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Sixteen Years Before
A camera clicked.
Head down, I leaned against the double doors to the library, closing them as I cradled my textbooks in my arms. I gazed down at the tile floor, full of scuff marks, hoping to god that the source of the clicking hadn’t been directed at me. My face flushed, fresh pain from the hot tears which had streaked down my cheeks moments before. I hoped I’d done a good enough job hiding my emotional state before packing up and exiting the damn library.
I slowly lifted my eyes and caught Jamie’s gaze through the lens of his Cannon SLR camera.
Fuck.
“Say cheese,” Jamie said over the barrel of the lens, clutching the base. He clicked the camera a few more times.
“Not today, Jamie.” My voice sounded tired.
Jamie dropped the grip over the camera, and the Cannon slung around his neck via the strap. A line formed above his brows. I turned to go back to my dorms, but he reached his arm out for mine, and I paused.
“Hey.” His soothing tone stopped my heart dead in its tracks. “What’s wrong?”
What a loaded question.
My mind was languid. Without hope. A slew of confusing emotions wrapped me in a cocoon, there partially from the passing of Dad so abruptly. Partially from everything that’d happened with Jamie back at the homecoming dance a month before, discovering a boy I wanted to connect with could only care about me to a certain extent. And partially because I simply couldn’t shake the depression which had been clinging to me since my sophomore year everytime I shut my eyes or found myself sitting idly. The sound of the gun going off rang over and over again in my mind…
Sometimes, I imagined myself in the blood instead of Dad. Sometimes I imagined what it would be like to shut my eyes for the last time, take one more breath, and drift away into nothingness.
I’d fallen to the bottom, to the darkest place possible, and I didn’t know what to do to stop feeling this way.
Over a year later, and my body was shot. Emotionally beaten beyond repair. Prone to random bursts of deep sobs which racked my insides. The only thing that kept me going, kept me from thinking so deeply about the darkness inside my head, was my school work which preoccupied my mind at least half of the time.
Despite the busy work, I sometimes found myself staring off into space, the pain consuming me until the only thing I had left were the bitter release of tears.
“Jemma?” A shadow of alarm touched Jamie’s face.
“I’m okay.”
“No… you don’t look okay.”
A sharp pain shot through my heart. Hurt from two very contrasting emotions washing over me. Caught between wanting so desperately to rush into Jamie’s arms and tell him my deepest and darkest thoughts. But then simultaneously stopping myself from letting go in front of a person who literally told me that they would never love me. How could I confide in such a person? How could I relax with them, give them every piece of me, and safely walk around with my guard down?
I couldn’t.
“I’m okay,” I repeated, body on auto-pilot, simply trying to get through this stupid exchange before moving on to the next place where I hoped to be alone in my dorm. I brushed by Jamie and continued walking away, not giving him another chance to stop me.
* * *
A couple of hours later, after the last tears had fallen from my face, someone knocked on my dorm room door. The space was practically no larger than a closet, so I heard the noise like it was right up next to my ear. From my twin bed, I flipped away from the sound, facing toward the window. Outside, the grey sky lit up my window which popped next to the increasingly dark room.
The knocking on my door sounded again. Now, I also thought I smelled something salty. My stomach grumbled.
I threw the comforter over my head.
“Jemma?” Jamie asked. “Hey… Jemma? You missed dinner.”
I debated whether or not to respond, but then the part of me which felt guilty for potentially making him worry decided against playing the ghost.
I tossed the blanket away, feeling a rush of cool air.
“Yeah, I know,” I said. “I’m not hungry.”
“You sure?” I heard something clink against the door. “I brought you up some of what they were serving. I figured we could eat in your dorm.”
