Dancing in the Dark

(31) .James. | Rock-Bottom

I hadn't slept last night at all. I couldn't. 

I skipped rehearsals this morning and stayed put in my room. This room. Tight and cramped and congested. I had never been a claustrophobic person but this felt like a different story.

When the curtains were closed, it was too dark. It was depressing. I was trapped inside this darkened atmosphere without a way out. Without anywhere to go.

When the curtains were opened, it was too bright. The sun shone, blasting through my eyes and all the memories of what had happened in this dorm room came to light.

When the curtains were half-drawn, Amanda's shadow appeared on my wall. I couldn't stand that, either.

My mind jumps to the photos of Amanda and I which I had kept inside a cardboard box hidden beneath the bunk-bed. I hadn't touched those polaroids since the last photograph Amanda had taken of us, printed off and laminated, had been stored inside the box with all the others.

That last photo was a photo from Regionals. Before the actual competition had started, we had been at a disco the night before. It was put together as an ice-breaker but ice was always better than fire.

I remember showing up alone because Amanda had refused to talk to me. She was far more distant than I had realized back then. She had locked herself away in one of the dorm rooms she had been staying in for that weekend. 

If I remember correctly, she had been in the same dorm as Riley and Michelle. 

Those two girls still showed up at the disco that night. I knew Riley had because she was the first one I spoke to when trying to figure out where exactly Amanda had been. 

When she told me Amanda was still up in the dorms, I went up to go and find her and after knocking, she allowed me to go inside. 

Back then, my turning seventeen-year-old brain didn't think anything of it. But now, I'm pretty sure I didn't even need to guess what she was doing and I would have been right. 

I was thoughtless that whole year ago. I wasn't as exposed to things as I am now. It was all messing with my head. Everything was. Every new bit of information affected me majorly and I just wanted it to come to an end. 

That night, I took no notice of what Amanda had done to herself. I wasn't thinking straight, no one was. Everything was being disguised to me. She hid her feelings from me, her emotions, her inner-most thoughts. She was my girlfriend and I thought I knew everything about her but I clearly didn't. 

I still don't know or understand. 

Everyone seems to have their secrets. Everyone knows something about Amanda that I never did - things that still haven't been revealed to me. 

That night of the disco, she told me she didn't want to show up. She said she wanted to stay behind. I stayed with her, I made sure I did. We lay together on the bed and we spoke. She spoke to me properly for the first time while we lay in the dark, curtains shut, lights off and door closed.

 I hadn't caught onto the fact at the time but I'm pretty sure the bathroom door was locked, only purifying something had gone on in there - something I was too-scared to find out what. 

She wore a long-sleeved black top with matching leggings and as we spoke, I listened to her every word until the early hours of the morning. She wasn't telling me everything straight up as it was. It was like she had been reading an entry from that diary.

That diary she carried around with her everywhere. 

Her words were poetic laced with a solemn rhythm, one that seemed to have no end and eventually sent me off to sleep.