Escaping the Void

Chapter Two

I wake up the next morning to an empty bed. Trevor's already gone to work. I get out of bed and make my way over to the dresser to put on fresh clothes. I then go to the bathroom to clean myself up only to find a note taped to the mirror above the sink. It reads "I love you" inside of a big heart. Trevor writes notes like these whenever we have an argument. It's his way of apologizing without actually having to say sorry. I tear down the note and ball it up as tight as I can get it before tossing it into the trash can by the toilet. In the past, those notes might have meant something to me, but now they're just pathetic. 

I wash my face and brush my teeth, then I go to the kitchen to fix myself some breakfast. I don't feel like cooking, so I just fix myself a bowl of cereal to eat before I start my chores. That's what I do everyday: chores. I don't ever go out anymore unless I'm with Trevor, and if I'm by myself, Trevor gets very suspicious. So instead, the only joy I have is when I talk to my friends over the phone or when I watch TV. I don't talk to them while Trevor is around because it only agitates him. He knows that they encourage me to leave him. But there's one friend that I have that he doesn't mind me talking to, and that's because she's too far away to ever help me. Her name is Mariah, and she's my best friend.

Mariah and I were good friends in school up until we graduated high school. We had plans to go to the same college, share the same apartment, and still be friends. But somehow our grand plan began to unravel after she go caught up into some serious trouble. I always tried to convince her that whatever she had done couldn't have been that bad. She way a good girl with not even the slightest mark on her record. This girl wouldn't even hurt a fly...literally. But apparently it was, because she went and moved out of the country all the way to Bingley, England.

I tried everything to make her stay. I even followed her to the airport and walked with her to the gate, begging her to stay with every step that we took. But before she walked through those gates to get on the plane, she said, "Some things are just more complicated than you think, Drew." 

After she left, she went ghost. For about six months, no one had heard from her; not me not her friends, not even her mother. She deactivated all of her social media accounts and changed her number, so getting in touch with her was out of the question. Then, one day out of the blue, I get a call from a strange, unknown number. And when I answered it, it was her. Hearing her voice on the other end of that phone made me lose it. She had been gone for so long that I apparently had forgotten all about her.

I was so shocked to hear from her that I didn't know how to react. So all I said was, "Hey."

"Wow, I'm gone for six months with no type of contact, and all you've got is 'hey'?" she said back. We both broke out in laughter, and after that, it almost felt like she never left. She was always my best friend, no matter how long she had been gone.

She began to tell me about her grand new life in England. She had gotten this cozy job in this coffee shop called The Perky Mug as a barista. She moved into a homey flat that she shares with her now boyfriend Eden. Yes, Mariah is content with her polished, cushy life. We talk all the time now, but the one thing we never mention is the reason why she left in the first place. She never told me what she had done that was so detrimental that she had to run away to a different country.

If only I had the courage to do what she did. Maybe then I would be like her; happy.

I stare down at the bowl in front of me that's now just halfway filled with milk after I finished eating all of the Honey Nut Cheerios that was in it. I lift the bowl up to my mouth and drink it all to the last drop. The milk was always my favorite part of the cereal. I go to the sink with the bowl and immediately wash it with the spoon, then put them both in their correct places. I remember Trevor telling me yesterday that he had wanted all of his work clothes in the dirty clothes washed before he gets home today, so I go to work on that next.