Displacement // Shawn Mendes

One: Cold

It was October, and it was cold; as it always had been. But this time—this time was different. There was a chill in the night air that made all the muscles in my body tense, as my cheeks turned crimson from the night air that slammed against them harshly, and my breath turned into an opaque mist that vanished into the atmosphere within seconds.

I shoved my hands into my brown jacket, staying focused on the sidewalk, practically counting the seconds until I arrived at my doorstep. My body was begging for some type of warmth to release it from the cold that had me shivering.

I pass the seemingly millions of yards until I finally reach mine. Thankful, I blow some warm air into my hands and rub them together as I run up the cobblestone pathway. My hand reaches the doorknob and almost desperately I swing the door open as the warmth of the thermostat set at 82 degrees on nights like this welcomed me in its embrace, and I gladly joined in.

"Mom, I'm home!" I yelled up the wooden staircase as my feet padded against each step. I heard her mumble an "okay", like she usually did, and I headed into my bedroom. There were what looked like hundreds of looseleaf papers scattered all across my bedroom, both crumpled and neatly placed.

I take a seat on my bed, pulling off my black Vans and tossing them into my closet. The same happens with my thick coffee colored jacket, and I'm left in black jeans and a red and black paneled flannel. It was only 8:39, so I went and sat at my piano, hoping for the autumn weather to inspire any lyrics to come to mind, even if they were just random phrases.

"Shawn?" I hear Aaliyah say, as she enters my room. She's nearly identical to me, even though she is around five years younger than me. I can see myself in her golden brown eyes, and in her pale skin. We were constantly mistaken for twins, despite the major height differences between us.

I make my way over to the chair seated in front of my piano and clear some papers and muffin crumbs off of the black leather before sitting down in it.

"Yeah, come in." I said, not turning to face her until she didn't move. She stared at me with her lips pressed together, and her eyes wide; unsure of what to say. I swiveled slightly in the chair, turning my body to face her.

"Are you okay? What's wrong?" Aaliyah sighed softly and made her way inside my room, closing the door behind her. She had a folded up piece of paper in her hands, burying it deep within her fist as if she were trying to hide it from me.

"It's not me." She muttered slowly. She reached her hand out, the white slip of paper placed between her index and middle finger. "It's Camryn."

My heart began to race at an uncontrollable rate, as I hesitantly reached forward for the note. Camryn Marie Bowen was my girlfriend, who bore the same long, medium brown hair as Aaliyah, and glimmering emerald eyes. She was beautiful in every way I viewed her, and still, after two years of being together, I could never seem to get enough of her. God knows what I'd do if something happened to her.

I opened the note, unsure of what awaited me, only to see the pretty handwriting that only belonged to her. It was messy, almost as if it were rushed, and the pen seemed to carelessly smear onto each word, making it that much harder to make out.

"Dear Shawn,
I'm going to have to give this letter to your sister, because I know you're off God knows where doing God knows what, and I just can't wait for you anymore.

Every single word I could read in her voice, yet her words were so much colder this time than they ever had been.

"I'm sorry, but I have to end things. I've found someone else, and maybe it's very cliché for me to write this on a note, but whatever. You're going to find someone after me, and I'm going to find someone, Shawn. And they're going to make me happy. Happier than you have ever made me in the entire two years we've been together. Sure, the songs were sweet, and all, but that's all you did. All you did was sit at your piano or on your guitar trying to write songs that aren't going to get you anywhere. I'm sorry, but it's true. Get over it, Shawn, and maybe you'll be able to make someone happy.

Goodbye,
Cam."

All I could do was stare at the letter. And the more I stared, the more reasons I found for the state of nothingness I found myself in. All the small details of the note stood out in the most appalling way possible, screaming and mocking me all in her voice. The messy handwriting, the way the jet black ink of the pen she used for everything smeared insensitively across every word. The fact that the letter was written on the back of a torn out piece of paper from an old homework assignment. The way I could hear her once beautiful voice twisting into a much more evil sound, mocking me for my music and my love for her.

I read the horrible excuse for a letter over and over again, searching both sides of the paper for some type of hidden "I'm just kidding, I still love you!" sentence written in her handwriting, but I couldn't find anything. Still, the letter remained the same. The meaning remained the same, and no matter how long I stared, I couldn't stop seeing her. I couldn't stop seeing the simple images of her holding Samuel Lance's hand, or getting on the very tips of her toes just to kiss his cheek, or getting flustered whenever he called her beautiful.

"Are you okay?" Aaliyah asked softly, acting as if I was a fragile piece of glass that could break at any moment if handled too roughly.

The images snapped out of my mind almost instantly, but the thoughts still remained, burning a hole in the back of my mind like a magnifying glass reflecting the light of the sun.

"I'm fine. Just," I sighed shakily, trailing off as I tore the letter into pieces above the trash can that lay next to my piano. Little pieces of me fell in along with each paper that dissolved into the mountain of much larger ones, crumpled up into tiny spheres.

I could remember each paper in that trashcan, they were each professions of my love for Camryn that went through hundreds of revisions and drafts, hoping that I'd create the perfect song, and that she would love it. Now, the icing on the cake is her letter. The very letter that ripped me into shreds the same way I'd ripped it up into tiny pieces. Topping off my professions of love with her end to it all.

Her very own form of destruction.

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