high school; a series: freshman year

The voice of a dead boy waits for me on my phone, and i'm too afraid to listen to the accusations I know i'll hear so I let it sit and rot like he will. He spent last night sleeping on a cold metal slab, letting his eyes adjust to the dark. He follows me around school he smells like flowers and rotting flesh, I try too hard to get his voice out of my head. He screams at me and asks why I never answered the phone. twenty seven missed calls, twenty seven voicemails waiting for me to find the courage to face the truth. The best friend I ever had and I lost him the summer before my freshman year, I unzipped my veins to let the emptiness out and stitched myself back up and pasted a smile on my face. The pills I took an hour ago bang through my veins like metal trashcans blowing down the street, dreams and reality blur together and I can't tell the difference between the two anymore. I eat more pills than food and I don’t know the difference between right and wrong, I swallow them by the handful, the mouthful, the cupful. I drink coffee at night to catch up on the homework I never did and avoid my dreams because he haunts me. My hands shake when I do the dishes partly because they're too heavy for my damaged nerves and partly from the caffeinated drug induced haze. I wobble on the dancefloor, I shake when I hold his hand. I cry in the bathrooms during the day and I smile at night when i'm home. She told you this would happen, you know. Gave you a little warning for her little sister. Said if you're not careful i'll end up more scared than loved, and you didn’t listen, you have no excuse, he knew from the moment he met me. We’d play a game, how many cars would pass by me on the interstate? 8, 26, 19, just 1, maybe 12.it didn’t take long for him to figure out we weren’t counting cars, He stopped asking but I kept telling and he would lift up my sleeves to see the real count of our game. We were toxic. He was the only person I would go out and see on the weekends and he was the only one who made me feel guilty for my slipping grades. The sound of him yelling at me to put the bottle down, put the razor down, flush the pills, clean the blood stains out of the bathroom sink, would drown out the sounds of your cries that still echoed in my head and in my heart. I hung onto his every word, he was my whole world. Helped me turn my grades around and turn away from the bad influences in my life. Stitched me up and made sure the wounds stayed closed, turned my life around. But he still yelled. And his words still echoed in my head and made me afraid. Of him, of commitment, of abandonment. Of everything. I started to work harder, maybe if I did more, applied myself more, danced more, pushed more, ate more, he would finally quiet down. But wishful thinking causes bad luck. And I unstitched my wrists and let all of my unspoken words flow out, everything I wanted to say but couldn’t. I needed 23 stitches that night. I called my best friend in a panic, please help me, I need you, my vision is blurry and I can barely see my hand out in front of me. She got into the car stocked with oxycodone and a suture kit, drugged me up and stitched me up outside at two in the morning. I don’t know what i'm gonna do with you baby girl, you can't keep doing this to yourself baby girl. I won't always be here to save you baby girl. What do you mean? You're my saving grace, my guardian angel, you make the screaming stop. I won't always be the one to save you, you need to learn to save yourself. She left that night after taking everything sharp from my room, emptied the pill bottles down the toilet, called my boyfriend and told him how close i'd been to death. I couldn’t stand to hear him cry but it was better than hearing him yell. now, it's show time, and were practicing upstairs, scars still healing, heart still bruised. I sprain my ankle before the show. And because i'm so convinced that I deserve all the pain I caused other people to feel I don’t tell my dance teacher. And I dance. And it hurts. And I want to stop. I want to cry but I spent two hours on my makeup and i'm not going to ruin it. And it hurts. But I jump off the chair anyways, I run around the stage anyways, I don’t let it show on my face. dance teacher yells at me after the show. I never go to the doctors to fix my hurt ankle, I don’t go to the doctor to fix my hurt self-esteem, I don’t go to the doctors to fix my hurt mental health. I let myself fall. Grades up, feelings down, sitting alone in room as if isolation will make the loneliness any better. My cat curls up in my hollow places and purrs so deeply it echoes in my bones. I get scared that you can't hear me, that you can't see me, that  i'm just a doll that everyone has outgrown. I still talk to you, I still hear your voice, don’t you care that your parents have gone off the deep end? You shouldn’t have done it, you should have asked for help. Your smile turns dark, anger flashes in your eyes, I tried, you say, but you didn’t answer the phone.