What Loneliness Means to Me: Lying in your bed on a Friday night listening to your mom do laundry while the guy you hate in the good way is at prom with his pregnant girlfriend ex-girlfriend WHATEVER.
After I reread my words a thousand times, my secret little friend was alive and banging around inside. In my stomach, in my blood, in my veins. Loneliness. She was alive because she was breathing, and she was breathing because I was pumping air into her lungs. I was making her real. The louder she became, the deeper my resentment. But I didn’t resent that she played these games with me, I resented that she always won.
Unable to shake her any other way, I frantically scratched out the words and wrote new ones underneath. I didn’t know what they meant. I only knew that Dr. Rachelle had said them, and they meant something. It was better than nothing.
What should I do when I’m alone on a street corner?
The washing machine clunked out.
Piece of crap.
Chapter Sixteen
SLEEP HIT ME LIKE A TRUCK. Zoloft always knocked me out cold, but it was way more intense when getting knocked out cold was something I was gunning for. I won’t say that I hit Stage 1 and cried until ten o’clock, because that’s deplorable . . . but I cried until ten o’clock. My eyes stung, and the walls were suffocating, and I could hear my heartbeat, and I hated the thump of heartbeats, and Stage 2 was way more miserable than Stage 1 because my chest felt sharp and penetrating and every sound made me want to die. Thank God the washing machine had broken, or I may have had a full-on mental breakdown. Mental breakdowns were a bitch.
I was in my ugly, drug-induced slumber when I awoke to the sound of a clinking noise. I jumped upright in bed. My head spun and part of my brain still sank below the thick bed of unconsciousness I had fallen into. The room was pitch-black, the flicking sound growing. Louder. Faster. I sat in total quiet and concentrated on the noise.
Clink. Clink. A hushed curse word. Clink.
Something was being tossed against my window. I grabbed my phone and checked the time. Midnight.
Springing from my bed, I stumbled to the window, tripping over my laptop, which all but broke my pinky toe. I hopped to the window and pulled up the blinds.
Clink.
I nearly fell backwards as something red spiraled into the glass and bounced off.
Clink.
This was really happening. I wasn’t dreaming. The clinking against the glass was red licorice. I looked down at the driveway and there he stood, still wearing the fitted suit that made him look significantly manlier than he would ever hope to be. He had to go and ruin the sexy undercover spy vibe by sporting a gray beanie that shoved his thick hair completely over his eyes. He was holding a bag of Twizzlers in his hand, and one was aimed at the window.
He fired.
Clink.
I unlocked the window and forced it open just as one of his licorice bullets went airborne and smacked me in the eye.
“Sorry!” he called up.
“Snake!” I yelled. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m being romantic,” he whispered (see: screeched). “I’m tossing theoretical pebbles at your window like those medieval romance movies with the guys in drag.”
“No, you’re wasting food and acting like an idiot.”
He dropped the empty bag on the asphalt and stretched out his arms. “Soft, what light through yonder window—”
“Shut up,” I interrupted. “Are you drunk?”
“No. Are you?”
“I was sleeping, you moron.”
“You’re meaner than the girls in the movies.”
A light blinked down the hall. I could hear footsteps and I shut my window. I held my breath until the bathroom door closed, then let it out slowly. I pulled the window open again to the cry of Snake singing some atrocious melody.
“If you don’t shut up, I’m going to throw something at your head!” I called down. He stopped and pouted. “What are you doing here?”
“Look.” He leaned his neck back and pointed to the cloudy sky. It was black in spots, emitting a purplish hue.
“It’s about to storm. What’s your point?”
“Not just storm. A cold front is moving in from the east. They’re calling for a lightning storm. It’s starting in about fifteen minutes.”
“What are you, a meteorologist?”
“Filmmaker.” He smiled. “And I have a movie to finish. A lightning storm is just what I need for my last few shots.”
“Good luck with that.” I grabbed the window and yanked it down. “Don’t hit my mother’s ceramic angel on your way out.”
“Wait!”
“Shhh.” I pulled the window back up. “What now? My mom is right down the hall.”
“Come with me. There’s a hill behind my house where you can see everything. I want to watch the storm come in with you.”
“Stop trying to be romantic. You’re bad at it.”
“Fine. Of all the conceitedly self-sufficient loners in town, I thought I would be able to slightly endure your company. And do something with your hair. You look worse than you usually do, and that’s saying something.”
“That’s more like it,” I commended him. “But I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“For one, it’s midnight and I just took Zoloft. It’s a wonder I’m even coherent right now. Second, my mom is awake. She’ll hear me leave.”
He stroked his chin, searching all around him for divine intervention. And then he looked up and gave me that telling, mischievous grin, and I knew. I don’t know how I knew, but somehow I knew exactly what he wanted me to do before he even proposed it.
“Jump,” he said.
“Are you insane?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not jumping. It has to be fifteen feet down.”
“It’s not that high. Come on, I’ll break your fall.”
“You’re weak. You can’t catch me.”
“I didn’t say I’d catch you. I said I’d break your fall. I carried Carla up to her room after prom, and she has to be at least as heavy as a baby elephant.”
“Why’d you have to carry her?” I asked, trying not to sound jealous.
“She was tired, and her feet were swollen, and—” He shook his head. “Never mind. Irrelevant.” He moved to the side of the house, only a few feet from the brick. “Slide your legs over and then push off with your arms. You’ll land on top of me, and we’ll plummet to the ground together. Deal?”
“I’m not jumping out of a building for you.”
“Then why do you have a leg on the ledge?”
I glanced down and realized that I had mirrored his instructions. One leg rested on the metal frame, both hands white-knuckled against the brick.
“I don’t trust you,” I said.
“Rude. I trust you.”
“Duh, because I’m trustworthy. Unlike you, Mr. I-Want-to-Ask-You-Out-Even-Though-I-Have-a-Girlfriend.”
He spread his feet and bent his knees in ready position. “You’re still hung up on that? I consider that a minor infraction, compared to everything else I’ve done.”