Baubles

Baubles.

Baubles all along the floor, Broken to bits, shards still slowly spinning.

Some were glass orbs, while others were the traditional red ball ornaments that my mom loved.

All of them, broken.

Broken by me.

By ME.

I snapped out of my trance, looking around at the wreckage. I'd had another black-out, and broken something. A lot of somethings, actually.

"Cherrie, what happened?" my dad asked as he walked down the hall, towards the box-filled, butter-yellow living room, just around the bend, unable to see what I'd done.

"Did you drop something-- holy--"

"BEEP!" I shouted over his swear.

"That was a good catch, Cherrie. But how... You haven't had one of these--" he gestured to the bauble pieces everywhere. "--in months! What happened?"

No, no. Not this again. Every time I-- I couldn't-- there was no--

I could feel my muscles beginning to clutch, vibrating as my fears condensed inside of me, becoming a serpent, coiling around my heart. I could hardly breathe, with all that weight inside of me.

"Dad, I--" tears came to my eyes. I shook harder.

"I c-can't just... just... be like THIS anymore!" I rolled up my sleeves, showing him the scars on my lower arms. Some were recent, others still bleeding from my recent black-out. But the worst were long and jagged, from this time last year, when Mom and Dad got divorced. I can still remember punching a hole through the table when I first heard about it. I bled for a full hour before someone called 9-1-1.

"Cherrie, I'm sorry..." Dad says. Sorry isn't enough. Sorry is never enough.

"Dad... can I... uh, go to my Room of Regrets?"

"You mean your garage lair?"

"...Yeah, Dad. If you wanna call it that."

"Don't you need something for your, uh..." Dad's ice-blue eyes land on my arms. I shake my head no and run outside.

*~*~*

My Room of Regrets is my greatest masterpiece. I consider myself an artist, a sculptor who works with found junk and makes it beautiful. Or, a short-tempered girl who breaks stuff and puts it back together in ways it should not be put back together.

There, a shredded armchair I tore six months ago holds a mannequin queen, dressed in a crown of broken glass (from the time I dropped every cup and plate in the house on the floor in a black-out) and a robe made of Mom's ripped bathrobe, (the one I tore up and left in her separate bedroom after crying into it for an hour or so) holding a scepter made out of a dented, scratched chair leg (that I pulled off my Dad's stool in his off-limits office) with a "jewel" in the top that is really a chunk of porcelain from the antique teacup I bit three moths ago.

BLACK-OUT is scrawled across her fluffy pink bathrobe-gown in black mascara, the exact tube I stole from my goth soon-to-be-stepsister, Emily. The queen has a horrible makeup job on her perfect face that makes her look better, if I do say so myself. Between the poison-apple purple-lips dripping black gloss, the silver smeared around her Sharpie-colored black eyes, and the Elsa wig I dyed acid green, thunder blue, and midnight black with Kool-Ade and Toxic Touch hair dye makes her look venomous. I even created vampire fangs for her, and painted them red with lipstick. She rules her trash kingdom with an iron-nailed fist. (Her nails are really iron.)

Around her are vases made out of cobbled-together-vase-bits, nudist mannequins in various poses, strange prototypes for machines that would never work made out of scrap wood, and awkward sculptures containing, on one alone, a Barbie head, a hairbrush, several unrecognizable bits of wood and this its innards hanging out, a whole TV with its innards hanging out, a phone case, an extension cord, a cracked wine glass, a sneaker, a blank canvas with an angry face drawn on it, various bits and pieces of glass, wood, and sticks glued into a monsters-looking nature-inspired voodoo doll, and a can of hairspray, and a crushed Pepsi can, all dripped with paint and stuck together in weird ways.

That's just the one closest to me.

I sit in here and sulk, trying to control my impulses. I can't let Emily and Won think I'm any eviler. Soon I'll be stuck with them as stepsiblings.

Dad walks into my Room of Regrets, holding a small bowl of something. Broken baubles.

"Since you like to... um... repurpose broken things, here's the safest pieces of bauble I could find."

I smile. Dad's still the same dad deep inside.

*~*~*

Two weeks later:

Emily and her brother Won, along with miss Giala, are here for the holidays. Mom is here as well, and she's acting nice to dad even though she doesn't like him much anymore. It's one day till Christmas Eve, and tomorrow we're having a big dinner with the rest of the family. I can only imagine how they'll react. Won, they'll think is adorable. Emily, they'll think is creepy. Well, that's as far as I can imagine for now. I'm too nervous with Won bouncing on the couch.

"I CAN FLY!" he shouts.

I roll my eyes and look at my phone.

Nothing.

No texts at all.

No one cares.

I shoot Won an evil eye and try not to think dark thoughts.

Impossible.

*~*~*

The next day:

Nothing from any of my friends.

But hey, at least I can hide in my room for, what, another hour until dinnertime?

No dice. Dad comes in and practically has to drag me out of the room.

"I apologize for Cherrie," Dad says. "She was hiding in her room for a little while, Very antisocial, she is!" I frown. There's some table chatter from my aunts Liza and Lizz, from my six cousins, and from all the other people like grandparents and uncles.

I don't really care.

I feel myself slipping into a black-out, my vision blurring, my rage solidifying.

No, jo, I tell myself. Don't do it, don't do it...

Too late.

I throw the turkey, throwing out everything else I hate with it--

"Cherrie? You okay? Miss Giala asks me.

"Yes, why?"

It hits me.

I had a black-out.

And I managed to stop it.

I've never done that before.

"Hehe... everyone has enough food already, right?"

Everything goes back to normal. I did it. I rarely can control my black-outs. I threw a turkey, but at least I didn't throw anything else.

~*~*

"This place is cool," says Emily.

I've shown her my Room of Regrets. She Ikes it, as far as I can tell.

"You know, if we're going to be... stepsisters... than I need to tell you about something..." I say.

I tell Emily all about the black-outs, the way I feel my fears my dreams and everything else.

"But my biggest secret," I say, "is that right now I'm not afraid anymore. Or angry. I'm... calm."

We walk outside and stare at the stars.

"Let's make this a tradition," Emily says.

"This?" I ask.

"Yeah. This. Looking at the stars and talking about what's inside. It's what's inside that matters, anyway."

And so begins the tradition between me and Emily. We do this every Christmas Eve until we grow up and move out, and even after that.