The Mysterious Guy

”Lillian Scott, graduation starts in an hour, you have to get ready now!” Mom screams for the hundredth time. I mean for how long can it be an hour left to that damn graduation? I just want to sleep through it, sleep through my whole life. I mean what is the point to live? For mom it might be to scream at me, but what is my point? All I ever do is study, eat and sleep.

Even if I don’t want to I slowly pull myself up from my favorite thing in the whole world, my bed. I start to think about an excuse for me to go back to it. Sour throat? Headache? But I know that none of those will work. Mom has looked forward to my graduation all year. She says that it is a big thing to be done with high school especially with top grades like me. But the truth is I don’t care. I don’t care about my grades. I don’t care about graduation. I don’t care about a shit. Well except sleeping. I guess the “I-don’t-care” thing come from that I have nothing to care about. Sure I have a lovely family. But my family has to love me. They have to take care of me even if they don’t want to. That’s what family’s do. I feel so lonely it is almost absurd.

I walk out of my room without even taking a look into the mirror. I don’t want to see what I look like. Because all I ever see when I look into the mirror is a disappointment. I see a tired, alone girl who haven’t found a purpose to live yet. I have no idea how I can fool all the people at my school. How I can fool my family. But somehow I manage to. The problem is cannot fool myself. To myself I will always be a disappointment.

“Honey, what took you so long?” mom asks when I get down from the stairs, but I know as well as she that she doesn’t want an answer on that question. “Now we have to hurry, there is bacon and eggs on the table”, she says to me and I mumble something before I sit down on my usual seat next to my father.

“God morning, sweet love”, he says before he returns to read his paper. I don’t think he even notice that I don’t answer. I look down at the bacon and the eggs on my plate and suddenly I lose my appetite. But I can’t just go upstairs again. I have to eat and look happy because that’s what I always do.

“Your dress is hanging in the bathroom”, mom tells me as soon as I have taken a bite of the hot bacon. The taste that fills my mouth should make me want more but instead I want to spit it out. It feels fake just as this family has since my brother died two years ago. I still think as he is alive, I know mom does too. But that is not the truth.

“Mom, I don’t think I have the time to eat, I will go and put my dress on if that is okay?” I say it as a question but I do not wait for an answer, instead I leave the table without even have touched the eggs, any less eaten up. First I walk towards the bathroom, not because I want to wear a dress. Just because I know mom will be devastated otherwise. But just as I reach out to grab the white long dress that is hanging on my brothers old hanger I realize it, it is wrong of me to wear a dress. My brother haven’t even had the chance to go to his graduation, why should I dress nicely and smile when someone who deserves it much more don’t even get to go to graduation?

“Why did you take him but leave me?” I ask right out in the open. Wondering if god can hear me, but I have found out for a long time ago that god is just something people came up with to make themselves feel better. The truth is there is no such thing as god or no such thing as a higher power, there is no such thing as faith, it just is. It doesn’t happen for a reason, it just happens and when you have realized that everything becomes boring. Because the truth is most of the time boring, so either you live in a miserable life but the truth or you live a great life but in a lie. That is mostly up to you. Notice the word mostly, for me it was not up to me. I did not choose to live in the truth, it just happened. Just as my brother’s death just happened. With those thoughts in my head I leave the room and instead I walk upstairs where I pull out a pair of sweatpants and my favorite grey T-shirt from the closet. I collect my hair into a bun and place it in the middle of my head.

“Mom, I am done!” I scream and I hear the chairs moving, the hands searching for a camera. I know I will disappoint them and because of that, and because I am scared I hurry to put some makeup on, the sparkling eye shadow mom have bought, the black eyeliner, the mascara, I finish the look of with some lipstick and after that I hurry to pull my hair out of the bun. I grab my comb and slowly brush my dark hair until I look as good as I can do in those five minutes. But even with the makeup on I see the real me but I though hope it is enough to fool my parents and the rest of the people at school. Slowly I realize it I have failed again but I do not blame myself for not showing them the rightful me. I know I am too scared to, so that is that. I hurry down the stairs and slip through the bathroom door before my parents notice. I grab the dress, ignore to feeling of wrongness and when I have gotten the sweatpants and my blue T-shirt off I pull it over my head and let the material touch my skin. It feels soft but still wrong. To make the feeling go away I grab the necklace around my neck, the necklace my brother gave me when I was five. I close my hand around it and let the warm feeling of love, the feeling of my brother, inside. Then I look around for a pair of shoes to wear and find my old sneakers. They aren’t pretty but no one will be able to see them under the dress and in that way I haven’t lost myself completely. I walk out of the room and in the hall I find my sweet parents, all ready with their cameras and just for a moment my life feels normal. But just for a small moment.

“You look so pretty!” mom exclaim. I press out a smile and stand still so that they can take a picture, a picture that can uphold our reputation of the happy family, who got through their son’s death. My dad kisses me on the forehead and even if he smiles I know that as soon as mom and I leave he will start crying. He will go inside the bathroom and sit there for about an hour, all in tears. How do you know this? You might ask, well my answer to that is I know it because I have seen it. Dad might not remember it, he was too drunk to remember, but I remember it like it was yesterday. The words he said, the words that have been following me ever since gnaws inside of me and without even noticing tears start falling out of my eyes.

“Honey, what is wrong?” mom asks and pull me into a warm hug. But the warmness do not fill me like usual, I am as cold inside as before. The words repeat themselves in my brain and I sink down on the floor.

“God should have taken you instead you son of a bitch. He…he was so kind and you so greedy all the time. God came for you but took the wrong kid and you know it. You will never experience love again for what you did. You will be doomed for the rest of your life knowing that you cheated death while a better person died”, I hear the words one last time before the memories start to come back. Suddenly there is no escape and it is almost as I can smell the rainy air that night. It is almost as I can hear the car crash and almost as I can feel the panic when we hit the water. He saved me instead of himself is my last thought before everything turns black and I fall hard on the floor right in my own puddle of tears.

Notes