Cody V
Somberly I sit alone.
I sit alone on the base of the broken tree while I stare at what’s left of the old tree house. It feels like all those goddamn happy memories are gone with it. It makes me kind of sad but at the same time, I want to build another one all for myself.
I sit alone knowing that I’ve lost the most important person in my life. She hasn’t replied to any messages I made. It’s been like that for a while. It's been like that since the last text message I received from her. I thought it was going well. I guess I was wrong. It’s as if she vanished along with this tree a few months ago. It’s been ceased of life, never to grant life to another. I still wonder if I made the right choices.
-
My brother is home for the summer. Travis doesn’t like to come home very often and it’s been about two years since I’ve seen him. Everyone always said we look like twins. I doubt people would say that now. His hair is much longer and in a ponytail and carries a strong beard. If anything I would say he looks more like our dad now. He couldn't be more different. I can at least rely on Travis. He always knows what to say. He always knows what to do. I think it comes with the territory of being an older brother.
“Mom says you and Emily broke up. What’s up with that?” he says when he barges into my room.
I’m forced to put down my pen and notebook. “We were never together.”
Travis laughs and hops on my bed. “Keep telling yourself that. It’s exactly how Jerrica and I broke up. We had labels, you guys didn’t. That’s the only difference.”
“It’s more complicated than that.”
“It’s not. You fucked up, that’s all. But maaan, Mom’s all sad about it. You gotta win her back for her sake. You know how much that girl means to Mom.”
“And how do you propose I do that? She rarely answers my texts and she’s all the way in New York.”
Travis lays on my bed and shrugs. “No, she’s not.”
“What?”
Travis laughs. “She’s back home visiting her dad. Jerrica too. She didn’t text you? That’s rough buddy.”
“How do you know?”
“I saw them unloading while driving home yesterday.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Why didn’t she tell me?
“I honestly thought you knew,” Travis says sitting back up. “So what are you going to do?”
What can I do? It’s obvious that Ems still doesn’t want anything to do with me anymore. I just can’t walk up to her house and say hi. I could text her and say I heard rumors she’s back in town. If she wanted to talk to me, she would. I’m at a loss. There’s nothing.
I’ve been lost.
All I do is hurt people for my selfish ego. I do things just to do things. I’m no better than Andrew. I can’t change. I’ve been trying. There hasn’t been a single thing I’ve done that proves I’ve changed.
“Why did you and Jerrica split up? Apart from her moving to New York?”
“I think it ended long before that. Jerrica ain't the type of girl who falls in love. Not in the way I wanted at least.”
"You guys still talk?"
Travis shrugs. "Not really. It's just how it goes. I think it's better that way."
"How so?"
"Why would I knowingly drink poison?"
-
I don’t know why I’m at Elizabeth's grave. I haven’t been here since the funeral. Nobody ever talks about her now. It’s a thing of the past, something that just happened. Everyone has moved on. I’m not sure if I have or not. I don’t think about her that often anymore, nor does it make me sad.
I just think that I’m here now because I think it can give me some clarity. It’s a good time to reflect and it’s a good way to avoid Emily. She would never come here. Now that she’s back in Darkwood, I rather not face her until I’m ready. I’m not sure I’ll ever be if I’m being honest.
Elizabeth’s grave isn’t in bad condition, but it's not the best. It hasn’t been visited in a while, I can tell that much. She’s just another byproduct of time. Time is what she feared. She was running out of it.
Fuck, why couldn’t she just ask for help?
I think about it often. What it would be like if Elizabeth would still be here. She would have become a permanent member of our group as she was getting sick of hers. She often complained to us about just how fake her friends were. They just orbited around her because she was popular. They never cared about her, not like she did to them.
I guess it took her death for us to see who actually cared about her. Alyssa split and does her own thing now, and the other is so closed off from the world now.
I feel like Elizabeth and Grace would have been best friends. She would’ve found Grace’s naivety and innocence to be endearing. Grace would have become a little pet project for her. Then again, would we even be friends if she had not died?
"Emily, Sara, and you would have been a fantastic trio. You three complement each other so well. A granola vintage girl, a goth, and a prep. It would have been perfect. How would it have worked if we were still dating? Would you have stayed if we broke up? Would Emily put up with it? Would Sara still disappear from us for a couple of weeks?
Andrew wouldn't stop hitting on you, although now I know you guys hooked up. I think I’m okay with that now. You were just lost. Chris could have helped you with that. He’s good at saying things that make you think. I feel like things would have been better if you stuck around.
I just want to know what was going on in your head. Were you that lost? Were you scared? Desperate? For what? Why couldn’t we help you? Why couldn’t I help you? What happened? All of these reasons we think of just don’t make sense. It couldn’t have been a drug-induced psychosis. I knew you, you were much stronger than that.
Please, just tell me.”
A finger taps on my shoulder. It startles me and almost makes me jump. My first thought is thinking it’s Emily, but it’s not. It’s some girl covered in all black and a large black sun hat. My eyes are immediately drawn to her paler-than-white skin and then to her white eyes that I see behind her sunglasses. Her white lips make a small smile.
“Oh, sorry, am I in your way?.”
The girl waves her hands, telling me no. She knees down next to me and cups her hands to form a prayer. I watch her as she prays and I want to too but don’t. The girl stands up and turns to face me. She places her hand close to her forehead and waves it toward me. I don’t understand, but she pulls out her phone next.
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“Sorry, I'm mute and this is the only way I can talk,” she shows me what she typed in perfect grammar.
“Oh, no don’t worry about it.”
“Were you her friend?”
“Yeah, and you? She never mentioned-”
“Nope! First time here.” I don’t respond and watch her ferocious typing on her phone. She’s fast at it. “I just wanted to see the girl who caused so much chaos.”
“What do you mean?”
The girl giggles but no sound comes out of it. “Her world was truly massive. I would have loved to have gotten to know her.”
“Yeah, yeah she was great.”
“You seemed troubled.”
I laugh, “I’m at a grave. Of course, I am.”
The girl turns to the gravestone and places her phone on top of it. She takes a small notepad out of her backpack along with a pen. “You don’t have to get into specifics, but this isn’t about Elizabeth, is it?” She writes on it.
The air of the graveyard instantly changes. There’s no way she can read people that well. It reminds me of how Chris can say something that makes you feel like he’s reading your mind. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. It’s about this other girl.”
“Ooooh, do tell.”
It makes me chuckle. “I guess we were always meant for each other, the day we were born. Growing up we were inseparable but somewhere along the line I just got too comfortable. I started to get a lot of attention and I liked it. I got so much of it that people would just flock around me. It didn’t matter what I said, I said things and it would just eat people up. I did it because it made me seem so cool and mysterious and it worked. It worked too well. I became addicted to it. So I started doing it to Emily, and she didn’t like that. Then Elizabeth died because I was fucking with her just to get her to like me more. It got me to be afraid of myself, it got me to see that I was doing the same with Emily. I tried to stay away but every time we talked, I kept doing it. I drove her away.”
“What do you feel about it now?”
I scoff, “Shitty.”
“No, I mean do you feel like you’re who you describe yourself to be now?”
It takes me a second to answer. “I’ve stopped if that’s what you’re asking me. But I don’t feel like I’ve changed.”
“And why’s that?”
What is she, a therapist? “I don’t know.”
The girl puts her pen in her mouth and tilts her head over to think. “Do you want to know what I think?”
“You just met me.”
“You didn't appreciate what you had and now that it's gone, you're afraid you don't deserve to get it back anymore. You're afraid that you have to let it go.”
“What?”
“Close your eyes,” she writes and tosses her notepad to the side as she extends her palm. I’m compelled to take it and so I close my eyes.
-
I’d forgotten.
Growing up I was never that guy. I never had friends. Chris was my first friend, then it was Emily. Those were my only friends. That’s all I had. I was never popular like I’ve always thought. I spent my entire childhood being ostracized. Besides my two friends, I was alone. Dad never was always away for work and Travis would always be out with his friends. Mom and I never got too close. It’s just been us three and we never fit in. I spent my childhood writing about it. It’s how I started writing poetry.
It was Emily who first started to become popular around eighth grade. That’s what changed for us. That’s what changed for me. It’s always been her. She suddenly became interested in fashion and taught me how to dress. People liked her and since I was always with her, they started to like me too. Because Chris was always so quiet, I would often repeat things he would tell me that felt deep. I used what he said as my own. All of a sudden, I was cool and my introspective nature made me mysterious. Emily then became friends with Sara and by extension, Andrew too. That's how our group started.
Elizabeth started to talk to me while I was getting popular. She wasn't who she grew to be back then. She was a quiet and shy girl but I didn't care. I liked her and she liked me back. She was my first girlfriend. Emily was fine with it, at least that’s how I remember it.
“Well, it’s not like we’re dating, so it's fine,” she said. “I’m still going to marry you when we turn 21.”
“Yeah, of course, that plan won’t ever change.”
I remember Emily’s laugh, “I'm glad I took your virginity before she came along.
Looking back at it, Emily never wanted to open us up. It’s always been us, that was never supposed to change. It didn’t matter how we justified it; to get experience or to explore. That was just a farce we told ourselves for it to be okay. No, It’s a lie I told myself. Emily was gritting her teeth the entire time.
Once I had Elizabeth, Emily went after who she wanted herself. She did it to make me jealous. I never did because, in the back of my mind, I knew she would always be mine. It’s that ego that destroys me. Elizabeth began to become really popular towards the end of Middle School and I was there to collect the crumbs. We were all heading to be the ones to hang out with, the IT crowd. Even after we broke up, we stayed around each other. Halfway through our freshman year that changed when Emily decided against it. She didn’t like the crowd, so I followed. Elizabeth became a stranger.
I was never the leader.
Emily was.
I was just piggybacking off her, and always have been. It got into my head. I stole quotes from Chris. None of me is the real me. I thought I was more important than I actually was. The addiction to the attention and power I had over people made me twisted. There was never a moment where I was myself.
My loneliness took my right to be a person.
“Hey Cody, what do you think about this new skirt I just bought?” Emily asks the second she climbs the treehouse. She’s wearing a black and red plaid skirt that matches the bandana I gave her when we were kids.
Shit. That’s right, I have forgotten about the bandana. It’s nothing special, just something I bought at the store for a dollar. I gave it to Emily after she recovered from her sickness. I thought it was a lucky charm, seeing that the day I bought it was the day she woke up from her coma. The bandana itself is pure black with a rose and diamond pattern all across. Emily always wore it tied on her left wrist or ankle from that point forward. I've been wearing it on my ankle since she gave it back.
“It makes your ass look flat,” I say to her with a short laugh.
She lightly punches me on my arm when she sits next to me with our feet hanging over the entrance’s edge. “Jerk! Be for real. I think it’s what I’m going to wear for the first day of High School. Gotta make a good impression!”
“It looks good. You make everything look good.”
“Aw shucks, you’re making me blush.”
“Although you should wear tights.”
“And why’s that?”
“I like ‘em”
Emily shoves me to the side with her body then she rests her head on my shoulder. “Your wish is my command, my prince charming.”
“What’s with you today, you’re awfully cheery.” I chuckle.
“Do I need a reason?”
“No, but I can give you one.”
“How so?”
I turn and grab Emily by the shoulders and push her down to the floor. The look of surprise quickly turns into a smile right before I inject myself with her lip’s nectar. “This a good enough reason?” I ask and Emily nods with a grinning approval.
“And you? You’re usually not this bold. I like it.”
“I decided that’s who I’m going to be starting the new year. I don’t want to stay the same awkward kid that pulls no girls.”
Emily grabs hold of my hands and pulls me in. “Fine, fine. You’re still mine at the end of the day. All mine,” she kisses me. “But I do like this new Cody, what changed?”
I narrow my eyes for the first time and I focus them on Emily’s. This is the first time I use them. “I want to be better.”
Emily’s grin is intoxicating. “Show me.”
-
"Do you think I'm a joke?" Elizabeth asked.
"Of course not."
"You don't have to lie to me to make me feel better."
"Are you asking if I think you're a joke or that you think that?"
"Both. I guess."
"You wouldn't be my girlfriend if I thought that. This facade you put on, it's not a joke, it's you."
"Who would you pick? Me or Emily?"
"What kind of question is that?"
"What is it about Emily that I can't fulfill you how she can?"
-
When I open my eyes, the girl with white hair is staring at the tombstone with a frown. I let go of her hand and she turns her head back to me..
“What was that?”
She grabs hold of her notepad and gives it to me.
It reads;
I just had to give you a better understanding of the person you lost. You shouldn’t be afraid of yourself. The direction you were going wasn’t a bad one, you were just misguided. Don’t let the death of Elizabeth make you afraid of being happy. It’s okay to forgive yourself, Cody. It's okay to let it go.
The mute girl dusts off the dirt on her knees. She doesn’t even give me time to read the entire note before she takes her leave. I read it once, then again.
Elizabeth once talked about a woman in white. She said she was her guardian angel. It was nothing but nonsense at the time, something I attributed to her just being high. This couldn’t be that, could it? I didn’t even get her name, yet she was just here. A woman with white hair, white skin, and white eyes. Someone straight out of fiction.
The air around me shifts as if it’s alive. It’s warm. It’s calming; accepting.
"This is you, isn’t it? You’re telling me it’s okay."