Bad Decisions | Fred Weasley

Epilogue: The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes

The record store was usually closed on Sundays. But the lights were on and a girl with bright green hair was at the counter marking prices on CDs with a sticker gun. I stood outside it for at least five minutes, like I was waiting for someone to open the door for me. My watch read eleven o'clock, it's little grey face staring back at me expectantly. I felt automatic as I pushed the door open, the little chime announcing my presence.

Something ambient and full of synthesizers was playing over the speakers. The green-haired girl didn't look up at me, but bobbed her head to the music as I walked past her. I flipped through the As and the Bs in the vinyl section and spent five minutes working up the courage to speak. I opened it mouth and decided against it. I felt very predictable asking where the new releases were, so I didn't. She probably listened to music that only played in underground punk venues or alleyway concerts. She probably understood the words to Pavement songs and thought bands like Yo La Tengo and Radiohead were overrated.

I bought two vinyls, which I found in the discount stacks, $5 each, and told the girl I liked her makeup, black lipliner and drawn-on Clara Bow eyebrows. She looked at me then, and I could've sworn she smiled when she said, "Thanks. I like the streak in your hair."

Wendy was already asleep when I got back to the apartment. She'd left the kitchen light on and I went to turn it off, dropping my keys in the bowl by the door. Kitty, the tiny grey tabby Wendy had rescued from the dumpster behind the building rubbed up against my ankles and purred furiously.

"She's just a baby!" Wendy had cried, holding the cat out before me when I got back from class, "We can't leave her out there alone."

"I think she's just a stray, Wendy." I replied, keeping my distance, "They like living alone. Besides she probably has fleas."

"You know cats can get sepsis and die from flea bites," she said, "and they're only strays because people are too selfish to get them neutered, then abandon them and their kittens when they have a litter."

She held the cat to her chest and made her eyes all big and watery. All I could imagine were the fleas crawling onto her sweater.

Wendy was the one to name her Kitty and we found out she was already five years old despite her small stature. She was a ferocious character, a skilled cockroach killer and a master yowler.

She yowled at me then, asking to be picked up.

"Okay!" I whispered down at her, kicking off my boots and throwing my coat and scarf on the couch. She played with the coin that hung around my neck as I carried her to my room, shutting the door as quietly as I could behind me.

My radiator was shot. It produced hardly any heat and made a clanging noise every five minutes, like someone was hitting it with a hammer. The room was freezing even though it was spring, so I layered on two pairs of sweatpants and a sweatshirt over a turtleneck and the knit jumper with a big green S on it.

I could've waited until the next day, but I wouldn't be home until late. Morning classes followed by the closing shift at the library. So I plugged my headphones into the record player and sat cross-legged on the floor. I blew one of Kitty's hairs off the vinyl and placed the needle down as gently as I could.

I sat and watched the record spin as I listened, twisting the coiled headphone cord around my finger. I had almost made it the whole way through. I should've just finished it. It was already midnight and I had class at 8. But when the third-to-last song ended, a sudden numbness hooked my stomach and reeled up towards my throat. I became automatic again, leaning forward and moving the needle back. It began again.

I felt my body move without much thought, laying down on the yellow rug and closing my eyes. Kitty crawled onto my stomach and curled into a tight ball, her purrs vibrating against my abdomen.

I couldn't help myself. I started to think about him. Everyone told me it was normal, that I shouldn't resist it when I had spells like this, that it can happen when someone close to you dies. Then I'd tell them that my father died when I was twelve and I'd already known it was normal for ten years. It was just different this time, wasn't it? Maybe it was fresher. Maybe it was because I'd shared a bed with him. I wasn't sure exactly. I just knew it ached like a sickness inside of me, like a parasite that had been eating away at my brain for two years. Two years seems like a long time when you feel like that.

I saw a moment, distant and fuzzy, like a dream. I had to focus very hard to see it. He was holding my hand, fingers interlaced with mine and pulled against his shoulder. An arm was around my waist, hand pressing into the small of my back so our chests were touching and I could feel his heartbeat against mine. Bare feet against the wooden floor of the kitchen, moonlight pouring in through the window above the skink and painting the floor silver, crickets rubbing their legs in the field of tall grass outside. He grinned down at me, his teeth rested on his lower lip, and I smiled back, unable to control the way my eyes crinkled up just because I was so happy. I think we kissed then, but the song was ending, and I lost it, disintegrating into nothing but the black behind my eyes. It was getting hard to remember what he looked like.

But my eyes were open. And a sensation had developed which I'd experienced before, a long time ago. I could feel everything, the pressure of the cat on my stomach, the carpet beneath my shoulders and head, and still, I felt as though I was outside my body, looking down on it from above, suspended and rigid as if in a dream. It had been a while since I felt that way, empty and full at the same time, present and absent, dissolving into the air around me. And it wasn't such a bad feeling at all.