too young for this

chapter 18 | dewy eyed girl

TW: this part has descriptions of suicide.

I lay in the bed eyeing Jamie who's resting beside me, as my thoughts scatter to the corners of the earth.
He had drawn me everywhere.

He has the most blissful look on his face as he sleeps.
I carefully shuffle closer, so as to not wake him. He knits his brows in a dream, mumbling something unintelligible.

I can feel his slow breaths tickling the hairs on my collarbone. I'm overcome with a heat that spreads from my face to my toes, one that hits the very core of my gut.
He's so vulnerable, in front of me.

Then suddenly images of Kyle flare in my mind, making me want to gag. And with it the ghost of my mom.

"Mama," I chorus, slinging my backpack off my shoulders. I straighten the graded essay in my hands, "I an got A+!"

No one answers me so I check the tiny excuse for a kitchen we have, "Mama?" Usually she's home in the living room, snoozing on the couch when I get back from school. "Mom?"

She probably went out for groceries, I think, placing the paper on the stack of books I have accumulated after purchases at many cheap garage sales. 
I sing blissfully, making my way to our small washroom.

Splashing water in my face I peer at myself in the cracked mirror, which fractures my features like a cut-up picture. Something red flashes in the bottom right corner and I turn my head, halting my melody.

I shudder, the scream caught in my throat.

Mama lies still in the bathtub with a white cotton dress on, half submerged in the red wine of her own body. Her eyes are closed and her hands clasped together almost as if she's praying.
My body shakes and shakes and shakes. I can't stop staring at the colour, crimson like the heartless tone of rotten cherries. Like the dark red ruby of Mari's necklace.

I let myself sway to the ground, let it catch me the way nothing else ever has. My eyes sting but no tears seem to come.

She was supposed to stay, she said she would. She said. And she lied.
The words fell from her mouth along with the thick smoke of her cigarette.

The burn of cigarettes is her perfume.

Her scent I could indulge in like Daddy with his horrible, lovely drugs.

But she'll stay. Mama doesn't lie, only cusses.

She looks like my guardian angel, all saintly and pristine. Cuts on her wrists where the bracelet I'd made her should've been.
I'm her sundara parī. Her beautifulbeautifulbeautiful angel. Mama's angel.

I feel my breathing quicken loudly and I bring the bedsheets over my mouth to muffle it. My eyes well up as I try to put it off my mind.

Jamie stirs, scanning me with sleepy eyes which soon turn to confusion. His watching me cry makes me feel desperate.

I blubber into the sheets, tears running over the slope of my nose to my ear.

He raises his brows, "Are you...?"

I close my eyes, turning away embarrassingly.

"Cam?" I hear over the thrumming in my head. I keep my eyes closed, regret washing over me instead of the desire I'd felt just moments ago.

I feel his hands pat my back, almost as though he was trying to comfort me. My short sniffles lessen, my back relaxing slightly.

Then I feel him pull me towards him so that my head is tucked into the crook of his neck. His arms wrap around me.