Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Close To The Edge

Chapter 2: Short Break

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When my alarm clock started ringing at 7 AM the first thing I did was that I made sure that Jadie wasn’t just a dream. So I walked to my closet, opened it and there she was. She opened her eyes slowly.

“Good morning.”

“Morning. Why are you still in my closet?”

“Where else should I be?”

“Gee, I don’t know, but not here!” Then there was a knock on my door.

“Honey, are you up yet?”

“Yeah, yeah, just a minute!” I turned to the little brat that had taken residence in my closet.

“Okay, you stay here-”

“No. I’m going with you.”

“No, you can’t! What do I say to my parents?!” I would not start making up an excuse as to why I had a little girl in my closet, a very disturbed girl at that.

“They can’t see me.”

“What?!”

“They can’t see me.” She climbed out of the closet and headed to my door. “Aren’t you going?”

I swore under my breath and gave up. At that point she was already out the door.

I entered our kitchen (pastel yellow, I hated that color). Jadie was already walking around. My mom was already making toast. She smiled at me. Weirdly, she didn’t seem to notice the little girl right next to her.

“Good morning honey! Did you sleep well?”

“Yeah.” I was mostly keeping an eye on Jadie, who just walked around in that doubled-over-fashion of hers. She stopped when she noticed our cat and started making faces at it. The cat didn’t react at all.

“So how’s school?”

“Fine.”

As if I didn’t know that the whole conversation was supposed to make me feel loved and cared about. You know, I wake up every school morning at 7 AM, eat breakfast, go to school, come back home, do my homework, eat dinner and go to bed (and the usual stuff between all that) and yes, I do that every single day, because I “need a routine” to “keep away my depression”. Laura (my psychologist) was a nice woman, but her advices didn’t help much.

“How are your friends doing?”

“Mom, I don’t have friends.”

“Oh sure, if you don’t want to tell me about them then alright-”

See? My mom still can’t get out of that little world of hers. I do know that I didn’t fit in the sunny, warm, pastel-colored and toast-filled kitchen with my bandaged wrist. But my mom just kept pretending that I did.

I turned my attention to Jadie. She had left the cat alone and had made her way to the table. Though now that I looked around, where had that cat gone to?

“Hey where’d Tom go?” Mom looked around for a while.

“Hmm, I don’t know…but he’ll probably appear again soon.”

I wasn’t that confident. Not with Jadie around.

“Shouldn’t you be going?” I looked at my watch. 7:15.

“Yeah.”

“Well have a good day at school!”

“Yeah, yeah…”

Jadie was already walking to the front door. She got out at the same time Alex rushed through the door. He has a habit of sleeping late. I grabbed my bag and went outside.

“Where’s your school?”

“Why didn’t mom see you?”

“I don’t know…” She shrugged. “Most people don’t notice me…”

“What did you do to Tom?”

“That cat? Nothing.”

“Why don’t I believe you?” She was quiet again.

“Fine, be that way.” I started walking. My school wasn’t that far away, but I had to pick Jack and his sister up first.

“Where are we going?”

“To a guy I know.”

“Your friend?”

“I don’t have friends. He talks to me, I talk to him back. That’s it.”

“Oh. I don’t have friends either. Just you.” I stopped on my tracks. What?

“What do you mean “just me”?”

“You’re the only friend I have.” I moved my bag from left shoulder to right and straightened my glasses.

“Let me get this straight with you: I’m not your friend, you just came out of my closet and I can’t get rid of you.”

“But you talk to me.”

“Yeah, I talk to people but that doesn’t make us friends!”

“Don’t shout. People are looking.”

I turned around. Yes, our neighbors were all looking at us. No, looking at me, because Jadie seemed to be invisible.

“Why didn’t you warn me?” I had to whisper. But the whole neighborhood knows that I’m depressed, suicidal and potentially mad so I have no idea why I bothered.

“I didn’t notice.”

“Yeah, maybe if you could stop staring at the ground and start looking around you-”

“Where does this guy live?”

“Huh?”

“That guy you talked about.”

“Ah. Jack and his sister. A few blocks away.”

“Oh.”

We spent the rest of “few blocks” in silence. Once we arrived to the apartment house Jack lived in with his sister (their parents are both in jail) I could clearly hear Dir en grey blasting through the stereos. Anna liked that sort of music: dark, depressive (if you knew how the lyrics went) and not-English. I rang the doorbell and waited for a while for Jack to open up.

“Chris! How are ya?”

“Excluding this” I raised my hand to show the bandaged wrist “I’m doing great. You?”

“Well you know, the usual- ANNA, TURN OFF THAT SHIT!” An annoyed reply came right away.

“IT’S NOT SHIT! IT’S ART!”

“ART MY ASS! NOW TURN THAT THING DOWN BEFORE I HAVE TO TAKE DRASTIC MEASURES! AND CHRIS IS HERE!”

“HE IS!?” The music was turned off. A few minutes later Anna came out of her cave (me and Jack called her room a cave: it was dark, the curtains were never open and you never knew what you could step on). She hadn’t combed her brown hair (darker shade than mine) and her green eyes where wide and bright (minus the few times when she was on something). She was still in her pajamas.

“Hi Chris! How are ya?”

“Why haven’t you dressed yet?”

“Haven’t had the time, bro.”

“You’ve had plenty of time, now get something…decent on and let’s go!”

“Okay, okay.” She disappeared to her cave while humming along “Obscure”.

“So how’re your parents?”

“Better than yours?”

“No shit Sherlock. Seriously, aren’t they worried?”

“Nah, they’re back to their routine.”

“Man, don’t they notice anything?”

“I doubt that.” Jadie was still with me, trying to get a peek inside past Jack.

“Okay, let’s go!” Jakc smacked his forehead when he saw his sister’s latest outfit: tight, black top (that showed half of her stomach), a red miniskirt (more like a wide belt in my opinion) and black high heels. She had lots of black eyeliner and red lipstick.

“Do I have to tell you what you look like right now?”

“Like a hooker, no doubt. But that ain’t your problem bro.” She walked past her brother and right out of our sight.

“Well at least she didn’t go in her underwear.”

“You sure? I thought I saw her sleep in those rags few nights ago…”

“Well she’s done worse.”

“Unfortunately.”

“Anything new lately?” Jadie looked disappointed when Jack closed the door and we started walking.

“Oh yeah I got in that college.”

“Good job, Jack-kun” I said with my worst Japanese accent and gave him the thumbs up. Jadie looked at me like I had gone crazy.

“Hah, hah. At least I got somewhere.”

“Well excuse me for being in the hospital.”

“Your bad man.”

“I know.” And then we ran on Anna. She was smoking a cigarette (she’s been smoking for a while now).

“YO! Put that out!” Anna rolled her eyes and took another drag.

“You’re not my dad.”

“Thank God. Put that out.”

“I know it’ll kill me someday but my life is over when I turn 25 anyway-”

“Who said that? You been with those weirdoes again?”

“They’re not-”

“-weirdoes, they’re artists, yeah yeah, I know, I’ve heard that about a hundred times!”

I decided to walk on while the siblings started another fight. Jack’s just trying to look out for Anna but she’s too immature to get that it’s for her own good. I sigh.

“Why didn’t you stay?” I almost forgot about Jadie.

“Those two can solve their own problems.”

“Why didn’t you help?”

“They don’t need me to help them. Hey, I can’t even help myself, not to mention others!”

“I can see that.” Was she being sarcastic?

“Hey! Wait up!”

“Did she put it out?”

“No. Damn, where has her common sense gone to?”

“To a journey with amphetamine?” He glared at me. Anna’s drug-usage is a taboo.

“More likely with those people she’s been hanging with. God, she believes all the crap they feed her!”

“She’s gotten into a cult?”

“Yeah, it seems like it.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s alright.”

“Though I wonder why you let her hang around me since depression seems to be lethal.”

“Nah, that’s just you. But that stunt you pulled-“ he looked at my hand “-was a bit too close.”

“A bit? I would’ve died if it weren’t for those morons-”

“-who saved your fucking life! Can’t you appreciate that? I know it’s not my business to tell you what to do with your life, but try to give it more value! Don’t fuck it up like Anna does.”

Fuck it up? Wait ‘til you’ve heard of Jadie.

Speaking of Jadie, where was she?

Ah. A bit after us. Still staring at the ground.

“Is there something behind us?” Jack looked over his shoulder.

“Nah, my mind’s just playing with me.”


“Alright…”

We arrived to the school and separated. I had a class to drag myself to.

“Looks like a nice school.” I jumped at the voice before remembering Jadie. She stood next to me, looking at the walls.

“Have you ever been to school?”

“Yes. But then I couldn’t go there anymore.”

“Why?” She starts humming some tune. I dropped the subject and entered the classroom.

Wonder if the teachers have already kept the speech about being normal around me and be like nothing’s wrong…

The minute I got inside all the talk stopped and everybody stared at me.

Apparently they have.

“Alright, everybody! Back to your seats! Nice to have you back Christopher.” Mister Haddigan: the only teacher who took things easily and the only adult who used my full name.

“Nice to see you too.”

“You probably know where your seat is and I’ll get to you about our class-progress after class, okay?”

“Sure.” I walked to my seat and at back of the class and sat down. Jadie followed me and sat on the floor next to me. She started feeling the floor with her fingers. Well, whatever made her happy…

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A/N: I think most of you know that Dir en grey is a real band. "Obscure" is one of their songs, very depressive lyrics.

And this chapter was mostly of "normal" life (Jadie's stuff is going to get worse, just to warn you) but I felt that we needed a bit less depressive way to look at Chris' life,just to show that he's not all "angst angst angst" and that he can communicate with people.

Though there will be more depressive stuff later on.

Until the next chapter!


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