Inversion [Camp NaNoWriMo July 2021]

day 12

d a y   1 2

Cian still hasn't returned. I stayed up late to wait for him, but after a few nights of poor sleep, my exhaustion had won out over any concern by three in the morning. And when I woke up just before noon, I saw no signs that he had returned at all last night or this morning.

It's dinnertime, but I don't have much of an appetite, fear and worry churning in my gut. Where could he be? I can't decide which prospect is worse—that he's in trouble, or that he's merely avoiding me after yesterday.

I push my cold pasta around my plate, having taken only a few bites before my throat locked up. Not that it looked appetizing even when it was freshly hot. I've never really made food aside from the occasional ramen or microwaveable meal. This weak attempt at boiled pasta is my first time actually cooking for myself, and it's a dismal failure.

It also serves as a reminder of just how much Cian was watching out for me, especially in those initial days when I could barely bring myself to get out of bed.

Frustrated with myself—for many, many reasons—I get up and dump the leftover pasta in the trash, making quick work of washing the plate before I head back to the living room. I've spent most of my time camped on the couch while waiting for Cian, playing random songs. I've mostly stuck to songs I've played before, but I've gotten bored enough of playing the same few songs that last night I started trying to teach myself new songs by ear.

I'm currently attempting to learn the chords to Rush's "Resist." Usually, Jeremy would teach me his favorite songs, or I would look up sheet music. As much as I love music—and playing guitar—I don't have the ear for it. But fumbling my way through the music is the only distraction from that gnawing unease at Cian's absence.

Every chord is painstaking. I have to place each finger carefully along the fret, mouthing each note of the chord as I press down, trying to figure out if it matches the song playing faintly through my headphones. I have to loop through several chords before landing on what sounds like the right one, and each time I start the song over, playing through what I've worked out so far.

My fingers are red and tender before I'm halfway through figuring out the song, despite the calluses that have been building up. I don't even know how long it took to get here, to figure out these few chords. But the light outside the window, visible only through a tiny crack left in the curtains, has started to fade by the next time I look up, and the clock reads half past eight. Mouth dry, I tug my headphones down to rest around my neck and stand up from the couch, head spinning slightly from sitting in the same position for so long, heading to the kitchen to grab a glass of water. The apartment is silent save for my footsteps and the running of the sink and the faint hum of the fridge.

I pull back the curtains to let in more of the light, leaning against the island in the middle of the kitchen and staring up at the dark sky. I haven't let myself dwell much on my family, but alone in the dark apartment, I can't help but wonder what Jeremy is doing. If he's also looking up at those stars, if he ever thinks about me.

Dangerous territory, I warn myself. I know he's thinking about me. I know him, almost as well as I know myself. And I know he, even more than Mom, wouldn't be able to forgive Dad for those words, for this bargain I had struck because of Dad. The image of Jeremy, alive and whole, barreling out of the house flashes through my mind. I can't stop the questions that follow. Has he said anything to Dad? To Mom? Does he resent me, for the accident and for my choice? Does he ever wonder if there's some impossibly miniscule chance that we'll see each other again?

I grip the glass of water tightly, trying to lock those thoughts away. Questions full of regret and longing and desperation, utterly useless except to upset me. The stars blur into little more than a glittering mass of lights dancing in front of my eyes, and I realize that there are tears slipping down my cheeks. I don't bother wiping them away, even as a few slide off my chin and land on the counter and even in my water.

I don't know how long I stand there. I don't bother checking the clock, fighting the urge to grab the spare keys and run out of the apartment and all the way home. At this time at night, there's no way to get there anyways. There are few buses running, and certainly none making the long trip across town. And I can't call an Uber like I had when I had left home, not with my phone in some landfill somewhere after I had thrown it in a dumpster before striking this deal, and not with no way to pay for it. Cian had supplied me with a new phone that I only keep in my pocket because he had asked me to. And he had pointed out the jar of cash on the sole shelf in the living room—mine to use as needed, he said—that I only used sparingly for food when I needed to venture out of the apartment.

A half-life, this. No friends, no one to talk to. No money or job or way to support myself.

I remember Cian's words to me an eternity ago, though it's been less than two weeks. How he'll help me craft a new life. Start over, wherever I want, as whoever I want to be.

I think about yesterday, how I had sat in that park and felt that maybe one day I'd return to the real world. But in the darkness, that hope has shriveled up. Not because I can't see the opportunity. But because I don't know who I would want to be, where I would want to go, when I finally walk out of this apartment and away from this life I've known for eighteen years.