Whispers In The Dark

Jessiah

Jessiah

I cried a lot at Reximus's funeral, but I wasn't embarrassed much. I definitely wasn't the only one.

There were nearly twenty people who showed up, but we were the only ones I really paid any attention to.

Everyone gathered around the closed casket as his family hugged and cried together, and the priest recited verses that he had likely said a million times before. I bowed my head and mumbled the same responses as everyone else, though I wasn't really listening.

Reximus's mother didn't say anything; she looked as if she had aged twenty years in the past month and her eyes were elsewhere. Robin said what he felt he had to say, squeezing more water from my tear ducts. When the priest signaled that the funeral was over and they could lower the casket, Victoria jumped up and spoke, too. More tears.

Anna and I fought for the first time after the funeral, on the sidewalk outside of the cemetery.

"I just want to go home and sleep, Jessiah. Okay?"

I shook my head sternly. "I don't want to leave you alone, Anna. I know how much we're all hurting right now, and I just want to make sure you're okay."

She gritted her teeth. She looked exhausted; red rings around her eyes and paler than I had ever seen her. "I don't need a babysitter. I'm fine."

"I'm not trying to be your babysitter. I'm trying to be your boyfriend."

"You are my boyfriend," she said. "That doesn't mean you have to watch over me twenty-four/seven. I'm seventeen years old. I know how to take care of myself."

I frowned. "No, you don't."

"Why?" she snarled. "Because I don't like to eat? I'll eat something, alright? Just leave me alone."

"Anna, please," I begged. "Just let me come with you."

"I want to sleep, Jessiah. I'm tired."

"Then you can sleep. I'll stay out of your way, I swear."

"Why are you so desperate to come with me?" she huffed and crossed her arms.

"I just--I just don't want to find you like Robin found Reximus, okay? Is that what you wanted to hear? I don't want to walk into your room and find you dead, or I don't want to get a call from her telling me that you're in the hospital. What you're doing is dangerous, Anna, and I'm afraid that this could only make it worse."

She stared at me with large, doe-like eyes. "You're afraid I'm going to kill myself?"

I found myself nodding. "I love you, Anna. I know, we're only seventeen and we've known each other for less than a year, but I just..." I couldn't find any more words; my brain was jammed. So, I kissed her to make up for it. She kissed me back, but I don't think she was completely at ease. None of us were.

When I got home that night, I burned my Chemistry book and one of my pillows in the bathtub. I had thought no one was home, but my dad turned out to be in the garage. He smelled the smoke. It was the second time that I had been caught, but the first that they put all of the pieces together. I wasn't allowed to have any lighters or matchbooks, anymore. My mom handed sixty dollars to the school for the book, and then fifty more for an appointment for a psychiatrist.

Throughout the following weeks, it was like there was a glass barrier between Anna and I. I told her what had happened. She kissed me and enveloped me in a hug, but her eyes never changed. It was like we could see and talk to each other, but we were hardly reaching each other.

On the first Monday in March, she was hospitalized.

She had collapsed, again, but this time it had been in the shower. Her mom was the one who found her, lips blue from the cold spray and skin resembling paper. Her mom found my number in Anna's phone and called me. We met for the first time outside of the hospital, but there wasn't much said between us.

"So, you're the boy who's been dating my daughter," she pondered aloud.

I nodded, lips sealed.

She sighed. "Thank you, for taking care of her." She pointed a finger at me, brown hair billowing behind her and a cigarette in her other hand. "But if you hurt her in any way, shape, or form, I swear to God I will send the Swat Team to your house with insight that you are wanted for murdering a class of preschoolers."

I laughed uneasily, slipping through the hospital doors.

Anna was committed to the psych ward and remained there for a month (27 days, exactly).

I wasn't allowed to go see her; family only. I made sure to call her once a week, though, more if I could. The first time that I called her, she was crying.

"Anna, what's wrong?" I panicked. "Are you okay?"

She was gasping for breath on the other end and I could hear another voice trying to calm her down. "I can't do this, Jessiah," she whispered. "I can't."

I exhaled deeply. "You can. I know you can. You're going to be okay, Anna. I promise you."

Over the next few weeks, she told me about how they were making her eat, but how every time she did, she just felt worse. They had assigned her to a psychiatrist, too; an old woman with graying hair and blue eyes. She wanted Anna to talk about her dad and how she felt about her mom being away so much. They wanted her to speak in group therapy, but she was too embarrassed and anxious.

When she called me and told me that she was being released, I whooped so loud that Zack ran into my room and started screaming that he couldn't hear the TV. I didn't care. Anna's laugh was like bells in my ear and I was going to see her. I couldn't be happier.

The next day, I drove up to the hospital with Victoria and Riley in the backseat, and Robin in the passenger's seat.

Robin was still sitting at the same lunch table as everyone else, and he still agreed to get together when we did, but he was talking less and the despondent air surrounding him had yet to fade. I couldn't look at him without thinking of Reximus. Truthfully, I couldn't really do anything without thinking of him.

We sat in the waiting room for an hour with Anna's mom. Victoria bought a weird balloon-on-a-stick thing that she planned on giving Anna, but then spent twenty minutes poking Riley with it. Everyone laughed. Even Robin chuckled. It felt good, really good.

My stomach was fluttering and it only intensified when Anna walked out with an old woman, probably her psychiatrist. Anna hugged her mom and nodded at whatever she whispered into her hair. The psychiatrist spoke with her mom in a hushed tone.

Anna's eyes locked with mine and she smiled. I grinned and opened my arms, laughing when she launched herself into my arms. I lifted her from the ground and spun her before letting her feet hit the ground.

"I missed you so much," I breathed.

"I missed you, too," she confessed. She looked at everyone else. "All of you."

And then we were kissing.