AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Well, no one except Ms. Traynor, my PE teacher who thought of herself as an amateur nutritionist. Her sun bleached lips would purse as she scrutinized me. "You look like you've lost weight." And then I knew for sure I was losing too much. So I'd make myself stop. But I couldn't stop eating. I had to live. And so the cycle would always repeat.
I never wanted anyone looking at me like I was a walking eating disorder. I didn't need that judgment or it's 'do you know what your problem is?' I lived in my body-I knew what the problems were. Once, it got to a point where I was so hyperaware of my yo-yo weight, I couldn't let anyone see me eat. I still have trouble with that shit.
I didn't need anyone trying to define me by my issues, so I've always kept them to myself.
Did that damned doctor even hear herself? I'm no good for Angel-did she not realize that Angel was already broken by the time I came along?
She was shattered, like glass. Like the windshield she flew through when the car went off the road. She lost her mom and her home in one morning with the cranes and the dying trees on the side of the road. She had no one left, no one to take care of her. I knew what that felt like, and so I became the mother-figure in her life. I didn't do it on purpose. I just took care of her in the only way I knew how. It's not like I hid my issues from her.
Well, maybe I did, but she knew about them. If she paid any attention at all, she knew.
"Don't sweat the small stuff," was the motto I tried to continually beat into her, though I had miles to go before I could walk that shit out myself. Because I knew that the small stuff is what destroys a person. Only with Angel, nothing was ever small. Even the littlest things were mountains in her mind. She would sweat everything and the more her troubles piled up, the more I felt the need to drive them away because just watching Angel try to deal with stress was painful.
I've always thought the world of Angel, but she's weak. Weakness could be a good thing, I guess. Angel was a good person. A really good person-but she was also a perpetual victim of her position in life. Other people were always doing shit to her and I was always running interference, always trying to make sure they didn't get away with it. I had to make time to check on her in between classes. But that was okay, some people weren't fighters.
Being peaceable shouldn't mean a person deserves testing at every turn. That's why the world needed more people like me. Not all like me, but some parts might be okay, under the right circumstances.
I never got the bullying thing. So what if I did it sometimes? I only gave shit to people who deserved it.
It was not okay to pick on someone who was as sweet and vulnerable as Angel. Or anyone so small. It wasn't right to make fun of someone because they didn't have a home, or parents, or new clothes at the beginning of the school year. It was not okay to hurt a person just to make yourself feel better.
I saw that shit happen to Angel all the time. When something like that pouncing in the girls' bathroom happened to someone that was so exposed and unprepared, what kind of friend would that make me if I just let it happen?
Rosa Dominguez was lucky the campus fuzz found us so fast. She was lucky I never laid eyes on her again, because if I had, a broken shoulder would have been the least of her troubles.
If I'm being completely honest, sometimes, when I'm watching TV-one of the lame teenage dramas that always seems to be playing, I compare myself to the people in those shows. Sometimes, I think maybe I was never very good at being a friend. But I kept trying and that should count for something.
So, when people like Doctor Williams tried to tell me I was no good for Angel, I could look at what I did for my friend and know that they were at least a little bit wrong. Angel was good and having her made me a better person.
Even standing here-in this prison where they turn us into refuse-I would do it all over again, suffer any consequence in defense of my friend.
And still, she goes out of her way to ignore me.
But it doesn't matter.
One need not observe human behavior for long to learn that we require companionship. Some more so than others.
Not that it matters.
I'm not an actual person. I'm a ghost. So it doesn't matter.
It will never matter.
+ + +
21
-Angel
I wake to the sudden buzz of interior lights.
A dream lingers on the edge, just outside my confinement. His song sails from my freedom into captivity, making me ache. I'm on my side, facing the wall of my cell, feeling wide awake though my eyes are still closed, trying to see the page, to grasp the moment I held it in my hand.
Why do you go and where?
Silent steps-leaping.
I chase, but you're too far ahead.
