The Hope of Morning

Two:

A blaring and high-pitched noise bursts in my eardrums.
    I sit up straight, gasping, and fumble around blindly in the dark until I, quite literally, pound my knuckles into the alarm, silencing it -- for now.
    Blurry-eyed, I peer down at the time.

6:15 AM

Fuck it, I decide as I flop unceremoniously back into bed.

“Maurie!”
“Huh?” I mumble groggily, peeking out from under my oversized comforter.
“Maurie, get up.”
When my eyes manage to concentrate on specific shapes, I recognize the figure hovering above my bed as my brother.
I audibly groan and lie back down, pulling my comforter back over my head. “School is for the weak.”
“Maurie, it seven thirty.”
“I’m deathly ill.”
“You don’t sound sick to me.”
“You look sick to me,” I mutter under my breath.
“You’re not helping yourself here,” he points out persistently. I can hear the impatience in his voice, and I resist the urge to shout at him for turning out to be just like Mom and Dad. Why couldn’t you have been on my side? Just for once, why couldn’t you stand up for me? “C’mon, Maurie.”
“Who’s this ‘Maurie’ you speak of?”
He sighs. “Maurie-” he begins.
“I’m not Maurie, I’m Pete,” I interject. I hold my breath, preparing for the usual  quiet disappointment or boisterous rage that statement entices.
When silence follows for several seconds, I poke my head out again and discover that I am alone. Whatever. I escape back under the covers for warmth. My room is always chilly in the mornings after rainfall in autumn because my parents try to delay turning the heating back on as much as possible.
Suddenly, when I am on the cusp of sleep once more, something freezing and soaking wet splashes over me.
I don’t think; I react.
I’m not sure how this happened, but the end result is me pinning Sam against the wall with my dagger pressed to his throat.
“Maurie, what the hell?!”
I blink, suddenly disoriented, and slowly back away. “I-I.” I chuck the dagger away from me and stare at him sheepishly. “Sorry.”
“Where did you get that knife?”
“Sam, shut the fuck up,” I hiss softly, backpedalling. When I look into his eyes, I only see horror there. There is no understanding, sympathy, or even pity in my brother’s gaze as he looks at me.
I swallow heavily. “I can explain-”
“No.”
“Sam-” I start, feeling panic setting in. My brain works in overdrive, and suddenly nothing makes any sense anymore. I can’t think of the words because I am thinking too much, too quickly. All of my excuses die in my throat as it seizes up on me. I shy away from him, probably mirroring his terrified expression. “I wasn’t going to hurt you. I was just. I thought-” I can’t talk to people. Stop talking, Pete, stop talking. You’re making it worse.
Oh God he already thinks you’re crazy and this isn’t helping. Oh God why did you even still have the dagger? Why didn’t you change into pajamas? Stupid, stupid, stupid.
“Maurie.”
That’s not my fucking name. That’s not my name, stop calling me by a name that’s not mine!
I want to shriek my thoughts at him, but instead I stand, pressed up against the wall by an invisible force, gaping wide-eyed at him and silently strangling on all of the words caught in my throat.
“Maurie, why were you sleeping with a dagger?”
Tell him you’re afraid. Tell him the paranoia is coming back. Tell him you had a nightmare. “I- I don’t know,” I stutter.
Godfuckingdamnit.
“You don’t know?” Suspicion flares in his blue eyes.
I feel the impending urge to cry or punch something -- perhaps both at once. “Sam, please don’t tell Mom and Dad.”
“I’m not sure that listening to you is the best idea here, little sister.
“Maybe we should schedule your therapy appointment for earlier this week. Maybe even this afternoon.”
At the word “therapy,” I cringe, lightly thumping the back of my head into the wall. I feel a clamminess in my hands, and the fact my skin is already perspiring from sleeping under the comforter does not help. He thinks you’re crazy. He thinks you’re crazy. Maybe you are crazy. Maybe they’re right. Maybe it is all just your mind playing tricks on you. 
I release a high-pitched croak and then sink to the floor. “Sam, please. It was an accident. How I was supposed to know it was you dumping water on me?”
“Who in their right mind pulls out a dagger on someone for dumping water on them?” he demands, still appearing somewhat shaken despite the fury that is seeping across his features.
Who in their right mind? I feel my stomach churning violently as I cry out, “I don’t know! I don’t know, Sam!” I hide my face in my knees and gasp while shaking. A full-on anxiety attack and it’s not even eight in the morning yet. What a champ.
I hear him sigh even heavier than he had earlier, and I imagine him as Dad for a second, tiredly rubbing at his temples and shutting his eyes: fatigued by the mere stress my existence causes him.
When I look up, he is doing exactly that, and everything in me wilts. Look what you’ve done to your brother. Look what you’ve done.
    “I’m sorry,” I find myself whispering softly.
He opens his eyes and shakes his head slowly -- just like Mom always does.
It hurts to know that they’ve dealt with me so many times that he’s grown to respond the same way.
“It’s not your fault,” he surmises weakly. He attempts to smile at me, but it falters. For a moment, all I see is cold resentment. He blinks, and it vanishes out of sight. “Go change your clothes. Brush your teeth, put some deodorant on. We have to go to school,” he concludes in a voice older than he is.
I nod, unconfident in my actions, and rise feebly to my feet.
I open my closet, pull out dark jeans, a random t-shirt, a sweatshirt, underwear, and my binder. Seeing its current condition doesn't help my present anxiety: the shoulder straps are stretched, the seams are beginning to fray, and sweat stains it. I'm not sure how much longer it will last, and its adventure to the garbage last year, at the hands of my mother, did not assist in prolonging its use.
I carry my clothing to the bathroom and quickly change, grateful for the towel over the vanity table's mirror. My mother bought it for me two years ago after I broke the upstairs' bathroom mirror. I brush my teeth, put on men's deodorant, and head out the door.
I pull up the hood over my head and descend down the stairs.
"Hey," greets Sam, shoving my lunch bag into one of my hands and a scrambled egg sandwich into the other. "Eat breakfast in the car. You have your insulin?"
"Yes."
"Juice?"
"In the bag," I sigh.
"Sugar pills?"
"Yup."
"Meter-"
"Sam! Let's just go! I have everything."
"I'm sorry, I didn't realize making sure my little sister doesn't pass out or go into a coma was a bad thing," he snaps.
"I'm your little brother," I mumble.
He turns around and heads out the front door instead of replying.
I roll my eyes and trail after him. "So are you taking me to school today?" I inquire once we're outside and bustling across the front yard.
"Yeah. Mom went to work early," he answers, opening the passenger side door for me. "Weirdoes first."
"Oh. Well in that case, you'd better get in first," I mock.
He flashes me a quick grin before walking around the front of the car.
I get in before he does because, all jokes aside, I am  the weird one here.
Once we're both seated and buckled, he starts the car, backs out of the driveway, turns around, and steers us in the direction of our school. He starts the radio and begins playing something.
He sings softly along the the pop song that’s playing, but I ignore it, watching instead as several people wander up and down the streets. Some of them are dead, and some of them are alive. Unfortunately, to me, there is no obvious difference between the two unless the dead have a blatant injury on their skin. Usually I have to figure out who is invisible to everyone else and who isn’t by telling who the majority is entirely oblivious to. When I was younger, I felt sorry for the dead because they got ignored by everyone else, but I realized that they can still see each other. They just hang around and observe out of curiosity. As Rhonda has told me before, it’s far more interesting to watch the living than to talk to the other dead. Sometimes they become malevolent spirits simply out of boredom. “You know what makes people evil? Boredom, a lack of regulations, and having no one to talk to.”
Sounds a lot like me, I think before I chastise myself for dismissing Jacob, Rhonda, Ali, Selene, and Aleks. They’ve been there for me for a while. Rhonda has stuck around the longest: I rescued her when I was eight from her decapitated ex-husband. At the time Crooked John (his nickname was earned by the fact that he duct taped his head to his neck slightly off center and pointing his face a tad more to the right than any attached head should be) was trying to force her to come with him to another realm, and she was refusing.
I intervened by grabbing Rhonda’s hand, causing her to latch onto me, and then focusing on keeping her here with me when he left to his main realm.
We haven't seen him since then, but Rhonda has stuck around me, operating as a dysfunctional dead mother as repayment.
My thoughts snap to the present as Sam pulls into the student parking lot. I tense up as my anxiety begins to overwhelm me. Shit. I forgot to do my math homework and my Biology notes.
Mentally shouting at myself for my negligence, I wait for Sam to park the vehicle before swinging the door open and stepping out. "Sam?"
"Yeah?"
"I-" Pause, falter. "I'm sorry."
His eyebrows slide together. "Maurie, I think I'm going to tell mom to pick you up after school. So you can see your therapist."
Instead of arguing with him, I just stand there, gawking at him and feeling prepared to unravel once I'm alone.
"I won't tell Mom and Dad about what happened though," he delegates, "I'll keep that between us."
I exhale in a faint wheeze, relieved despite this is the tiniest gift he could give me. He's still betraying me in a way, but at least he's not sharing the part about the dagger. "Thank you." I start to stride away from the silver-colored vehicle, but he quickly escapes the interior and snags my right wrist, rolling up the sleeve.
"What are you do-?" I begin, confused.
He examines the underside of my forearm. His eyes survey the pale flesh and dance across it before he slides the sleeve back down and releases me. "I guess you really were just scared."
It takes me a moment to infer what just happened: he was checking my arm for self-inflicted scars. "Yeah," I say, softly, mixed emotions flooding through me. I take a few steps back before trodding toward the school.
Once we both reach the other side of the doors, we part ways with a simple nod to each other as a farewell. I weave my way through the groups of people that always take up half the hallway by just standing there and conversing. Sometimes I wonder if this is an intentional inconvenience, or if the people are totally oblivious to the others struggling to get around them. Either way, I guess I wouldn’t know.
I sift through a herd of seniors in the senior hallway, pivot left, and march toward my locker. As I near it, I observe a heterosexual couple pressed up against the umber lockers, making out. I scan the numbers before determining that, yes, the locker they are on is mine. I start to move toward them, straightening my back in hopes that my height will somehow instill the motivation to move the fuck out of my way in them. But as I draw awkwardly nearer, I notice three things. One, the girl’s eyes are open. Two, she is looking at me. Three, she is tense, her arms are braced against him, and it’s clear by her body language that she doesn’t want him on her.
We make eye contact for a moment, and there is desperation in her eyes. I have to help her. I grab hold of the boy, yanking him by his broad shoulders, and drag him backwards. He creates several startled noises before whipping away from me, whirling around, and glaring at me accusatively. “What the fuck?” he demands of me.
I am not the best at conflict involving normal human beings, especially since I’m technically not allowed to kill them like I am with the supernatural when they test my patience. So instead, I gulp tensely and turn toward my locker, opening it to avoid eye contact.
“Hey, I’m talking to you!” the boy shouts, mortally offended by my indifference towards his existence.
“I can hear that,” I grumble, fishing out my textbooks. Class starts soon, I can’t afford to waste more time dealing with this hooligan.
“What is your problem?!” he shouts at me, and I internally cringe. Stop yelling at me, stop yelling at me, stop yelling at me.
“You were in my way. Plus you were forcing yourself on her.” I glance at the girl, and she has her eyes fixed on her shoes. I quickly recognize the strawberry blonde girl as Saffron Denayas. She’s in my same grade, and well known by most of the school because of her outgoing and sweet nature, decidedly “attractive appearance” by general consensus, and her step-father’s wealth.
There were rumors that Saffron’s biological father had been physically abusive toward her mother, but I wasn’t sure how true they were. After all, there’s plenty of gossip involving me that aren’t at all true. But for whatever reason it was, her parents divorced, and her mother remarried a little under three years ago.
If the word was true, she still had enough enthusiasm to make up for a crowd regardless. So seeing her eyeing her unmarred leather flats with an expression of both embarrassment and deep-rooted terror is unsettling. 
“What? No. Saffron was totally into it, right?” the boy interjects.
Saffron raises her head with her nearly teal eyes peering out from beneath her thick, wavy hair. At first, I assumed she was afraid of me, as most people are, but her eyes skip over him completely, and she just stares at me expectantly instead. No, I realize, she’s afraid of him.
“She was shoving you off of her. She wasn’t into it,” I retort, “Guess you wouldn’t understand that with your head up your ass though.”
His eyes widen a fraction before he springs toward me with venom written on his face. “Shut the fuck up and mind your own business, you stupid dyke,” he hisses, glaring at me.
I open my mouth to reply, but I am soon cut off.
“Thanks.”
I turn my attention back to Saffron.
“For helping me,” she adds in a softer voice, avoiding eye contact with the boy. When I look back at him, he appears indignant.
“Fine, whatever,” he grouses, storming off down the hall, “I’m almost late to class anyway.”
I watch his receding figure until he heads to the right, vanishing from my view. When I face Saffron again, she’s already halfway down the hall, running. Not thinking rationally, I chase after her.
Despite her speed, I catch up to her quickly. Saffron Denayas is a shorter girl with thin bones, an ovular jaw line, broad hips, and a full front. Yet she has probably one of the tiniest waists I have ever seen.
I’ve never actually been this close to her before in my entire life. Not many people let me get this close to them, and they certainly don’t slow down when they notice me approaching -- but here she is, walking beside me silently.
I debate asking her if she’s alright. I develop possible questions to ask her. Are you okay? Did he touch you? Has he done this before? Do you know him? But then I remember who I am, and decide against voicing any of my queries.
Her steps are slow, deliberate. Her eyes are focused on a spot in the distance. If what just happened bothered her at all, she isn’t showing it. She promenades forward with perfect posture and a casual expression on her face. If her hair wasn’t slightly mussed and her lipgloss partially smeared around her mouth, I would assume this is just another school day for Saffron Denayas. Maybe it is.
I continue spectating at her through the corner of my eyes and briefly wonder if she is doing the same to me. I wonder if she remembers that we have seventh grade earth science together?
    Probably not.
    She halts suddenly. The hall ends here; we’re at the main hallway. Several students are bustling through, rushing to get to class on time. I can’t bring myself to care about being late.
    “What’s your name?”
    It takes me longer than it should for me to realize she’s talking to me. When I do, I stare at her, dumbfounded. We’ve been in the same school since third grade, do you legitimately not remember what my name is? Isn’t it your friends that started calling me “Luny Maurie” in middle school?
When she doesn’t seem to register what my name is, I finally grunt out, “Pete. Pete Torild.”
Torild isn’t my last name. Legally, my name is Maureen Smithsen, but I refuse to respond to that name.
She doesn’t seem to react. She doesn’t say “oh, now I remember you!” She doesn’t point out that I’m actually “Maurie” and not “Pete.”
She just smiles and nods slowly, sticking out her right hand.
I take it, shaking it awkwardly.
“I’m Saffron. Nice to meet you, Pete.”
I start to object and explain that she has probably heard of me, but she retracts her soft hand from my own callused one and wanders off, waving to me.
From across the main hall, four of her friend appear just in time to see her waving farewell to me. Baffled, I wave back.
“Saffron!” two of them crow. They sweep her up like a lost bird in a flock, perform one of the smoothest aboutfaces I have ever witnessed, and then continue on their merry way.
One adds, just barely within my hearing range, “Were you just talking to Luny Maurie?”
“Who?” Saffron says in turn.
“The girl you were just talking to. She’s a schizo, remember? It makes her think she’s a boy. And she thinks she can see dead people,” another reminds her urgently.
Saffron wraps each around the shoulders of her flanking friends. “You must be mistaken, that boy’s name is Pete.”
“That’s what she says her name is!” one insists, beginning to sound frustrated.
“Pete Torild? Well I can’t blame him.
“‘Maurie’ is a terrible name.”
I hear a throng of giggles as they round a corner, and the bell ringing swallows their words.
I blink a few times, gawking at the spot they disappeared into, and then gradually pivot in the opposite direction to go to my first class with a grin etched onto my face. Saffron Denayas just called me a boy.