She was the girl who was afraid of love. Terrified of it. It isn't permanent, she believed, it leaves you and it leaves you broken.
He was the boy who desperately needed it. Love--the only thing that could've rooted him to this world.
Ophelia and...
"who am I when I feel? what dies in me when I am me?"
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I can't do this.
“Yes, you can,” Nora said, staring. She had been staring at me for a very long time now.
I hadn’t realised that I said it out loud. Just thinking about saying anything out loud, right at this moment, was making my stomach churn in an almost sickening way. I didn't even remember having breakfast this morning.
I gave Nora a miserable look, wanting to curl up on myself.
“I think you can.” Nora passed me a smile, a sympathetic one.
A shudder went through me and I wrapped my arms around myself. Just the prospect of getting up from the couch and leaving my house to go to that art studio was enough to make me want to throw up again. I would do absolutely anything, I thought, to avoid going there. I think I meant that too.
“I can’t,” I whispered, then recognised the familiar dread in my stomach. “I can’t. I can’t. I can't.”
Nora sighed heavily and stood up from beside me, stretching out her arms above her head. She had been sitting there beside me for the past seventeen minutes.
“I have to go, though.” She faced me. “Mum was expecting me to come home before noon because Dad needs help with something. Probably wanted me to sort out his old vinyls. And it's already afternoon so…”
I nodded slowly, very slowly. “Okay.”
“I can walk you to the art studio.” She suggested.
I couldn't open my mouth. What I did though was look around me, my eyes grasping at everything but her. This was really happening, I reminded myself. Not a dream. Or a nightmare. This is real, Lia.
Then why did it not feel like it?
“Come on,” Nora said, gripping my arm and trying to pull me up from the couch. “The more you are left alone to think about this, the more you'll give yourself the chance to panic. Probably good if your parents see it, but I don't want to experience that again. A panic attack of yours.”
I let her pull me up and blindly followed her towards the coat stand right near the front door. It was just the both of us here in the house. Everyone else was gone; Mum was at the shop, Dad was at work, Mason at school, and Helen was busy working for some event at her university.
“Why...why would it be good if my parents saw me panicking?” I asked her in a whisper--a small, strained whisper.
Nora handed me my coat, a long black one which I think was Helen's, and waited for me to put it on. It was big on me, but I didn't seem to care at that moment. I couldn’t when my head was already too full--quite literally. It felt like one of those times when I couldn't even think straight. I couldn't think because my brain felt overused. I didn't think my insides could handle any more complex emotions at that moment. I didn't think that was healthy, but what could I even do?
