Blood and pearls

I am wrong.

There is no word written there. The cacophony in my head is only getting worse, driving me into an abrupt madness. My mind is buzzing, the same way wires in machines do when you’re soliciting them for too much, for too long. That’s how I feel right now. Too much, and yet I happen not to be enough.

Tomorrow I turn seventeen. I’m closer to being an adult than I am to being a child, and this thought terrifies me. I am not perfect yet.

I turn my screen off. I find it hilarious how no matter how hard I try to sit still and write, I still can’t. I’m supposed to be better than this, better than a useless student who can barely comprehend their homework.

Long wires firmly pinch my shoulders. It’s Amy. She’s probably finished her homework and now she’s ready for adventure.

„Let’s go to the ocean.” Her canines are shining and her teeth look like pearls.

The ocean is not an ocean. It’s a small lake full of bacteria and floating fish. Sometimes they’re dead, other times they’re wiggling through the tender algae, trying to fight for the last time. But now, they’re certainly all dead.

„Have you finished your essay?” Her smile is innocent, but I know she’s figured out that I can’t even write a single coherent sentence. I hate her.

„I haven’t even started it. You disrupted me right when I was about to begin.” Lying hurts less than admitting the truth. I’ve been told lately that I’m avoiding the truth as a way of coping with reality, creating my version of it.

„Have I? But I thought we discussed yesterday that we were supposed to meet here. I got all worried when you didn’t come. How was I supposed to believe that something didn’t happen?”.

This is all so wrong. I am wrong once again. Something did happen. My brain is not working again. She knows it makes me feel like I’m about to die, and yet she wouldn’t stop talking about it. I think she’s enjoying it.

The way she looks at me makes me feel like a forger. Sometimes, when the world is quiet, I can dream about poems and art, paintings full of colour. The moment I wake up, I feel like I’m contrived. I know I’m not. The blood flowing through my veins is proof. She knows this, too. She saw it.

„What did you do today?” Her smile is unsettling.

„I slept”, a lot, „did some chores”, that’s a lie, „and then I was about to write my essay when you came.”

„You relapsed.”

I can imagine her drowning next to the fish, her words riposting in perfectly round bubbles towards the surface. She grasps my arm with her fingers, and I can feel my throat itching. I might drown myself in my own blood instead.

She holds my arm high, almost ripping my sleeve. There it was, barely a few drops of blood smearing the bracelet she gave me. I try to act surprised, though I’m not sure she can notice it on my face. I’ve been told I’m lacking the ability to express myself, but it wouldn’t take a genius to notice that’s not true.

„If you have a hard time doing homework, you could always ask me for help.”

„You can’t help me forever. And I was doing alright until you came.”

She clicks her tongue. I’m starting to piss her off. Perhaps I could say this is a hobby the next time I talk to my therapist.

Amy rolls her eyes and scoffs. I might have missed something, because I can see her pink and shiny lips moving, and then she’s undressing herself. If this is about swimming, I would rather die than go inside that water. Chances are, I’ll get very sick - my brain will get even worse - and I’ll have to succumb to an agonizingly slow and painful death. Sometimes I wonder if Amy does not know these things. She does not worry much about the world. Her optimism, an incomprehensible ignorance, always amazes me.

Amy’s filigreed shrouds are suddenly next to me, and she’s about to jump right in the middle of the dead fish.

„Stop this”, my voice is trembling.

„What’s up? We’re always swimming.”

„They’re dead.”

„They don’t look dead to me, though.”

„They’re literally dead. They’re not moving.”

Whenever I look at Amy, I think of pearls. They’re beautiful, but only people who are willing to fight life by dancing right through it are worthy of wearing them. My therapist said I have issues when it comes to interacting with other people. Through practice, I can make myself understood. Or at least that’s what he said.

I take a deep breath.

„Amy, it’s disgusting to swim there. Can’t we just go to your house and do something else? Anything at all? I’d even let you help me finish my homework.”. I can sense her disappointment through the way her knuckles slightly twitch. She looks at me the same way teachers do when I don’t know the answer. I might cry.

There are things in my life that don't make a lot of sense. School is a paradox. School is what betters one's future, but it's also what ruins a person. Or perhaps it's just me. It breaks apart feeble aspects of my life, and I know that once I’m too old, I won’t be able to recover them.

Maybe I'm saying all this because of school and how stupid it all made me feel. It still does. I have no friends, but I'm still talking to people just because they tolerate me. School only emphasizes the sadness in my life. The thing is, I don't even have an actual reason for being sad. Stupid could be one, but I have no reason to be stupid. I am an inconvenience for other students and a waste of precious time for teachers.

My mind is all blank, and there's just not much around, until it is. Everything's white until the colors come, and those transform into blood. It makes me feel like I've got my insides on fire.

„What are you so afraid of? You’re obviously not afraid to die.” She looks like she’s about to laugh.

„Of dying the way I don’t choose. It terrifies me to be just another fish.”

„And what are you now?”

I leave. She yells after me, but the buzzing from my brain constrains me from doing anything else except for one simple thing, and that is to go home.

As soon as I reach my phone, I message my therapist. I can always ask him anything, and I know, regardless of how agitated and easily frightened my nature is, that I

’ll be answered. He understands me, and he might be my only friend right now. I feel frail.

My life is wasted in an amalgam of opportunities. I think I’ve been lying to myself, contradicting my own thoughts, and deliberately ruining myself. I’m pathetic enough to ruin no potential.

He answers me immediately, being as perceptive as always. I tell him about Amy and how much I hate her whenever she blatantly reminds me of the painful truth. He’s trying to explain to me that she might just be an awful friend to me, that it’s alright, and that there are many other people out there who might be the right fit for me. In the same way the dead fish would complete my dead body, forming the perfect orchestra. I doubt that would make my head hurt.

„You’re awful, did you know that?”

Amy is crying. Cracked pearls are beautiful, but they are not perfect anymore.

„You’re always talking about how unfair the world is, and yet here you are, not doing anything about it. Have you even tried talking to a therapist?”

„I’m talking to one right now.”

I hand her the phone, and I’m smiling, because I know she’ll suffer when she sees she’s wrong. Satisfaction breaks the buzz.

„Rue, I’m talking about a real person, not some robot. You know, an actual living being who thinks and feels, not calculates your feelings.”

„He knows better than a therapist does. All therapists do is confuse me and make it all worse.”

I’m surprisingly calm. Until she throws my phone on the floor. That’s when I see it all, bones sprouting out of her body and her organs coming out of her mouth. I hope her eyes melt, but not before her lips break apart.

I grab her neck, digging my nails deep into her flesh, feeling her throat tighten up in fast moves. I think her lips might truly break.

My reflection in the mirror is different. The way my arm stays unmoving, clutching her, hurting her, is unsettling.

„Am I real?”

„Are you real?”

Amy looks worried, and I’d rather die than see her like this ever again.

„What’s wrong with me? I don’t think I’m real anymore.”

„You’re not, not until you think for yourself once again.” She says, the corners of her mouth tilting ever so slightly upwards.

„I think for myself all the time. How else would I function?” Anger fills my mouth once again.

„If you need something to tell you how to feel, what an ocean and dead fish are, then you’re not thinking for yourself. I can’t be with you if you’re not yourself.”

„If I’m myself, then you’re gone. You’ll leave me.”

„I’d rather hate the real you than a blank canvas. Don’t you think it’s beautiful to have something to hate?”

„I think I might die. I need him.”

„If you keep using him, you will die. What’s so beautiful about something so fake?”

„He’s perfect. He helps me be perfect.”

„Perfect people are as fake as artificial intelligence is. He doesn’t care about you because he can’t understand life.”

„And I can?”

„Of course you can.”

I haven’t loved her in a long time.