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 the single call I made. It’s been like that for weeks. I thought it was going well. I guess I was wrong. It’s as if she vanished along with this tree. It’s been ceased of life, never to grant life to another. I still wonder if I made the right choices.

I sit like there’s nothing wrong and I’m just a hypochondriac wishing that everything is going wrong. It hadn't rained for a month and last night, hell poured down. Last night a couple of lovers tossed each other off this town’s sole bridge. Those are two more suicides and it just doesn’t seem to stop. It just feels like the town isn’t the same anymore. I somberly sit alone as I smell the lingering petrichor and burned wood that engulfs the circle of life. The smell is strong and sometimes pungent.

There’s nothing here for me anymore, so I leave.

My brother’s just gotten home for the summer. Travis doesn’t like to come home very often so it’s been about two years since I’ve seen him last. 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.

“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. 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?”

“We just weren’t meant to be. We didn’t have what you and Emily clearly have.”

And what’s that? All I’ve been is a piece of shit to her for that entire year. I never listened to her. I never thought about her concerns or problems. She was just something I owned. Emily was never my partner, not really. I see that now.

We haven’t been compatible for a while now.

-

I don’t know why I’m at Elizabeth's grave. I haven’t been here since the funeral. Nobody ever talks about it 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 would 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 you 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 were her true friends. Alyssa split and does her own thing now, and the other is so closed off from the world now. Why didn’t you see the people who you hurt the most when you died?

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 you wouldn’t have 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. Although I wonder how it would have worked if we were still dating. Would you have stayed if we’d broken up? Would Emily put up with it? Would Sara still disappear from us for a couple of weeks?

Andrew would have not stopped 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. Where 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, I didn’t mean to intrude.”

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 in all black opens her eyes and turns to 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.

“I forget that new people I meet don’t know I’m mute,” she writes in perfect grammar.

“Oh, no don’t worry about it.”

“You were her friend?”

“Yeah, and you? She never mentioned-”

“Nope! First time here.” I don’t respond but instead, watch her ferociously type on her phone. She’s fast at it. “I just wanted to meet 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 meet her one day.”

“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 lifts herself up a bit and takes a small notepad out of her backpacker along with a pen. “You don’t have to get into specifics, but this isn’t about Elizabeth.”

The feel of the room instantly changes. There’s is 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 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 manipulating 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.”

“I think you’re just afraid of being happy.”

“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 my poetry.

I don’t know how or when, but 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. Chris is Chris and never listened, but Emily is who taught me how to make friends, and how to be normal. She suddenly became interested in fashion and so she would dress me up. With a sense of style, it became easier to talk to people. All of a sudden, I had the attention I always wanted but never knew how to get. Emily became friends with Sara then, and by extension, Andrew. That’s how our friend group started.

Then I met Elizabeth. She wasn’t popular back then, at least not at the level she would grow to be. She was just a regular girl. I liked her and she liked me back. She was my first girlfriend. Emily at the time was fine with it, at least that’s how I remember it.

“Well it’s not like we’re dating ourselves,” 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, “And it’s not like she got to you before I can take your virginity.”

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. I never got jealous because, in the back of my mind, I knew she would always be mine. It’s that ego that destroys me. The attention I got from dating Elizabeth carried well over after we broke up right before freshman year. We were all heading to be the ones to hang out with. Halfway through the school year that change when Emily decided against it. She didn’t like the crowd, so I followed.

I was never the leader.

She was.

I was just piggybacking off her, and always have been. It got into my head. I thought I was more important than I actually am. The addiction to the attention and power I had over people made me twisted. There was never a moment where I was actually a person.

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.

“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 myself 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.”

-

When I open my eyes, the girl with white hair is staring at the tombstone with a frown. I realize I’m lying down so I sit up to match her. I’m the one who has to let go of her hand before she notices.

“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.

The girl in white gets up and 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.