I’m alone now. I’m actually alone.
I throw myself into bed, shoes and all. How could Max be so cruel? How could I be so cruel back? He’s right. I’m a liar, and I’m a fake, and . . . I’m not special. There’s nothing special about me. I’m a stupid little girl crying on her bed. Why does my life keep cycling back to this moment? After Cricket, two years ago. After Norah, almost two months ago. And now, after Max. I’ll always be the little girl crying on her bed.
The thought makes me cry harder.
“Lola?” I’m not sure how much time has passed when I hear the faint voice outside my window. “Lola?” Louder. He tries a third time, a minute later, but I don’t get up. How convenient of Cricket to appear now, when I haven’t seen him in two weeks. When he hasn’t returned my calls. When my soul is bluer than blue, blacker than black.
I’m a bad person.
No, Max is a bad person. He’s difficult, he’s condescending, he’s jealous.
But I’m worse. I’m a child playing dress-up, who can’t even recognize herself under her own costume.
chapter twenty-six
The rational side of me knows that I need some kind of release. But I can’t cry anymore. I’m empty. I’m drained. And I can’t move.
Not that I’d want to.
Because that’s the thing about depression. When I feel it deeply, I don’t want to let it go. It becomes a comfort. I want to cloak myself under its heavy weight and breathe it into my lungs. I want to nurture it, grow it, cultivate it. It’s mine. I want to check out with it, drift asleep wrapped in its arms and not wake up for a long, long time.
I’ve been spending a lot of time in bed this week.
When you’re asleep, no one asks you to do anything. No one expects anything of you. And you don’t have to face any of your troubles. So I’ve been dragging myself to school, and I’ve been dragging myself to work. And I’ve been sleeping.
Max is gone. And not just gone as in he’s not my boyfriend anymore, but gone as in he’s gone. I asked Lindsey to retrieve a textbook I’d left at his apartment, and his roommate said he left the city on Tuesday. Johnny wouldn’t say where Max went.
He finally ran away. Without me.
I wish it didn’t hurt to think about him. And I’m not upset because I want to be with him, I don’t, but he was so much to me for so long. He was my future. And now he’s nothing. I gave him everything, and now he’s nothing. He was my first, which means I’ll never be able to forget him, but I’ll fade from his memory. Soon I’ll just be another notch on his bedpost.
I didn’t know it was possible to simultaneously hate and ache for someone. I thought Max and I would be together forever. No one believed me. We were going to prove them wrong, but we were the ones who were wrong. Or maybe I’m the only one who was wrong. Did Max think of me as forever?
The question is too painful, either way, to consider.
My parents are worried, but they’ve been leaving me alone so that I can heal. As if it were possible to ever heal from heartbreak.
It’s around midnight—not quite Friday, not quite Saturday—and the moon is full again. Traditionally, farmers called the December full moon the Cold Moon or the Long Nights Moon. Both feel appropriate tonight. I opened my window to better absorb her coldness and longness, to use it feed it to my own, but it was a dumb mistake. I’m freezing. And I had another long shift at the theater, and I’m exhausted, and I can’t find the energy to shut it.
But I can’t sleep.
The silk fabric of my Marie Antoinette gown, draped across my sewing table, shimmers with a pale blue glow in the moonlight. It’s so close to completion. The winter formal is still a month and a half away, there was plenty of time.
It doesn’t matter anymore. I’m not going.
And I don’t even care about not having a date. It’s the idea of showing up in something so ridiculous, that’s what hurts. Max was right. The dance is stupid. My classmates wouldn’t be impressed by my dress; they’d be merciless. I don’t know how long I’ve been staring at its folds when a yellow light flicks on outside my window.
“Lola?” A call through the night.
I close my eyes. I can’t speak.
“I know you’re in there. I’m coming over, okay?”
I stiffen as the CLUNK of his closet-bridge hits my window. He called out to me once more last weekend, but I pretended that I didn’t hear him. I listen to the creak of his weight against the bridge, and a moment later, he drops quietly onto my floor. “Lola?” Cricket is on his knees at the side of my bed. I feel it. “I’m here,” he whispers. “You can talk to me or not talk to me, but I’m here.”