The Truths Behind the Life of Maeve Sun Lively

27

I WAS BEGINNING TO TURN into a useless thing.

I found myself waking up in a bundle of sheets each morning, and without any plans for the day, I would slip back into those sheets and sleep. Then I'd find myself awake in the afternoon, the twilight sky looming in the supposed to be daylight. I'd get up then, ignore the whistles and catcalls Mason's roommates give me, and go to the bathroom.

I would look deep in the mirror, seeing my face. My hair would be a tangle of knots I probably wouldn't brush out for weeks. My face would have pillow marks from just laying there. But my eyes would no longer be swollen, I haven't cried. I haven't been really feeling anything. I forgot the days as they passed uselessly, I simply forgot myself as the cycle repeated itself.

It wasn't until one late afternoon, or night, when Mason came back with a frown. I have been eating and sleeping, doing nothing else, nothing productive. Sure, I felt sorry that he was taking care of me like this, but I also simply couldn't get myself up. I just didn't want to feel anymore. I didn't want to face what I knew I had to face if I were to pull myself back together..

"How was your date?" I asked him, because that was what he came back from. While he was gone, I imagined what the guy might've looked like. What kind of a guy Mason would like, the kind of guy he would deserve. Funny how it never occurred to me that he didn't like me in a way most guys had, how he had never looked at my breasts like most guys, how he had not wanted to touch me or just simply stare at me like I'm some steak in the middle of a desert. I wonder how I never realized that. He was the same as me, and it hurt me that I had said those things about people like us. I wish I didn't. And I also at the time wished I didn't keep thinking there was something wrong with me.

He didn't answer my question when he took off his blazer and sat on the bed next to me. He sat there, just staring at the cracked wooden floor. I stared at the crack with him, and the more I looked at it the more it felt like a deep hole. A hole that will need money in order to be fixed. I didn't have money. I couldn't fix the hole.

He asked me a question instead, eyes not leaving the small crack. "Why did you leave your village and come here with Mr. Wang?"

I looked away from the hole and at him, searching for some sort of an answer. I already told him why.

And like he knew what I was thinking, he says, "I know you had to get away because of your mother. She abused you, verbally and physically. And she was going to marry you off, so you had to find a way to get out. But there must have been another reason to why you followed Mr. Wang. You could have used him, could have taken the train with him and when you're out in the city, you could have taken your chances and ran away. But you didn't."

He finally looked up, and I saw what it was on his face. Tiredness. Disappointment. I felt suddenly aware of myself when I saw this, realized this. I had been his inspiration in a way, I had been the one who took him in under my arms when Mr. Wang threw him at me like a puppy. He must have, in some way, looked up to me. Yet now I was relying on him with nothing to give even though he was my best friend. Worse, I have fully given up on myself and have been living my life with no meaning. I had let him down, in one way or the other.

"You followed him because he gave you the opportunity to be free of your mother. But he also offered you something else, the possibility to be on screen. That was why you followed him and didn't leave him after he got you out of the city, right? If not, then give me the real reason."

I was laying on his bed, but then I sat up. I went back to all those desperate times, the little meals that never felt like enough for my stomach, the hitting, and the only highlight of those days were to see the people on screen. The evidence of that it's possible to be up there. That hope and ambition I held. I knew I had to get myself back together, for myself, but also for Mason.