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I’mnotcrazy.
You’re gonna be a crazy bitch for the rest of your life just like your mother!
The words stab through my memories, causing an ache to build in my chest, but I shove them away. They don’t belong in the space where I’ve built a home for myself. They don’t belong here at all.
I bite my lip hard, and though I don’t remember all the details, I know it was real. My fear was real. It happened.
I just don’t have a clue what happened after.
* * *
“And as governor, I promise to keep America American!” The chubby politician smiles brightly across the news channel, but for once, I don’t hear the infuriating man or his grating voice.
I’m entirely focused on something else. My book bag sits in front of me on the morgue counter with my notebook and library book hanging out the top. But there, at the bottom, is a stain. A water stain. I dropped the bag when that man pushed me into the alley. I can almost feel the splatter of the mud puddle against my legs again.
When I turn my neck just slightly, a pain throbs against the underside of my jaw.
The details are still fuzzy but I think I was mugged last night...
I think.
Maybe in a haze, I walked home and changed and passed out... Wait! No. Someonesavedme.
Gorgeous blue eyes flash through my thoughts. He had a scar there...
I try to push through the hazy memories, grasping at images and pulling them to the forefront of my brain. Simon... the mugger. My mind coalesces their images together until I shudder, wondering if Simon is the one who attacked me. But... no... Simon’s tall. And his tone is higher pitched than my attacker’s. It couldn’t have been him.
“Are you going to the party tonight?” Anna beams as she takes the barstool next to me and digs into her Chinese food for lunch.
Is it disturbing that I’m doing homework and she’s having lunch, and a dead body is patiently waiting on the table behind me for us to finish our break?
No. Just a normal Saturday morning.
It’s also only unsanitary if we go near the body and poke it with our forks and pens, but we’re smarter than that. Ish. Whatever, we’re used to it, and it reeks of bleach in here instead of decay. Not that it would smell at all due to the embalming process. Bodies are shoved with so many components and products to keep them looking pretty for their funerals, they become little more than plastic.
“N–” I pause before immediately telling her no. My automatic response tastes sour this time around on my tongue. It was a knee-jerk answer, but now I find myself thinking. I moved here ready to start a new life. Iwantto go to a party. I’ve never been, and now I’ve gotten two invitations in twenty-four hours. “Maybe?” I answer with a pinch of my brow, and it only makes her smirk at me.
“Maybe? How very rebellious of you, Atlas. You always say no when I ask you.” She teases me, and it only reminds me how quiet she was when I first started. She opens up when she’s comfortable. Especially when she’s excited about something.
And this, it’s fucking exciting apparently.
“But I didn’t say yes either.”
“But you didn’t say no...” Her smile is enormous and pure and infectious. She hasn’t been hurt by the world yet. I hope she never is.
“Maybe,” I whisper again with a small smile. And this time, I mean it a little bit more.
I could have died last night. And part of that is terrifying and makes me want to hide away in my room even more, but part of that makes me want to go running through the streets just to remind myself what it feels like to be alive. I can’t sink back into myself again. I can’t fall back into the habit of hiding from the world.
Someday, we’ll all just be bodies on a table, and none of this will matter anymore. I don’t want to be one of those people who reaches the end of the line and realizes I never did anything except wallow in my own self-pity.
I’m here today. I’m alive.
I need to start acting like it.
My phone buzzes against the metal table, and I quickly shut it up with the little button on the side before swiping open the message.
Hey
