almost the same thing to you several nights ago. It made you angry.”
I stopped a moment and stared off the edge of the porch into the trees. Tried to remember… He had said something along the lines of “you couldn’t disown me now even if it was the best thing for you.” It made me angry because… he said it in such a thoughtless way, maybe without knowing it. And yet… he was right.
“Sometimes love right where you hating most.” I quoted. I wondered if he’d know what I was talking about.
“Cute.” His voice replied. We were silent again. I was listening to the cold sky, unsure what I should say or what we were supposed to do after that, when he spoke again. “…Are you trying to say you love me?”
Holy mother, my whole system accelerated.
“No.”
I discovered shortly after saying that word that he was missing. Always going missing, always… Always being a phantom, the bastard. I muttered all of this aloud and turned my back on the building. I felt sort of like a balloon stuck under a paper-weight. I looked up and I could see stars, ones that were never there before.
When I reached an area down the path completely shaded in brush, making me the tiniest bit uncomfortable being all by myself, my phone beeped.
“Shame.” He wrote.
I'm honestly excited. I want to figure out what I'm doing with this now.
It's going to be posted on ff.net right now! Because I can't wait any longer. I haven't addressed my readers in months and months and their sticking by me means a lot. I can give them something to read AND let them know that I'm trying to get my shit together.
Anyway, it's also mandatory that I post it here. For Sara, and stuff. ^^; I wonder if at a certain point you can tell it's not-so-recent writing and fresh writing. Actually, I wonder if you'll even like it or if I'm just making the characters say nonsense. :P
Here are some of my favorite quotes. :3
But… if he really didn’t want to see me, he would not have cleared any time at all for us. He obviously sensed this was important, like he senses everything, because he must think he’s on a role and he can just tell me he isn’t going to stop doing psychotic things and I will eventually tolerate it.
Or maybe nothing he has ever done has been because he’s having these thought processes.
He’s a guy, after all. I keep hearing that guys rarely think or remember what they were thinking, if they were. That everything is basically instinctive, and the Phantom is instinctively a brain-twister that makes me melt into a puddle.
But I’m the kind of person that sort of prefers to be busy. Then I am not standing blankly by the register, thinking about self-injurious men that I have texted in request to rendezvous.
I hated that I wanted to know more, but he had said clearly that he was not going to ‘fix’ anything. I also hated that I was so hot and bothered when it happened, and then now suddenly I was just ready. Like withdrawal had killed my sense of right and wrong. He did not deserve this at all. He deserved to have to chase after me for at least another week before I would let another word pass his lips.
“…Am I finally saying things that make you happy? What a change. I thought I only brought pain and misery to your life.”
“Well! …I do admit that pain and misery are definitely involved, but…” He did not chuckle. I resorted to pacing again. “I don’t know what I’d be doing without you. Truthfully… I’m not near ready to say goodbye, either.”
“I said almost the same thing to you several nights ago. It made you angry.”
HE’S THERE
Chapter 24: A Shame
The last day before Winter Break was predictably rowdy and free-spirited. Some of the jocks decided it’d be funny to put on Santa hats and carol for some of their favorite teachers in a very inharmonious fashion. They also did one for Mrs. Nakamura, the Japanese teacher, mainly because it’s funny to see her surprised.
What can I say, I wasn’t quite as pissy myself. Not that the circumstances with the roleplay or my grades had gotten any better (I’m pretty sure I blew the Scarlet Letter test), but because I could at least deal with my problems without being interrupted by that obligation to walk up the street five days a week and be gone for seven hours at a place that just grinds at my nerves.
I felt worst for Giry, who was there for the first half of the day, as she had scheduled any tests she had before noon so she could return home. She looked like she’d been hit by a bus, with a lethargic dead expression and a scarf around her neck to protect her from the chills.
I was going to visit her now that school was out and bring her an awesome flavor of tea I had found at the store now that she had me hooked. If only I could get through the swarms of students waiting for the buses and talking about what they wanted their parents to buy them for Christmas…
I had not yet even thought about what I wanted for Christmas. Laugh at me for it, but peace on Earth was generically good enough for me at this point. I just wanted to get along with my damn “boyfriend”.
Well… no… I think I’m actually lying. The walk home was enough time to develop a huge mental list of DVD’s and books.
~ ~ ~
Mom pulled up to Giry’s driveway for the first time and studied the nondescript chestnut colored house as I stepped out of the running car with tea-box in hand. It was intimidating coming down the walkway knowing that I would be meeting one of her parents. I cautiously pressed the doorbell and heard it reverberate behind the closed door, then a woman swung it inwards and stared at me a moment. She looked so much like Paulina. Then I realized I had never actually announced that I would be coming.
“Uhh. I’m a friend of Paulina’s, I was wondering if I could give her something, I-I know she’s si-“
“Ok, yeah, she’s downstairs,” she sharply answered. She hurried to the side and let me in, then slammed the door shut and returned carelessly to the upstairs. I darted my eyes around and approached the dark downstairs hallway, remembering how difficult it was last time to balance myself on the steps. I could hear a television in the room where we usually talked and hers appeared to be open and unoccupied, so I appeared at the doorframe and saw her lying on the couch with a coffee table to her side invaded with crumpled tissue paper.
“Hey, girrrl.” I attempted.
“Huh?” She asked without moving her head from her pillow.
“It’s me.” I came to the side of the couch and waved modestly.
“Oh, hi…” She was smiling, but I could tell she didn’t know why the hell I was there.
“I brought you something.”
I emphasized the tea box.
“I-Is that the-“ She began excitedly.
“Yeah! I thought you could use it.”
“Thank youuu…” She closed her eyes and squeezed some hair over her forehead.
“Are you doing okay?”
“I’ve got a really bad headache.”
“Still?”
“Yeah, I know, right? I already took three aspirin, too.”
“Damn… well how long ago?”
“Hmmm… half hour.”
“Then it could get better.”
“Heh, maybe…”
She laid there a bit and I stood there awkwardly. Eventually, she pulled her legs out from under the blanket to cool herself and revealed a pair of snowman pajama pants. They were adorable. I wanted some.
She saw me staring and shook out of her thoughts.
“Go ahead and sit down.” I obeyed her and went for the rocker where I usually sat. “How were your tests?”
“Myeh.” I didn’t really want to go over that I had bombed. She would feel bad about it, and my apathy on the matter would just make me feel guilty for being apathetic. “How were yours?”
“I had a math and English. They weren’t that hard. Math was easier. English…it’s like… blah… I don’t want to write a short essay analyzing anything right now, do I really look like I’m ready?” I giggled.
“It’s just terrible timing, isn’t it.”
“Tchhh… you’re telling me.”
“Heheheheh…”
“…So… your mom.”
“Yeah?”
“Not a very social creature?” Giry looked amused with her eyes shut.
“So many people come by here, the novelty has worn off.”
“Hah! … I actually don’t mind. At Meg’s house, I have a second set of parents. They ask me how driving and school is going and stuff and sometimes her mom will insist on making me something to eat, even at the cost of Meg getting impatient.”
“Cute.”
Another awkward silence.
She went for the juice on the table and sipped carefully. I knew what I wanted to ask her, but hesitance got the best of me. No, maybe this wasn’t the time… She didn’t even feel good.
“I should probably go now… I just wanted to tell you I hope you feel better and hopefully next week we’ll both be free to do something.”
“Thanks.” She smiled. “You don’t have to go if you don’t want to-“ Maybe she was able to talk to me.
“Well, my mom’s waiting in the car… She said she would wait around, but I don’t want to take too much advantage…”
“Oh, yeah…”
“And I have work at 4:30…”
“Okay…well see ya…” I guess she couldn’t.
“See ya…”
I stepped away from the recliner and came back to the doorframe. She seemed content rolling over and going back to sleep, so I hurried off.
~ ~ ~
Mom dropped me off at work after I came back to the house to get ready and have a bite to eat. Being in the back room, ten minutes early, I had nothing left to be distracted by. School was over, the test was over, Mariam and I had no struggles and I wasn’t planning to see her yet… Giry was sick… It was just me and the fact that the Phantom and I needed to talk. And I hated that I had to talk to him. I hated that I wanted to know more, but he had said clearly that he was not going to ‘fix’ anything. I also hated that I was so hot and bothered when it happened, and then now suddenly I was just ready. Like withdrawal had killed my sense of right and wrong. He did not deserve this at all. He deserved to have to chase after me for at least another week before I would let another word pass his lips. And yet…
My text message was quick and to the point: “I want to see you today, please.”
I shoved that damn phone into my bag and put it in its cubby.
Lastly, I took one look in the mirror, in my collared shirt and “Lily” name tag and did an enthusiastic double-point at myself like I was having the best day of my life. Then I came out to the counter to serve people ice cream for three and a half hours.
~ ~ ~
About two thirds of my shift was watching the clock and looking out the window. I mean I guess when you think about it… people don’t want the cool refreshing treat that we’re selling when it’s snowing out and the roads are icy, and it’s the evening. One of the older employees had seen all four seasons and said that’s just how it is during December.
But I’m the kind of person that sort of prefers to be busy. Then I am not standing blankly by the register, thinking about self-injurious men that I have texted in request to rendezvous. And it was funny, because apparently I’m not good at keeping a poker face. I always thought I had the ability to look like nothing was on my mind, but my coworkers kept asking me what I was thinking about, in sort of a suggestive way, whenever I gazed into the floor tiles by the entry mat.
I didn’t care at this point, though. My shift was over, and all I wanted to do was check my phone, fumbling through my stuff for it in an unnecessary hurry… thinking maybe, despite the time, the time which said it was far too late to venture out to meet said self-injurious men, that he had responded… but there didn’t seem to b- 1 new in my inbox. I went for it like a vulture.
“I don’t know if that would be possible. I’m busy.”
I felt my shoulders shrink.
I was finally pumped up and ready to talk to this creep, and the creep himself wasn’t ready.
I sat at the table by the door and looked out the window. One of my parents should’ve been on their way. 8:43, the phone read. So late. Too late.
Before I knew it, my finger, without permission, opened up a new text message form for “The Phantom”. Totally without my consent, it clicked “I wish you weren’t.” Something mushy, and stupid, that I would never say to anyone, and there it was, sending and saving itself in my outbox. I stared at the ridiculous, longing words for another ten seconds before a pair of brights hit the parking spot in front of the shop. I glanced towards Andrea from behind the counter and smiled goodbye.
Mom didn’t say anything. It was bloody cold out and the windows were fogging up, and my legs hurt from all the standing around. I could not think of anything at all besides what I had sent to the Phantom and if he was going to give me any kind of response. Though I see no reason why I would be important enough to change his plans… he was… busy… after all. Busy what… busy what? … Ruining another part of his body? Please don’t do the fingers… Not that in my opinion he had nice fingers…
So what if he had a nice hand? That does not make him a good person. Being attractive at all does not make someone a good person. It does not make them trustable, or admirable, or worthy of your respect or time. I should have still been furious.
The offensive beep of a new text message broke up the awkward silence in the car. Mom arched her eyebrows at me as I got the phone from my bag, reading it carefully with my side turned into the window end.
“In an hour, then. Front of theater.”
I had to read it about 10 times over to register that he really was offering to see me.
“Ok.”
~ ~ ~
The only way to get out of the house and feel sure that my parents wouldn’t come knocking on my door was if I faked being tired. We talked a bit in the dining room while I grabbed a snack and then I planted the lie- that I had trouble sleeping, woke up extremely early that morning and thought I’d hit the hay, especially after four hours at an ice cream shop.
I promise you, I didn’t enjoy it. I don’t like to lie. I’ve had to do it a lot for the Phantom, and each time, it makes me guilty….
The clock said I still had forty minutes to kill when I fell back against the closed door. I decided to take out my ipod and pace quietly about the lonely, dark cube that was my bedroom, glancing over and over to the stubborn, slow as molasses digital numbers on their hike for…9:48…that was an hour away from when his last text arrived exactly. I noted this when I picked the phone up from the desk and started going through our previous stuff.
… I can’t believe I’d tried to say stuff like “I wish you weren’t busy.”
What was I thinking?!
How clingy does that sound? Everyone knows you’re supposed to sound like you’re really cool and have a million better things to do when the person of your affection is too busy to see you.
But… if he really didn’t want to see me, he would not have cleared any time at all for us. He obviously sensed this was important, like he senses everything, because he must think he’s on a role and he can just tell me he isn’t going to stop doing psychotic things and I will eventually tolerate it.
Or maybe nothing he has ever done has been because he’s having these thought processes.
He’s a guy, after all. I keep hearing that guys rarely think or remember what they were thinking, if they were. That everything is basically instinctive, and the Phantom is instinctively a brain-twister that makes me melt into a puddle.
~ ~ ~
The thick black coat or extra layers of shirts I wore in precaution were never enough to keep a chill from wandering its way in and making the first step outside seem prologue to a very uncomfortable walk.
I looked up the shadowed street and all the places under streetlights that I would reach on my way to the theater. There didn’t appear to be a moon, or many stars. I guess a few. This really wasn’t the time to focus on how cold it was. I had to meet him.
Passing the park, I thought to myself how funny it would be if Mariam was “out getting the mail again”. This was not the ideal time for her to wonder what I was doing. She hadn’t yet known that we had ever met this late, even on that night after the plays.
I wondered if he was already there.
How he handled the cold.
He was probably in his usual three-piece, maybe a coat.
If I weren’t supposed to be mad at him, I would’ve preferred to run into his arms.
Agh… the temperature was brutal. I could already feel my fingers numbing. I slid them in my pockets. I wonder if he thought I was an idiot for even asking to talk when I could have just waited, in the comfort of my warm, safe home, until tomorrow, or.. something.
Eventually I reached the top of the theater’s street. Every inch of me confronting icy air, no matter how tightly I clutched to the flaps of my coat. Every step that brought me closer to that ominous rectangular silhouette had me wondering if the black mark along the edge of the balcony was a figure. Then finally it moved. Its top glimmered just a little as he watched me approach, and my teeth chattered, and something about it was completely uncomfortable.
Like we had had no fight at all, he noticed that I was trembling the entire time I came to him and tried to hold me before my arms rose, but I felt so much conscience in the action in pushing him away, like I knew I was supposed to be mad and would reject even those offerings which gave me comfort. The offering, however, was jumbling my recollection of what I was first supposed to say to him.
“We’re not reconciling.” I muttered to him.
“All right.” He coolly replied.
I hadn’t prepared myself for such apathy.
“Then what are we doing, Christine…”
I hadn’t an answer. I ended up staring at his shadow against the railing, his stiff suit jacket, moving as he breathed. The more I studied, the more I realized that the bastard himself was shivering.
“We’re talking…. Because we have to… because I can’t just ignore you.” He continued to try, and fail, at remaining completely still. “Because no matter what you do that bothers me, I keep thinking you deserve a chance.”
“That makes two of us.”
“I’m trying not to judge you.”
“It’s hard, isn’t it?”
“Sometimes.”
“I don’t condone what you do. … I know so little about you. I’m just… trying… to get it. I’m trying to get how you think and what’s behind your behavior.”
“Why do you send me on such a rollercoaster?”
“…Why is it that things start going so well and then suddenly, you want me to see such a strange side of you, if it’s even real.”
“Maybe it’s how I forgive you for your own things that bother me to no end.”
Okay, that made absolutely no sense.
“But. But I don’t get it.”
“…What are you trying to say? That… that… that this is punishment? That you’re trying to have me live up to my side of ‘the deal’ because you’ve… gotten to know me and are such a saint that you accept my problems…? Therefore… I should accept all of yours? All in a row? None of which have any similarity to mine?”
“…This is splendid. I hoped you’d figure it out.”
“Oh, okay. I was right.”
“You’re always right when you actually take the time to think about what’s happening to you.”
“I… okay?”
“You calculate just like I do, but only when you put in the practice. That’s partly why I’m talking to you right now, Christine. I want you to wake up.”
“Wake up from what? What do you think I’m doing right now?”
“You need to wake up from the delusion that everything is what it seems and you’re just a nothing. You need to realize why your life is important, and why you have potential… And why we need to be together…”
“Okay, y-you’re kind of. You’re kind of scaring me. I don’t know how this has anything to do with the fact that you’ve been scaring me half to death and cutting up your face.”
“Hah! It…” (did he just go “Hah!”?…) “A long time ago one of the things that really made me like you, one of the reasons I still really like you… is that you will actually have a discussion with someone that you think is believing or acting on a completely outrageous level. You always leave room to go back on your opinion.” I crossed my arms, fighting back an intense interest in what he was saying. “I think it’s because… you’re fighting to think, as I said, just like I do.”
“But I don’t think like you at all! If I did, I wouldn’t constantly be upset about what you do.”
“And then you beg for a correspondence and find out your conjectures were correct.”
“…Godamnit.” I uttered without thinking. He paused. “…Sorry. Reflex.” “…Okay, maybe that’s the wrong word. But I don’t appreciate being predicted so easily. I mean… can’t I make you upset every once in a while? Can’t you think ‘oh man, Lily, I can’t believe she did that. How am I going to deal with this?’”
“It happens all the time. I guess I’m just…” He stopped mid-sentence. I could still see him shivering. “I just want to make you strong enough to meet the potential I’ve always seen in you.”
I didn’t know if I loved or hated the phrases he used to justify cornering me in a room with blood on his face. Or stalking me at all, actually.
“You’re a piece of work. Why the hell am I crazy about you? Really.”
Without my knowing it until a few seconds in, I began to pace the theater’s front porch.
“You’re nuts! You’re completely nuts!” From behind me, I heard a chuckle. I turned in his direction. “Don’t you laugh over there. I am angry with you. Really, I am. You sound like a freakin’… bad novel. I-I-I’m curious-“ I said to the dark figure at the other end of the planks. “When I ask this question, I just want you to know that I’m serious and not shitting around.”
“Okay…”
“…Do you script what you say to me?” This really got him into a chuckle-fest. I felt the corners of my mouth rising. “Were you practicing these lines before I got here? I’m serious.”
“…No, I was not.”
“…Okay..”
“But I do admit that some of the ideas I expressed were done so pre-meditated.”
An amused ‘Pfth’ escaped from me.
“…Am I finally saying things that make you happy? What a change. I thought I only brought pain and misery to your life.”
“Well! …I do admit that pain and misery are definitely involved, but…” He did not chuckle. I resorted to pacing again. “I don’t know what I’d be doing without you. Truthfully… I’m not near ready to say goodbye, either.”
“I said almost the same thing to you several nights ago. It made you angry.”
I stopped a moment and stared off the edge of the porch into the trees. Tried to remember… He had said something along the lines of “you couldn’t disown me now even if it was the best thing for you.” It made me angry because… he said it in such a thoughtless way, maybe without knowing it. And yet… he was right.
“Sometimes love right where you hating most.” I quoted. I wondered if he’d know what I was talking about.
“Cute.” His voice replied. We were silent again. I was listening to the cold sky, unsure what I should say or what we were supposed to do after that, when he spoke again. “…Are you trying to say you love me?”
Holy mother, my whole system accelerated.
“No.”
I discovered shortly after saying that word that he was missing. Always going missing, always… Always being a phantom, the bastard. I muttered all of this aloud and turned my back on the building. I felt sort of like a balloon stuck under a paper-weight. I looked up and I could see stars, ones that were never there before.
When I reached an area down the path completely shaded in brush, making me the tiniest bit uncomfortable being all by myself, my phone beeped.
“Shame.” He wrote.
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