Chase comes to the door: “Hi, I am from across the street and I would like to talk to your daughter through the window. Could you give her this so we can talk?”
Yeah, I’m sure that would go well. The tears had stopped, but now they flow freely from my eyes again. At times like this, my life feels so hopeless. I know it won’t be like this forever, but I don’t know how I can live like this for two more years. The older I get, the more difficult it becomes. Even at this point, my mother’s actions are affecting my chances of getting into any kind of college worth going to. My grades are mediocre because half of the time I don’t finish homework. Any time there are big projects, they don’t get done. I can only do so much in between classes. I still do my best, but in this case, my best isn’t nearly good enough. I know colleges look at extra–curricular activities, too; but since I’m not allowed to do anything extra, that’s a mark against me too. The best I could hope for at this point would be to get into a technical college, but that isn’t going to do anything to help me follow my dream.
My dream is to be a photographer. The thought of being able to stand safely behind a camera and capture the emotions of other people has always intrigued me. I look at photography books at school whenever I can, and some of the photos are so beautiful, they bring me to tears. The way good photographers can tell an entire story with one photo is mind-boggling. I want to do that. I want to be the one who tells stories through pictures. But you can’t get a degree like that from a technical college. You also can’t get into a decent art school without a portfolio. Building a photography portfolio with no camera is impossible.
These are the thoughts that I can’t seem to move past. I can look at the next two years and think “yeah, I can get through this; there is an end in sight,” but knowing that my future is going to be affected by the way my life is now is too much to handle. All I want is to be a normal teenager. I want to think about normal teenaged things. I want my biggest concern in this moment to be Chase. To sit here and wonder if he likes me, or if he thinks I’m pretty, or if he thinks anything about me at all.
Instead, I sit here and wonder how I am going to make it through another weekend at home with her. Every weekend is the same: I do my chores, I stay out of her way, and I still get reprimanded for everything. My chores weren’t done right. I walked up the stairs too loudly. I woke up too early. Her weekend is spent sitting in her chair in the living room watching Lifetime movies and watching me, just waiting for me to screw up. Death is a welcome option. Being dead would be easier than dealing with this all of the time.
CHAPTER SIX
Chase
The first chance I get to talk to her, I blow it. Completely. Not like, well, that didn’t go as planned, more like a nuclear bomb that spells out YOU ARE AN IDIOT in big black smoke.
When I get up to my room, she is still in her window, sitting with her knees up just looking out the window. It looks like she is crying, but I can’t tell for sure from this far away. She looks over when I turn my light on, and we just sit and look at each other. She definitely has tears in her eyes. What is making her so sad? I want to talk to her again. She always looks unhappy, but I have never seen her look this dejected. I don’t have her phone number, so I can’t call her. I certainly don’t want to go over there, since she clearly already thinks I’m creepy. Rightfully so, I guess. I’m sure staring at her from my window isn’t helping that image.
My mind is spinning, trying to figure out how I can communicate with her, when I realize that I can write on my sketchpad and hold it up. I shoot her the one minute sign and scramble to get my sketchpad and a marker as quickly as I can. I write the word HI as big as I can and hold it up. She smiles a little half smile and looks around her room for a minute and then shakes her head and holds up her hands.
CAN I CALL YOU? I write.
Again she shakes her head. Does that mean she doesn’t want me to call her? Or maybe she doesn’t have a phone?
WHY?
She makes a little phone with her hand and holds it up to her ear and shakes her head. I think that means no phone, at least I hope that’s what it means. I can fix that, but I can’t fix her not wanting me to call her.
NO PHONE?
Again she shakes her head.
Well, this is not going to work. I grab my marker one more time and write I CAN FIX THAT.
I need to have some way to communicate with her. I turn my light off and head downstairs to talk to my dad. When my mom died, she left me quite a bit of money, but I have to have my dad’s permission to use any of it until I turn eighteen. I want to buy her a phone so that I can at least text her; this is going to be a tough sell.
I find my dad downstairs in his office.
“Hey bud, what’s up? How was your day?” he asks hopefully.
“Well it was good. I finally talked to that girl I was telling you about.”
“Oh? And how did it go?”
“Um, not good, kind of good—I don’t really know. Something is up with this girl. She is just so sad all of the time. I really feel like I can help her, but I need to know why first.”
“Seems logical enough. Why don’t you call her?”
“I don’t have her number.”
“Why don’t you just go over to her house then?”
“Well, I kind of followed her home, and now she thinks I’m some kind of stalker. I don’t think that would be the best idea,” I mumble.
“Smooth, Chase,” he snickers.
“I tried writing and showing it to her through the window, but she has no paper either. Which is why I came to talk to you.”
“Let me get his straight: You followed her home, she thinks you’re creepy, and now you are writing notes to her through your window? Doesn’t that kind of confirm the creepiness?”
“Yeah well, I am hoping you will let me get her a phone so that I don’t seem quite as weird watching her in the window.”
“No, you are absolutely not going to take money from your trust fund to buy some girl you barely know a phone. Are you nuts? Not to mention the fact that buying her a phone is over the top. If she thinks you’re creepy now, she will think you’re psychotic if you do this.”
“Dad, you need to trust me on this. She has that same look in her eyes that mom did before she, well, you know.”
He puts his head in his hands and sits like that for what seems like forever. I shouldn’t have brought up my mom, but hell, my big mouth is on a roll today.
“Dad, I just want to help her. Or at least try.”
“I get that, really I do, I just, don’t want you to get hurt. You have no idea what you are getting involved in with her. It may be something that you can’t help with.”
“I will feel more hurt watching her suffer and not even trying to help.”
“Okay, okay, I get it. I will run and get her a phone. My money though, not yours.”
“Thanks Dad, I appreciate your trusting me on this.”
“Just be careful. If she is like your mom, you are bound to get hurt in the end, and this kind of hurt is not easy to get through.”
“I know,” I say solemnly.
Everyone knows how bad it hurts to lose someone, especially to suicide. The years before she actually killed herself were just as bad as her actual death. She struggled with this addiction and that, and in the end, it was just too much. Now everyone we know looks at us with this look that’s a mixture of judgment and pity. Judging mostly, though, because shouldn’t we have seen it? Shouldn’t we have done something?
The thing is, we did see it, and we did try to help her; but she was already gone. I think in her mind she was gone long before she actually killed herself. She stopped going to work, stopped going out with friends, stopped going to my games—she just stopped living. It was all very gradual, and we didn’t even realize what was happening at first. But like I said, by the time we did, it was too late.
So now we have to live with that. She is gone, she escaped her problems, but all she did
was leave all of those problems for us to try to figure out without her. It’s not fair. She should have to explain herself. Have to deal with her problems just like the rest of us. I will never understand, and that kills me.
But the sorrow that I saw in her eyes in the months before she did it, is the same sorrow I see in Tenley’s eyes. It’s a hopeless sadness. When I first made eye contact with those beautiful chocolate eyes, I could see it, but the difference is, I could still see life behind that sadness, as though if someone could get in, she could still be saved. I will be that someone. I can save her. I know it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Tenley
Saturdays suck. My alarm clock still goes off at seven, so I can get all my chores done before eight AM. I have to have them done before eight, even though I am not allowed to do anything other than sit in my room for the rest of the day. Today I will be allowed to go outside, but only to do yard work. Winter is much worse. The only time I get to go outside then is if it snows and I have to shovel.
I get up and get dressed, and then I find myself pulled toward the window. I look at Chase’s window to see if, for whatever reason, he is sitting there just waiting for me to look, although of course he is not. However, there is a sign in the window that simply says FRONT DOOR.
I run downstairs as quickly and quietly as I can. On the front door is a small gift-wrapped box. I close the door and head back upstairs. Once I am back in my room, I unwrap it to find a brand new iPhone with a note attached.
Tenley: I hope you don’t mind, but I thought texting might be easier than messages through the window. I already sent a text to your new phone so you have my number. I also set up a passcode for you. When the numbers come up, the code is my birthday 1017. Just type it in. Text me when you get this. If you want to. I will be awake.
Chase
He bought me a cellphone? Who the hell is this guy? I have never had a cellphone before; obviously Queen Control Freak would never in a million years let me have one. Keeping this hidden is going to be a challenge.
I rip open the box and sit and stare at it for a few minutes. I don’t even know how to turn it on. The instructions are in the box so I open them to see where the power button is. I find it and turn it on. A little apple comes on the screen along with a keypad. I tap 1017 to see Chase’s goofy, duck-lipped face as the background, and I giggle. I can feel the heat rising to my cheeks. No one has ever done anything like this for me before, and you have to give the guy credit for being so brave, especially after how I treated him yesterday.
There is a text from him as promised that simply says, “Hi.” Cute. Just like the first message in his window last night.
I read the instructions again on how to text, and I send him a quick one that says: I have to have my chores done before my mom wakes up. I will text you when I am done. I pick up all the paper and the box and slide the phone under my mattress. I take the garbage with me and throw it out in a bag with some other stuff and toss it in the garbage in the garage so that my mother doesn’t see it.
I am absolutely giddy now, walking around the house doing all the crap I have to do. It really isn’t that bad, I guess. I just have to empty the dishwasher, wipe down the kitchen counters, scrub the kitchen floor, clean all three bathrooms, take out the garbage… Okay, maybe it is a lot; but I am used to it, so it really doesn’t take me that long.
Just as I am finishing up my last bathroom, I hear mom coming down the stairs. As expected, she immediately starts criticizing the job I have done. Normally, I would fight back, and we would have a whole big argument, but I am too excited because I want to go check my phone, so I just listen to her complain and then fix all of the problems she has pointed out as fast as I can.
In no time at all, I am done and have even done a few extra projects to keep her out of my hair for a while. Before I go upstairs, I decide maybe I should be a little nicer than normal, just to get some extra points.
“Mom, everything is done the way you asked. I was wondering if you wanted me to mow the lawn and pull the weeds today or wait until tomorrow?”
“I told you yesterday that I wanted it done today. You can pull the weeds this morning, but don’t mow the lawn until after noon. I don’t need you waking up the whole damned neighborhood. And try to do a better job than you did last time; it looked like it was cut with a scissors for Christ sake.”
She did not tell me to do it yesterday, but I smile and respond that I will go out and start with the weeds around noon. And if she thinks I do such a terrible job of mowing, maybe she could get up and do it herself for once. I don’t say that, though. That wouldn’t end well.
Once I am back in my room, I close my door and get all of my homework spread out on my bed so it looks like I am doing it and grab my phone from where I had put it under my mattress. Chase had texted me back.
We texted back and forth a few times, and then I heard my mother coming up the stairs so I quickly hid the phone back under the mattress and make it look like I am doing homework.
She comes and slams the door open. Wonderful.
“What are you doing up here?” she sneers.
Using every ounce of willpower I have not to just scream at her, I respond, “I am just trying to get some homework done before noon so that I can go do all of the outside stuff.”
With that she rips the book and pencil I have out of my hand and starts reading. “I can’t even read this chicken scratching you call handwriting.” She tears the sheets of paper into pieces and throws them on the ground. “Start over. And try to make it at least somewhat legible this time. And clean up this room; you have shit all over the floor.” I swear she is smiling as she turns and leaves the room because she knowingly just tore up two days’ worth of work, and the “shit” she so gracefully referred to is the paper she just threw, nothing else.
It is bad enough that I have to write everything by hand because I am not allowed to use her computer, but now I have to start over. I could kill her. I feel the tears starting to well up in my eyes again, but I remember that I am in the middle of a text conversation with Chase.
I pull the phone back out and eventually the tears subside, and I am grinning from ear to ear. He makes me smile. He is the only person who makes me smile.
We text back and forth for a bit while I try to write down everything I can remember from what I had before, with the pieces on the floor and what was in my head I think I have pretty much everything I had before.
The conversation with Chase ends with his saying he will see me this afternoon, and he won’t, but he says things like that and I believe him, even if it is against my better judgment.
But I have to admit, last night when he said he would fix the paper situation I was thinking maybe he would get me some paper, not a phone! But he came through. My untrusting mind and heart are learning that he follows through. Although I am still guarded about it, somewhere inside of me I feel like I can trust him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Phone – Chase
I must have fallen asleep on the couch, but when I wake up at four AM, Tenley’s new phone is sitting in a box on the table. I take it out and get it plugged in to start charging and get it set up.
I snap a picture of myself with the goofiest face I can muster at this hour, and set it as the background, and then grab my phone and quickly send her a text so she will have my number. I think a simple “hi” will do for the first text.
I find some paper and a pen and scribble out a little note to put with the phone. I need to go for my run, so I leave the phone charging.
When I get back from the run, the phone is charged, so I wrap it up with the note and leave it on her front door. As I start to put it back in the box, I realize that I should probably set up a pass code just in case her mom finds it. I quickly set it up with my birthday and put it in the box. I don’t want to be sitting in my window just waiting for her to wake up, so I grab my trusty sketchpad again and put a note in the window that says FRONT DOOR and then r
un over and set it on her front porch. When I get back home, I jump into the shower so that I will be ready when she finally wakes up.
I usually use my early weekend mornings to sit in the backyard and draw; the light is perfect at this hour, and it’s so peaceful to be outside before the rest of the world is awake. Trying not to look over at her house, I grab my art bag and head downstairs to get some drawing done. I have my phone in my pocket so that when she does get the phone and texts, I will be able to respond immediately. God only knows what she was thinking last night when I just disappeared.
Just as I am starting to think that maybe she was trying to tell me she didn’t want me to call, my phone dings, and I am irritatingly giddy with anticipation. The text says something about how she has to get some stuff done before her mom wakes up and she will text later.
I send a quick text back, so she will see it when she gets back to her phone: Good morning beautiful. Too cheesy?
With that done, I go back to drawing. Within a few minutes I realize that the tree I was drawing suddenly has a beautiful dark-haired girl with chestnut eyes sitting next to it crying. It amazes me the way my brain works and that I can draw her without even realizing I am doing it. And somehow, looking at the drawing, I even drew the sadness into her eyes, not just the tears, but the sadness behind the tears too. This girl is going to be the death of me. Although I have been watching her for a few weeks, I only really just met her yesterday, and already I feel like I can’t breathe when she isn’t around.
My phone dings and it is the happiest sound in the world.
Tenley: Perfect amount of cheesy. Thank you for the phone. No one has ever done anything like that for me before.
Chase: Not even your boyfriend?
Tenley: I’m sure you know I don’t have one, stalker boy.
Chase: Stalker boy? Ouch.
Tenley: So why did you get me the phone?
Chase: I wanted to talk to you.
Tenley: How did you know I wanted to talk to you?
Clouds That Were (Weathered Hearts) Page 3