Claire's Song

by Ashley King

  Claire nods and then takes a deep breath. "I remember the time he told me I was his best friend. His best friend in the entire world," she says in almost a whisper, her voice barely floating to our ears.

  My heart breaks for this girl and I know there's nothing I can do to fix it. Her mother's words come bouncing back into my ears and I can’t help but let a small part of myself wonder if it’s the truth, whether Claire even realizes it or not. Am I just someone helping to ease the pain of Jamie's death? Am I someone to pass the time with until she's better? Either way I know I'm the most horrible person on the planet for what I'm doing to her, yet here I am wondering what to do to make it all go away, to make the pain better for her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CLAIRE

  It's been a week since Jamie's birthday party. I was a complete mess that night. I thought everything would be okay, that I would be okay, but I was anything but. Things are a little better now, maybe because like always, I force them down and try not to think about them. But I have been feeling the pull to read Jamie's letter again. You'd think those final words of his would be emblazoned into my mind, but I can't even remember when I first read it, because I was so screwed up, so upset.

  Tomorrow's Thanksgiving and I try not to think about how Jamie came here instead of eating with his own family. This year I have Ryder. I'm pretty sure his Dad is coming to eat with us, too. That should be interesting.

  Ryder. I've been thinking about Ryder a lot lately. How he held me that night I lost it about Jamie, how his touch makes me feel, his kisses, and I am afraid I'm rushing into things with him, that I'm not being fair to him, but I'm too selfish to let him go. I want him in my life, I love the way he makes me feel, the way I feel about him. All of those things are real, no matter what the circumstances are. I know I'm not using him as a band-aid for Jamie.

  "Okay, honey, we'll be back tonight, okay?" My mother calls from the doorway of my room.

  "Love you, bye!" I yell after her. She and Dad are going to visit old college friends that are in town, leaving Ryder and me alone in the house. Instantly I warm to the thought. As soon as I hear the garage door shut, I text Ryder. They're gone ;)

  A few minutes later I hear his door open and my heart starts beating wildly and continues to do so on up until he steps foot into my room. He's so gorgeous with that chiseled face, those perfect eyes. I'm liking the way that t-shirt stretches across his body, the way his jeans hang off his narrow hips.

  "That was fast," I joke. I go to my Ipod and put on one of my favorites, "Remember Me as a Time of Day" by Explosions in the Sky.

  "I feel like we haven't been alone in a long time," Ryder says, his eyes burning into me, heating me up from head to toe. With each step I take towards him, I feel like I'm going to faint, my insides are so twisted up and nervous.

  "We can change that now," I whisper once I'm closer, my arms looping around his neck, my mouth next to his ear.

  He pulls back and gives me his sexy half grin, one side tilting up higher than the other.

  "Kiss me," he orders, his voice soft and conflicting with the demand.

  I stand on my tiptoes and kiss him with everything I have, the remaining pieces of my heart and soul thrown together in this kiss. Our lips move expertly together, not missing a beat. The taste of him is everywhere, clouding my thoughts, my mind. He makes a gruff noise when I bite his lip and a sound escapes from my lips when he moves to my neck. The kiss grows deeper and more passionate, everything screaming, begging for him.

  "Ryder," I gasp.

  He pulls away a little and his gaze meets mine. In that moment it seems that he can read my mind. My legs are around his waist and he carries me to the bed, where we continue to kiss and explore. I want him even though I know it's too soon, even though I know I shouldn't. But more than anything I want my first time to be with Ryder, I want his hands all over me, his mouth claiming mine as his.

  My breathing gets heavier with each press of his lips to my skin and then suddenly he pulls away from me.

  "Claire, we've got to stop," his breath hitches, his voice husky. He starts to move away from me and suddenly I feel cold.

  "Why?" I ask, hating how needy I sound, hating that I want him this much.

  "Because you're not ready," he says simply and then rolls over to the side of the bed he occupies, Jamie's side. When will it ever fully be Ryder's side? Or will it always be Jamie's?

  I sit up for a minute and study him. His eyes are on me doing the very same thing and I wonder if he's right. My body is completely willing, but could I handle sex right now with the state I'm in? I want to argue with him, but I don't. I simply lay on his chest and we lay there together, that familiar shifting appearing once again and it makes me nervous.

  After a while, Ryder falls asleep. I’m glad because he's been looking more tired than usual. I can only attribute it to getting ready for his big show that's coming up in less than two weeks. I move just slightly, careful not to wake him. I study him in all his perfection and lightly trace my finger across his cheekbones and down his neck. I take in his arms, which have gotten more defined within the past two months.

  I move my path downwards to the leather bands on his wrists. Around and beneath the bands I can see what looks like angry slashes, but so many that the skin is discolored. What is this? Then it hits me and I sit up so fast I can barely catch my breath.

  Ryder sits up too, disoriented. "What is it?" he asks, blinking several times.

  I put my hand on my head to stop it from spinning, my breathing bordering near panic attack. "It's…well, I saw something," I manage to get out.

  Anger swells up in my heart, threatening to explode, and I don’t know what to say, what to do, what to think. I scramble off the bed, trying to put space between the situation, between my heart.

  Ryder's eyes narrow in confusion as he looks at me. "What did you see?" He pulls down the sleeves of his hoodie all the way over his leather bands.

  "Do you…do you…cut yourself?" I ask, my world threatening to crumble and crash into the merciless sea.

  Ryder runs a hand over his face and then quietly he asks, "Why do you care, Claire?"

  At this moment he is no longer the Ryder I fell in love with. This boy before me is hardened and cold and there is nothing but sadness radiating from those eyes, the very same eyes that used to study with me with such care and interest.

  "Because I do, Ryder. Because I care about you, you stupid idiot!" I scream as I throw my hands up. "When will you realize that? That I love you? And, and…" I can't get the words out. I'm freaking out.

  My heart is thundering in my chest, its echo pulsing in my ears, the world is spinning on its axis and there isn't enough air to breathe. I slide down against the wall and sit on my floor; my eyes staring helplessly back at the boy I love.

  "What the hell, Ryder? You are such an asshole! You know what I went through with Jamie and you're cutting yourself? Why? Why do you do it? What if you actually hit an artery?"

  "I die," he says simply, as if it's no big deal.

  "Why do you cut yourself? And for how long?" I ask, my chest constricting and hurting. I can barely make myself say the words.

  Ryder rubs the back of his neck as he refuses to look at me. I stand up, although I feel wobbly, like everything I know has been ripped out from beneath me.

  "Look at me, Ryder!" I raise my voice, anger fueling me now.

  Ryder finally glances at me as he throws his arms out to the side, "What do you want me to say, Claire? It's not what you want to hear, is it? I've been cutting myself for years now."

  "Why?" I ask, my voice shaking, my heart breaking at how defeated Ryder sounds.

  The word is on repeat inside my head, inside my heart. Why? Why? Why? Why? Lindy's taunts of being the Black Widow rear their ugly head and I have to take a deep breath in order not to lose it right then and there.

  "I can't tell you," he answers, looking at the floor. "Look, I should go. I'll pack my things and just mo
ve in with my Dad."

  "Are you trying to kill yourself?" I block the doorway.

  He doesn't answer me.

  "There are other ways to deal with whatever it is," I say.

  Ryder looks at me, his voice soft and not angry, "Then you need to look into that about Jamie, Claire. You say you're dealing with his death, but you're not. You're a freaking mess. Just like me. We all have our own ways of dealing with things."

  Ryder tries to go past me, but I grab his shirtsleeve. "Are you trying to kill yourself?"

  "No," he answers and then he's gone, gone from my room, my house, my life.

  RYDER

  She was going to find out sooner or later. She was willing to give herself to me and I knew at that moment that I couldn't do that to her. I love her too much, even though I never wanted to in the first place. The way she looked so broken and helpless shattered everything I had left and I knew I had to get out of there. I threw everything I had in a bag and went to my Dad's, where I spent Thanksgiving eating a fancy catered dinner.

  It's been a week since our fight and I ignore her in school and she does the same. We are two complete strangers now, no hint of what we used to be, and it makes me think of that Smashing Pumpkins song, "Perfect."

  Even with all that, I'm still writing Claire a last song, because that doesn’t mean I don't love her. It's just better this way. Now she has time to get over me maybe, before I actually kill myself. I've got this countdown written on my hand. Sick, right? Today it reads two days. Two days until I never see Claire again, never touch her soft skin or smell that vanilla perfume of hers. Two days before I tell her goodbye forever.

  Since I'm ending it, I've managed to lay off the cutting, the anxiety strangely nonexistent. My Dad doesn’t notice a thing, but how would he, since he never noticed anything before? He's had me filling out college applications and I just couldn’t bring myself to tell him it's over for me, that I'm tired of fighting.

  Lindy has picked up her crusade at school and one day last week Darren beat the crap out of me. I let him because I’m tired of it all. I got a nice black eye from it, but I didn't get suspended, which my Dad said was commendable. Freaking commendable. I don’t want to be commendable. I'm a coward, that's what I am and I know it.

  I sit on my bed and take out my guitar and my notepad and try to write the perfect song for Claire. The words just won’t come and neither will any inspiration. I lie back on the bed and wonder if I should just end it all before the show. Besides, who would really care?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CLAIRE

  Mom was shattered when she found out that Ryder left. I didn't tell my parents the reason why. I made up a lie, which they easily bought. The rest of the break I just sat in my room and listened to depressing music and thought of both of the boys I've loved and lost. Lindy's right. I'm just a magnet for this stuff or I make people hate their lives, which one, I'm not sure.

  It's the day of Ryder's big show and I know that I'll go even though it scares me to death. I've tried contacting him, tried talking to him at school, going to his Dad's apartment, but nothing works. He refuses to see me and that breaks my heart into even more pieces, just when I thought there was nothing left to break.

  I roll over and face the drawer that houses the box with Jamie's letter. That Juliana Theory song is playing and it's like a siren call for the Jamie's words. I sit up and hang my feet over the edge of the bed. I feel nauseated. No. I'm doing this. I place one foot down and then the other. I walk over to the drawer and open it, pull the box out and take a deep breath. The nausea still rolls through me and I even gag once, the stress, the pressure, the thoughts of Jamie swirling through my head, the thoughts of Ryder cutting himself, all the while I'm too stupid to see that anything is really wrong with either of them.

  I steel myself and open the box. Jamie's handwriting meets my eyes, that chicken scratch handwriting that I used to make so much fun of. The sound of my heart can be heard thundering and echoing in my ears, my palms sweaty. I'm about to put the letter back in the box, forgetting it ever existed when Ryder's words come back to me. He's right, as much as I hate to admit it. Everyone's right. I haven't dealt with Jamie's death well. I haven't allowed myself to grieve, but instead I've just been pushing everything down, hiding it by being sad and hating everything, by trying to lose myself in Ryder, in music. Maybe this letter is the start of something. Maybe those words will set me free. With one quick movement my hands are taking the letter from the envelope, carefully unfolding it as if it is the most precious thing in the world, which to me, it is.

  Tears begin to blur my vision as soon as I see how neatly Jamie wrote this letter to me, as if in all the rush to leave this world, Jamie at least took the time to write his last words carefully. I almost smile at the gesture because it is so classically Jamie. I wipe my eyes and am careful not to allow my tears to splash onto the paper.

  Finally I take another deep breath and begin reading the words that have haunted me for so long.

  Claire,

  If you've gotten this letter, it means that I'm gone. I know you well enough to know you are hating me and/or blaming yourself for everything. It was never you, Claire. You were the one bright spot in my life. Since I was in middle school I toyed with the idea of taking my own life, because I just felt this darkness pressing upon my mind and soul. I live with my parents who are horrible people that only care about themselves and money. Nothing makes me feel alive anymore, nothing except you. I don’t want you to think that you weren’t enough to keep me here, because that's not it at all. You are the most wonderful, amazing girl I've ever met. You are perfect in every way down to the your snort when you laugh, to the way you checked me out the day we first met. I wanted to make you mine so many times, to be your boyfriend, but I just couldn't do that to you, knowing in the back of my mind that this was always lurking. Thank you for always being there, always being the other half of my heart.

  I love you, Claire. I love you more than anything else in this world and the only thing I will miss when I'm gone is you, your touch, and the way you look at me. But don’t forget those words I said to you, that you need to find a guy who will treat you like you're everything, a guy who will love you no matter what, a guy who is worthy of you. To be honest I don't know if anyone could ever be worthy of you. You're strong and beautiful and I know you will get through this. Don't be mad at me, don’t be angry at the world, but be strong and remember all the times we had together. Tell your kids about your crazy friend Jamie one day. I want you to live life because you are not weighed down by the darkness as I am. Live it and think of me.

  I love you more than you'll ever know,

  Jamie

  Tears are falling down my face, but I'm not about to lose control. It's the sweetest letter, the sweetest words that have met my ears and eyes. I gently kiss the paper, the paper that Jamie touched. His words soak into me, into my very soul and I think about one line in particular. Live it and think of me. I haven't been living. I've been walking through the past ten months like a zombie and Ryder was the first thing to awaken any semblance of life in me. Now he's gone. I even tried to help him. I told Mrs. Weathersby about the cutting and I think that's another reason he's pissed at me.

  I know now what I need to do. I haven’t been able to give Ryder everything, my full self. Upon this realization, I grab a few things, throwing them into a tiny bag. Next thing I know, I'm in my car and heading for a place that I haven't been in a very long time.

  I've got my Ipod and speaker in my hands and my backpack hoisted over my shoulder. There's plenty of sun left in this fall afternoon and I relish the cool breeze. My boots crunch the leaves underfoot and the rest stir and dance in the wind. My hair's grown a little longer and it kisses my face, a feeling once familiar.

  I walk the rows of headstones until I come to one tucked beneath a willow tree. There are new artificial flowers in Christmas colors in the urn sitting atop Jamie's grave. I stand at the foot of his headsto
ne for a moment, reading the inscription that's seared in my memory. James "Jamie" Morgan, November 15, 1996-January 21, 2013, Son, Brother, Friend. Tears start to well in my eyes as I kneel down and gently touch the indentions.

  "Hear You Me" by Jimmy Eat World filters through our conversation. We're on the way to the bowling alley, but Jamie stops talking the moment the song comes on. His eyes stay on the road as he gets this distant look in his eyes. His hand reaches across the console and takes mine. He squeezes my hand, the conversation completely halted, the car filled with only Jim Adkins's voice.

  "Jamie?" I'm looking at him, his handsome profile illuminated in the moonlight. That slightly crooked nose, broken from a fight in tenth grade that always makes me laugh, that perfectly messy hair that a rock star would kill for, the heart of gold that he never lets anyone see, only me. As I sit there, I wonder how did I ever get so lucky to be able to call him my friend?

  "Isn't this song beautiful?" He asks, our hands still entwined.

  We pull into the bowling alley parking lot and Jamie puts the car in park. We sit there, listening to the song, our eyes scanning everything but each other.

  "One of the best."

  "When I die I want this played at my funeral."

  "It's beautiful. But I'm not sure what I want played at my funeral. Blink 182 maybe?"

  Jamie faces me, one hand draped on the steering wheel, and sighs. "I won't be here for that, but I'm sure it'll be a party," he jokes. His eyes are drinking in my face as he tries to laugh.

  I punch him in his arm, "Shut up! I'm dying first and that's all there is to it. I don't want to do this without you, got it?"

  He shakes his head, his words and tone not matching, "Fine. But on the off chance I do go first, I want this played at my funeral. Okay?"

  I nod, satisfied with his answer. To think of losing Jamie made me want to curl up in a ball. I couldn't live without him, without my best friend.

  But I didn't get to make his wish come true. His parents refused, his sister wouldn't help, and my mom said to let it rest. I tried to break into the sound booth at the funeral home, but got caught. Nothing worked and it only made the pain worse. My best friend didn't even get his last wish and wasn't that the least I could do? Hadn't I promised him that?