Forever Mark

by Jessyca Thibault

  I watched Kellen continue to walk backwards, smiling like a complete idiot, until he reached his bike. I rolled my eyes and turned to unlock the door when I heard Kellen’s voice behind me.

  “For the record, if this were a fairytale I’d probably be a singing mouse or something.”

  Chapter 16

  Over

  Over analyze

  Over think

  Over worry

  Over do

  Too much

  Always too much

  But never enough

  Not for me

  Always need more

  Analyzing, thinking, worrying, doing

  Repeat

  Replay

  Same outcome

  It’s how I live

  It’s how I keep myself from living

  It’s how I function

  It’s how I ruin everything

  Including myself

  Kellen Jordan was kind of a freak.

  When did I decide that Kellen Jordan was a freak? Well, it was probably somewhere between when he declared that he’d most likely be the singing mouse in a fairytale and when he told me that he didn’t ever kill spiders because with his luck the spider he killed would’ve been the one to give him superpowers. So it might have been just after he explained that he couldn’t eat raisins because when he was younger someone told him that if he drank too much water afterwards then the raisins would inflate and blow up in his stomach.

  That last statement probably said more about the person that told him raisins were little stomach grenades, but the fact that Kellen still avoided them said a bit about him.

  Like that he was kind of a freak.

  The funny thing was, Kellen didn’t seem to mind. He didn’t seem to care at all about what people thought about him, not the way most people did. I couldn’t decide whether or not I found this to be more strange or attractive. I guess that made me kind of a freak too, but hey, I’d been called much worse.

  I’d gotten pretty used to Kellen saying freakish things. It turned out the things became less freakish the more you heard them, and I’d heard them a lot recently. Kellen and I had hung out for the past two days, three if you counted Thursday afternoon as hanging out. I had no idea how that happened.

  Actually, I did know how that happened. It happened because Kellen Jordan was as persistent as a mouse in a cheese factory, which was his explanation for why he was waiting for me again when I walked out of school on Friday. I asked if he was comparing me to a cheese factory and he said of course not, because I didn’t smell nearly as funky as a cheese factory would. And with that heart-warming compliment Kellen gave me a ride home on his bike.

  I hadn’t planned on welcoming Kellen into my house, but it was Friday night and I was lonely. Normally when I got lonely on a Friday night I’d go and do things to numb the loneliness, things that really only made it worse. Things like hooking up with a drunk asshole at a bar.

  I didn’t hook up with a drunk asshole at a bar on Friday night, and I didn’t hook up with Kellen either. Instead we sat on my couch and talked. We talked about nothing and we talked about everything. He told me stories that explained why he was a freak (see, he knew it) and I told him stories that explained why I was the school slut. I had been joking (sort of) when I said this, but Kellen didn’t laugh. He told me he could think of a hundred words to describe me, but ‘slut’ was not one of them. I told him he barely knew me and he said he knew me more than the people that ever called me that and that he hoped to get to know me better. I hadn’t said anything but it was then that I decided that Kellen Jordan being a freak wasn’t such a bad thing and I was actually kind of into it.

  Kellen left around eight to go have dinner with his mom and brother and as I closed the door behind him I couldn’t help but think that Kellen hadn’t tried anything with me all night. He hadn’t tried to feel me up or shove his tongue down my throat. He didn’t even hug me on his way out. He’d just smiled and asked if I wanted to hang out the next day. And I’d said yes, because for the first Friday night in a long time I was looking at the guy I’d spent the evening with and I didn’t feel regret. And for the first Friday night in a long time I was actually saying goodbye to the guy I’d spent the evening with (at eight o’clock, I might add). And for the first Friday night in a long time I didn’t feel so alone.

  When I heard a knock on my front door the next morning, I opened it to find Kellen standing there with his laptop.

  “Saturdays are for watching tv and funny videos online,” he said.

  “Are you inviting yourself in to do that?”

  “Well I was kind of hoping you’d invite me in.”

  I tapped my chin with my finger. “Fine,” I said after a minute. “I guess I can give you the WiFi password.”

  “Ah, the sign of true friendship,” he said.

  We sat next to each other on the couch and proceeded with the video marathon. We’d been sitting there three hours before it hit me that in all that time there was not one instance when Kellen tried to put his arm around me or put his hand on my thigh or anything like that. I pulled my eyes away from the cartoon monkey on the screen and glanced over at Kellen. He was looking right at me and for an instant our eyes met. I looked away quickly, but that instant felt more intimate than anything I’d ever experienced before.

  If Kellen tried to put his arm around me, I would let him.

  Woah.

  This thought freaked me out. It wasn’t necessarily the action itself, but what it would mean. Plenty of boys had put their arms around me, but there had always been a clear end goal. It wasn’t so clear here. I’d let Kellen put his arm around me and then what? We’d fall in love? Get married? Have children? Move into a retirement home and feed each other mashed potatoes and pureed chicken? That one arm move could lead to anything and that just wasn’t what boys were for, not for me at least. Maybe normal relationships started that way but normal relationships weren’t in the cards for me.

  Or were they? Was I catching feelings? Was I actually having a semi-normal thing with a nice boy? What did Kellen expect from me? What did he want?

  I was suddenly really confused, and scared too.

  “You should probably go home,” I said, inching away from Kellen slightly. “I have a lot of work to do.”

  “Do you want any help?”

  “No.”

  “Carson, are you okay?”

  Kellen looked worried and that set me off. I hated when people thought I was crazy. Sure, I felt a little crazy, but that didn’t mean I needed anyone pointing it out.

  “Of course I’m okay,” I snapped. “I just don’t have time to sit and watch stupid cartoons all day.”

  Kellen stood up, looking a little discouraged but not at all angry, and walked out the door. I went straight to my room, got in bed, and cried. And just when I thought I had cried out every last ounce of water in my body, more tears came flooding out of my eyeballs. I had no idea what was wrong with me. I’d been having a good time, a great time even, and then I’d gone and ruined it and I had no clue why. Was I afraid of Kellen or was I afraid of my feelings? I just didn’t know, and all I could do was lay there and cry.

  Somewhere in the middle of crying though, I fell asleep and slept almost straight through the night. I only woke up once when I heard my mom open my door, but I pretended I was still sleeping until I wasn’t pretending anymore.

  I’d never slept for so many hours in a row. It was amazing how exhausted crying could make you. It was also amazing how early you woke up when you actually got a full night’s sleep.

  It was Sunday and I was awake at eight in the morning. I’d never thought I’d see the day when I was awake before noon on a Sunday. Part of me felt like going back to sleep. What did I have to look forward to anyways? Sleeping hurt less than being awake. I couldn’t screw things up when I was asleep.

  The other part of me really had to pee. I didn’t know where my body was getting all of these fluids from, but if I didn’t get
to the bathroom in three seconds my bladder was going to explode. I got out of bed and that’s when I realized I was still wearing my clothes from the day before. And based on the fact that my face felt like it was covered with a porcelain mask, I knew I was wearing my makeup from the day before too. Great. It would take three hours to chisel all of that crap off my face.

  I took what probably looked like the walk of shame to the bathroom (funny since I didn’t actually do anything shameful) and made the decision to pee before I looked in the mirror. I knew that I’d either look like such a train wreck that I’d scare the pee out of me, or I’d look like such a train wreck that I’d laugh the pee out of me. So I did my business and then took a deep breath, preparing myself for the worst.

  “Ugh.”

  My hair was sticking up all over the place, my face powder was cracked and clumped, I had dried mascara tracks running down my cheeks, and my eyeliner was smudged and smeared all over the top half of my face. I looked like a junkyard gremlin.

  That’s when I noticed a pink note taped to the edge of the mirror. I didn’t know how I missed it before, what with it being so obnoxiously pink. Scrawled on the note was my mom’s handwriting. Went shopping for ingredients. Be back in a bit! – Mom.

  I loved how she felt the need to sign her name at the end of the note. Who else would write me a note on fluorescent pink paper and stick it on my bathroom mirror?

  I looked back at my reflection and sighed before throwing my hair up in a bun and getting to work on clearing off the construction site that was my face. Lots of soap and twenty minutes later my skin was makeup-free and a bit red from all the scrubbing. I looked at the girl staring back at me through the mirror, the girl with freckles spread over her face like constellations in the night sky. That girl looked nothing like me. That girl looked everything like me. That girl was a stranger to me.

  And yet… she was also so familiar. She had bits of the little girl I used to know, like those eyes. Those sapphire eyes. It was strange – sort of like looking at the past and the future all at the same time. It was like finding something you’d thought was lost forever. I didn’t even know I’d been looking for this girl, but there she was, and staring into her deep blue eyes made me wonder if maybe change wasn’t as impossible as I’d thought. I’d changed from her to me, hadn’t I? And then I’d just washed me off and gone right back to her.

  Except, which one of us was the actual me? The fact that I was asking myself that made me wonder whether I was different than I’d been even just last week.

  Part of me wanted to cover the girl up, but then again, another part of me didn’t. Besides, any more poking and prodding and I’d end up looking like a blowfish. It wasn’t like anyone was around to see me anyways. I had the house to myself.

  I had the house to myself.

  I smiled at the girl in the mirror before running back to my room. I shimmied out of my pants and pulled off my tank top before throwing on a black t-shirt that had “Kiss my ass” written on the back. Then I grabbed my phone, went to the music app, and turned the volume up all the way, letting the screaming noise stamp out the silence around me as I made my way downstairs in my underwear.

  I was in no mood for pants and that was totally fine because it was Sunday morning and I was home alone, and when a girl is home alone on a Sunday morning she is well within her rights to walk around in her underwear. It was the law.

  When I made it downstairs I placed my phone on the counter and danced around the kitchen, letting the music take me to another world. I forgot about Kellen and my mom and the fact that I wasn’t wearing any makeup and my father’s hand-me-down face freckles were on full display, and I just danced. I spun and twirled and slid across the floor in my socks, slipping and laughing and feeling lighter than I had in a long time. It was a massive improvement from my mood earlier when I’d woken up feeling like a dehydrated raisin. That made me smile and I stumbled across the floor, laughing because I’d probably looked like a dehydrated raisin as well.

  I stopped laughing after a few seconds though because my raisin face made me think of Kellen and his stupid fear of pruny fake fruits blowing up his insides.

  My mood instantly dropped and I turned off the music. Why did it have to be raisins? Why couldn’t Kellen have had a thing against some other food like, I don’t know, graham crackers. Yeah, graham crackers. Everything would’ve been fine if Kellen had some traumatic experience as a child where he fell into a fire while making s’mores.

  As soon as I thought this though I realized it wasn’t true. It wouldn’t have been fine, would it? No, not really. It wouldn’t have mattered if it was graham crackers or pickles or popcorn because no matter what snack Kellen had a weird phobia of, I would still be me. I would still be the girl that screwed everything up.

  I could feel a sense of frustration rush through my body. My hands started to tingle, and my legs started to shake and I didn’t know what to do.

  So I kicked the kitchen counter.

  Pain shot through my big toe, scaring the shakes and the tingles away. I clutched my foot and ended up losing my balance and falling over. I landed flat on my back on the floor. A solid thirty seconds went by and I just laid there, staring at the ceiling.

  I was just beaten up by the kitchen counter. My whole life was a mess and I was literally just knocked out by the counter. I didn’t see how my life could get any more pathetic.

  Oh, wait. I was laying on the floor in my underwear. Bonus pathetic points.

  After about five minutes I finally got to my feet and steadied myself against the cabinet, hoping it wouldn’t spontaneously grow a fist and give me a black eye. All of a sudden my stomach growled and I realized I hadn’t eaten since yesterday afternoon, so I poured myself a bowl of cereal and a glass of orange juice and made my way to the table. If there was anything that could calm my bad mood, it was food.

  As I was eating my cereal, I spotted my backpack lying next to the coffee table in the living room. Maybe I’d get some homework done. I had nothing better to do and despite the I-don’t-give-a-damn-about-school attitude I put off with people like Dr. M, I didn’t mind most of my classes. It was really an I-don’t-give-a-damn-about-geometry attitude, which is why I wouldn’t be doing that particular brand of homework.

  I was taking a sip of orange juice when I heard a knock on the front door. My heart sank to my stomach. My mom’s note had said she’d be back in a bit, but “a bit” usually meant anywhere from three to seven hours later, depending on whether or not she got lost on the baking aisle and then took the scenic route home, which happened to bring her right by the bakery where she could stop to work for “a bit.”

  I ignored the knock. My mom had a key, and she was perfectly capable of using it. There was absolutely no reason why I should have to interrupt my breakfast to open the door for her.

  Another knock echoed through the house just as I was lifting a spoonful of cereal to my mouth. I thought I was going to throw the spoon across the room. Instead, I dropped it back in my bowl and groaned. The spoon clanged against the ceramic, sending bits of cereal and milk flying across the table as I got out of my chair. If there was a God out there, then my mom would just be dropping something off or picking something up before leaving for “a bit” longer.

  “Is there something wrong with your key?” I blurted out as I flung the door wide open.

  God had one twisted sense of humor.

  “Key? I mean I know I’ve been over a few times, but I’m not sure our relationship is at the exchanging keys stage yet.”

  I was speechless, and I was never speechless. I always had something sarcastic to say, but in that moment I’d forgotten how to put a sentence together. It was funny, because while I felt like a black hole was inside my brain sucking up any possible response, there were several thoughts that the black hole kept spitting out and leaving at the forefront of my mind. Like the fact that I hadn’t showered, or that my hair was in a knot on top of my head, or that I wasn’t wearing mak
eup, or that I was standing there in my underwear. Yes, I was suddenly very aware of the fact that Kellen Jordan was at my door, and I was in my underwear.

  Kellen Jordan. My house. Underwear.

  Those were the only words the black hole would allow my brain to keep.

  Kellen’s brain didn’t seem to be having the same issues.

  “I’m flattered, really, but I think we should take things slow, Carson. Let’s wait until next week to give each other keys,” Kellen said, grinning at me.

  I was feeling totally self-conscious and I couldn’t decide why that was. It wasn’t like a guy had never seen me in my underwear. Maybe it was that a guy had never seen me in my underwear in broad daylight on a Sunday morning. Maybe it was that a guy had never seen me in my underwear when my hair was a mess and I had no makeup on, no mask to protect me from the rest of the world. Maybe it was because I had a feeling Kellen wasn’t like all of those other guys. Whatever the case was, I was feeling more exposed than I’d ever felt in my entire life. It was like I’d just been thrown into an arena to fight a starving lion without any armor or weapons.

  I crossed my arms over my chest, but that just pulled my shirt up and exposed my underwear even more. I quickly uncrossed my arms. I was an idiot.

  “What are you doing here?” I finally managed to say.

  Good. That was a solid question.

  Kellen’s expression softened into a shy smile. “I wanted to make sure you were okay. You seemed upset yesterday.”

  Oooooh. That was a pretty solid answer to the question. That was going to make it kind of hard when I sent him packing because I definitely had to send him packing. There was absolutely no way I was hanging out with anyone while looking like something you pulled out of a clogged shower drain.

  “Um, do you want to come inside?”

  Woah, woah, woah. What did I just say? That was not, I repeat, not part of the plan.

  I opened my mouth to plead a momentary case of insanity and uninvite Kellen, but he’d already stepped forward.