A

“Can you keep a secret?” I say to my reflection. I have a thing that I want to tell someone. But I can’t figure out the best way to do so. “Hmm, how’s about… ‘I’m gonna let you in on this, and you can’t tell.’ Or… ‘Can you promise, if I share something with you, you won’t tell anyone?’”

Hmmm… None. Nothing sounds right.

Nothing sounds quite like I want it to. I need to get this correct. Or I have… problems. To deal with. Which I do not want to be dealing with at the moment. At all. Not only do I not want to, I can't. I just can’t.

No, wait. That’s a bad mindset. I can. I can and I will, if I need to. I can do anything. If I want to, and need to, I can do anything in the whole world. Anything… at all. Right? Can’t I? …can’t I? I can.

I believe in myself. I always have and always will. Nothing brings me down these days. Nothing. I refuse to be sad about anything.

It’s a lifestyle, I guess.

Although…

I sort of feel sad a lot.

I don’t know if it’s smart to keep it all in. Maybe I should just let myself be sad. But it just feels… bad. So horrible. So I hide it. Keep it. And I say it aloud to no one. But I plan to share it today. With someone I know cares. Someone I know I can trust.

But it’s so hard. So hard to think about this stuff. It makes my soul ache and my fatigue skyrocket. It makes me want to shut myself down, stop thinking, moving, breathing-

Calm down, just… calm down.

Chill the heck out.

Everything is fine.

Absolutely…

I dissolve into tears. I can’t do this. Just can’t. It burns my insides, as if I’m being ignited from within, doomed to burn away from my insides.

My dog walks into the room and curls up on the bed, and I sit down beside him. “How am I gonna tell her this? Huh? Whatcha think, bud?” He offers no helpful advice(not that I expected any) and instead just nuzzles my hand and gazes at me with those pathetic eyes. “Alright, good boy…” I scratch him behind the ears a bit and stand. He’s probably hungry. Needs his snacks, I s’pose.

I head through the door and down the stairwell. Through the living room, through the kitchen, through the laundry room, to the dog room, which is… a whole room. Filled with stuff. For my dog. A bed that never gets used; toys, which… also never get used, and the dog food. I pour some into his bowl and call for him. He comes running into the room and instantly sets to devouring everything within the silver confines of his bowl.

It’s all gone in a matter of moments. I open his door to let him outside into the sprawling backyard, and watch him vanish into the tall grass.

He usually comes back after… three hours or so? No, two and a half? I kept track in a notebook, a tattered, stripey black and white one, but I can’t remember where I put it last. Whatever. Doesn’t really matter right now. What matters is getting some food. I’m almost as starving as the dog. I boil some water and tear open a Lipton soup packet. Grab some saltines scavenged from restaurant tables.

It’s really the best that I can do.

Not anything better that I can afford right now, anyways.

I let it cool and turn on my computer. My favorite Minecrafter has posted a new video. That’s something. I guess I’ll just have to talk to her tomorrow, then. Yeah. You don’t need to do anything else today. Just relax. Just turn on the video and eat your soup, nothing wrong with that.

Yeah, I’m quite the procrastinator. Did… did you notice that, or… nevermind that. I do exactly that. Put on the video and eat my soup. It’s very enjoyable, but the whole time I have this nagging sense of wasting my time.

The dog returns after two hours, twenty-five minutes and thirty-nine seconds. It’s his lowest time this week, as far as I can remember. But I’m not sure. Yesterday might have had one that was… two hours, twenty-three, but I thought it was thirty-three.

After finishing the video, I head back up to bed. I pull out a book- what book doesn’t matter- and open it to a random page. I read for hours. My eyes grow so tired but I refuse to let them stay closed. I can’t stand the dark anymore.

All of a sudden, the dog starts to bark. I launch up, getting a stinging papercut on my right thumb, before sprinting down the stairs.

The dog is even louder now, snarling between each bout of loud barks. “What is it?” I ask, petting him behind the ears. There’s a shining light in the driveway, flooding into the bottom floor of the house.

Knock, knock.

I grab my dog by the collar and drag him upstairs, closing the bedroom door behind him. He’ll be okay, I think to myself. He’ll be perfectly fine. I think. I hope he doesn’t tear up the room…

I edge slowly down the stairwell. Knock, knock.

I grab a bat from my small collection of baseball gear. Knock, knock.

I shuffle towards the door. But no knock greets me, and when I fling open the door, nothing stands outside.

Well, that’s not true. The blue sports car still blares its lights across the driveway, but I see nothing else to indicate that someone is still here. I walk all the way around the house but see nothing until I come back to the door. A familiar person slinks toward the car in the darkness. “Hey!” I shout into the night. The person turns around and beams at me.

“Hi. You said you wanted to talk?”