Going On

Noelle

"I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,

in secret, between the shadow and the soul."

-Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets

I didn't know how long I had been staring at the screen of my crappy old flip phone. It was a dumpy little thing, with a few missing buttons and a cracked screen. The number keys were all oversized, obviously never meant for texting. The outside part was scratched when it fell on the ground when I was in New York City with my family. The stupid thing only had four contacts: Leanne, Christopher, Whitney, and Jeanie. Jeanie was my aunt, and Leanne and Christopher were my parents (Everyone always told me that it was strange that my parents were in my phone with their full names. I could never bring myself to put in 'Mom' or 'Dad'. It didn't feel right.). The only number in my phone that was worth anything was Whitney's--my only friend's.

That is, until that day, Whitney was the only significant number.

Now, a foreign number glowed on the screen. After calling my parents on Theo's phone earlier, I had taken the number from my mother's cell history. I figured that that was probably considered "stalker-like". Most girls would not be so desperate as to steal a boy's number after borrowing his phone. But I wanted so badly to make that little number my fifth contact.

No. No, I wasn't going to be that girl. No, I would just delete the number and move on. I had to! I didn't even know the boy's last name. But I couldn't bring myself to do it. Instead of deleting the little glowing numbers on my old phone, I grabbed a napkin off of my bedside table and quickly scribbled it down.

This wasn't right. I shouldn't be taking a random boy's number! I just met him. This was not okay.

But I couldn't bring myself to get rid of it. I deleted the number from my phone and stashed the napkin under my pillow, like the creepy stalker I was.

I lay on my back on my bed. My parents hadn't spoken to me since I went to that damn club. I knew they were angry at me, for screwing things up even when it's supposed to be helping. I couldn't help it; I seemed to destroy everything I touched.

I slowly stood from my bed and stuffed my feet into an old pair of sneakers, putting my stupid old phone in my pocket. I left my room swiftly and headed down the long spiral staircase that led the the first story. I stopped in the main room, where my father was sitting on his laptop working.

"Christopher, I'm going out," I said.

My father didn't answer, or even move to show that he heard me. My heart tightened. I didn't wait around for him to so anything else; I was out the door in seconds.

The sweet spring air floated around me, and I slowly breathed it in, trying to forget about everything from earlier. The world outside my house was bright and colorful, thriving in the sunshine, but all I saw was gray. I saw dead. I saw nothing worth ever seeing again. Nothing worth living to tomorrow.

My feet carried me away from my house, and my estranged parents, who were so hopelessly lost and bewildered by me. I didn't realize that I was crying until I saw a small damp spot on my shirt where a tear had landed. I brought my hands up to my face and wiped them away, the same familiar numb feeling rising in my stomach.

I wondered what Theo was doing. Was he crying, too? Were his parents confused and angry with him for what he did? Was he recovering? Or did he still want to take his own life?

I felt a loosening sensation in my chest, like a huge weight had been lifted. Not because something had occurred around me, but because thinking about this boy--this boy I just met--somehow sparked a bit of feeling in me. I felt something, like a wisp of smoke coming from the burnt ashes of my life. Not a fire. But for a moment... just a moment...

I swear I felt something.