I'm Not Alone

Dear Diary,

I can’t try to pretend. I can’t try to do. I can’t try to assume. I just need to do what’s necessary. When I’m always the one whose huge Coke bottle glasses I received for Christmas when I was eleven and going into middle school and puffy chocolate brown hair that went boing! Every time I touched it was the center of the picture rather than the actual show up on the stage, I can’t even try.    

I just do.

I just do not.

Everyone’s ripping the diary out of my hands, but...

I pause and look over.

It’s my neon blue lizard character, Waterfall.

I don’t know how he got here, but I believed way back in time when I was a little girl (two or three) that my characters believed in me. And I in them. So they all came alive! Horrified, I screamed. But my parents didn’t believe me. They just yawned, ordered me back to bed and woke me the next morning with ‘Time for school!’ or ‘Time for the park! You want to go, right?’

Anyway, I wish I could grab Waterfall into a hug. I smiled a little at it, its huge eyes blinking at me. It scurried away to the pages in which I had written it. Jabbing at the top one, it hopped right into it, leaving me to follow. I sighed. I just made friends at school. Not that I’m new, but I never had even a best friend. I always had to show my secrets to the girls who just said ‘oh’ or the girls who… never mind. Who am I kidding?

I went inside the page, but I felt an outsider. I was a human. I wasn’t a lizard. I left, crawling into bed that night, wishing I was a lizard. Or a chameleon, orange-red with fire flickering off of its back. I actually searched for that story. Then I slammed down the pages after whipping them around. The chameleon had a black forked tongue and blood-red eyes! I couldn’t read any more—too scary! So I stuffed the pages into the box and shoved this box into the far reaches of my closet. I never touched it—or at least wanted to—again.

“What are you doing?”

My mom startled me.

Nothing, I told her. I just—

Go to bed. It’s late. You have that science project due on Monday, and if you don’t do well in school tomorrow, you won’t want to work on it all weekend. Go to bed!

After she disappeared, I scrambled over to the pages of the neon blue chame—I mean lizard—I had neglected a while ago today. “Hey—are you there?”

“What’s my name?”

“Uh…I haven’t read you in a long while. Uh…” I squeezed my eyes shut. “Uh—”

“Lightning.”

“Oh—right!”

A sigh. “Come on.”

Grinning, I hopped right in, forcing sleep to wait patiently until I went to it. I toured Liz Ard, the city in which these lizards lived. It was very similar to other worlds in which water or air animals lived. But something was off. Some of the lizards lived in fear. “Murder! Murder!”

I didn’t see any blood. No dead body. No investigation. So… it slowly came to me. I gasped. Murder—that blood-red eyed chameleon! They’re terrified of it. I must protect them!

I hurried away from Liz Ard, promising to return. “No, don’t return with it. It’ll murder us!”

I balled my fists, telling them I had to. “I need to relieve you of the terrors of it. How about if I bring you to its world, you can all talk it into—”

“Where’s your brain?” An angry bellow hollered from over a bar counter. “Murder will murder us all!” Cheers and rants echoed all around the space-like restaurant eating area. I blinked. Unable to speak, I slipped away, not caring whether they hated me. I’d prove myself to them. When I took the evil chameleon in my hands, I told it to behave. It nodded. An idea in my mind, I sprang it to life when I returned to the place. Everyone scrambled back, yelling, ordering, screaming and grabbing chairs, tables and knives and forks to protect themselves. Staring in hatred of the fiery red chameleon, they all stayed where they were, demanding an answer.

“It’ll eat us!”

“Watch.”

I ordered it to stay where it was. It did. I then told it to stay away from these lizards. Months went by, and I was told it hadn’t visited Liz Ard in a while. I had saved the day!

I bit my lip. What if they truly know? I shook my head. “Every lizard,” I told them one day, “I’m a person.”

But they need me.

I sighed. I didn’t visit them, but my friends always invited me. I always went to their houses, and they always came to mine. But I never enjoyed the parties or the sleepovers. Or the makeovers. Or the Girl Scout trips.

Why did I leave those poor innocent souls?

I stepped back into the world of Liz Ard. They all glowered at me. Murder stood in their presence. I told it to back off!

It scurried away, out of my pages and into its own story. If it had a story. If I finished it… I hurried away, searching for an ending. I grabbed a pen and scribbled four pages. There, I thought. All done. I jumped into the world of Murder. Its face was twisted into anger. It frowned. And shook its head violently.

“Look, I wrote you an ending!”

“No,” it croaked, and I widened my eyes, “I want—”

“Here.” I wrote something else. It hissed, its forked tongue in and out. If it touched me with that thing, I’d be paralyzed forever. Unable to move. Slowly stop breathing. Then I’d die.

I jumped back into the other world.

“Lizards, listen. If you brave Murder’s world, and you do to it and it has done to you, you can help it be like yours. Right?”

“That’s as true as we’ll be people tomorrow!”

“How dare you write its story as having murdered. Why would you do that? Leaving us to clean up the mess!”

Mugs of beer and juice came my way. Some hit me. Drenched in the sticky stuff, I cried out, but the uproar almost damaged my eardrums. I backed out of the world. I can’t just bow to my characters. They’re my characters. I need to write it. I need to write these books. I’m the writer! I charged in with a pair of scissors.

“I know none of you are dead, but I promise you, I’ll make it right—”

Protests resounded.

“Okay, okay.” I motioned for silence. The din quieted murderously slowly.

Over the years, I worked with these lizards.

I put these stories to rest. In a box. Maybe they’d be better off together, solving the problem.

I didn’t touch those stories.

Years later, I saw Murder in its story. I guess it was a story. Decades later, I published the novel. And the Liz Ard world, too. Both books became my own.

“You ditched us?”

My friends never saw me again. I sobbed, missing them. I wasn’t a lizard. Or a lizard savior.

I was a person.

I had written those books.

I rejoined those women at a bachelorette party. I was included. Or so I thought. They pointed at me, gossiping about me and slandering me whenever they pulled out pictures. I blinked at them. And shook my head, tears trailing down my cheeks. I couldn’t even open up those picture boxes without wanting to dash to the bathroom and cover my tear-stained face. My red eyes stared back at me in the mirror. All those Girl Scout trips, the marsh mellows being murdered in the fire. The chocolate melted. The Graham crackers housing those poor things. I just… The food never entered my mouth. The water never reached my throat. Three days of dehydration, and I was in the hospital. My parents chastised me. I fought with them until I drank water to clear my throat. And my brain. My grades stayed the same. I graduated both high school and college, but I sagged. My roommates’ concern pulled the truth out of me. I cried every night until I became one woman in one dormitory. I wrote them letters. I called them. I met them at school functions. But they all stared at me. Glazed eyes never losing that glassy look. I slammed my dorm room.

I’m forgotten.

My voicemail became stuffed with my parents’ calls. I deleted every one. My parents came uninvited, soothing my hair. Rubbing my back. I cried on their shoulder. They finished my sentences, told me what to say and what to think (to which I took the time in mind and verbally) and sent care packages. I thanked them, emailing and calling them. Their love and compassion soon stopped my tears and complaining. I found my sentences not suffering from fragments, run-ons and comma splices. Either on the page but also verbally.

My parents didn’t critique me. They didn’t correct me. They simply sympathized with me. But they gave me simpering looks when I cried on their shoulder and told them to rub my back. “Do you want this to be a repeat of high school?” They’d whisper in my ear.

“No.”

I wiped my tears away. My eyes knew no more waterfalls. I asked my roommates whether they’d return to my dorm room. They gave me blank stares. I returned with a shrug. I don’t need history to repeat itself. I cried alone, closing my eyes. My pillow was the shoulder of a best friend. I could drench it, and it’d absorb every reason why it should still lay there, waiting for me to return to it.

I’m used. I’m useless. I’m nothing. I’m just a topic. I’m just a joke.

I called my parents. Soon so much I was cut off, both verbally and physically, as the phone calls ended abruptly with my phone saying Call Ended. I slammed it down, and then I stared at the floor. A minute later, I scrunched my face.

I bought a new phone. An iPhone.

I got married. None of those girls were invited to my wedding. I didn’t have anyone but my parents and some of my relatives. My future husband had his best man, his parents and his relatives. A small wedding. A very small wedding. His eyes never left mine. He told me he didn’t care about the attendees. I fell into his arms, him holding me upright. A bright grin flashed on his face every time he looked at me. And the same happened with me. We were inseparable.  

My husband and I adored each other.  

My lizard characters warred. Thousands perished. But they had lives of their own.

I hadn’t seen them since.

No tears, complaining or balled fists birthed a divorce.

I loved my husband.

And he loved me.

Till death did we both part.