Shape of My Life

by DC Renee

  “Nice to meet you Brooklyn; Kami mentioned you needed some help with a paper.” She motioned over to the receptionist.

  “Oh, uh, yes, if I could have a few minutes of your time, that would be great.”

  “I’m not sure how much help I’ll be, but sure,” she responded and led me to the cafeteria where we took a seat. “So what’s this paper about?” she asked as she continued to study my face.

  “It’s about influential musicians who died in their prime,” I told her as I had Kami.

  “What does that have to do with me?” she asked, her confusion genuine.

  “Did you work here four years ago?”

  “I … uh, yes,” she stuttered as my question caught her off guard.

  “Did you know Jourdan?”

  “I … oh … you”—her eyes widened as she drank me in, and I could see when she understood why my eyes had seemed familiar to her—“are asking questions that I cannot answer.” She finished her thought after a moment.

  “Please, Rhonda, I just want to know about her. I know she died in this hospital. I want to understand her better.”

  “And you think her stay here will help you do that?” she scoffed.

  “I think it’s a part of her, and there aren’t many details surrounding her death.”

  “Look, Brooklyn, have you heard of HIPAA?” she asked, and I nodded. It was the patient confidentiality act. “Then you understand that I can’t share any information with you.”

  “Did she ever wake up?” I tried, even though I knew she wouldn’t answer.

  “Even if I could help you, there really isn’t anything I could tell you that the papers didn’t already know.”

  “Please, anything,” I begged.

  “What’s this really about? It’s not some paper, is it?” she asked, seeing right through me. I didn’t respond. I didn’t have to. She seemed to understand something bigger was at play with just the look she gave me. “Look, I can get in trouble for even saying this, and it’s a complete violation of her rights, but Jourdan left a bitter world for a better one. Let it go.”

  “I can’t,” I whispered.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t help you.”

  “I’ll find someone else to help me,” I blurted out, one last try.

  “No, sweetie, you won’t.” I was sure I heard a note of sympathy in her voice. I bowed my head in defeat as she patted my hand and stood to leave. “Sometimes”—she looked me in the eye with conviction as I looked up to meet her stare—“it’s better to let troubles stay where they are—in the past. That girl is long gone. Don’t dwell on her death; focus on your future.” She turned and walked away before I could utter another word. I was sure I wouldn’t have been able to, though, even if I tried. I was left sitting with my mouth slightly ajar, something akin to shock coursing through my veins.

  I honestly wasn’t sure what I would find when I got here, but that certainly hadn’t been it. I’d say I left with more questions than answers, but I at least had some clue. Rhonda had been acting weird. And that meant she knew more than she was letting on. There was more work to be done.

  I thought briefly about her last words to me. In any other situation, Rhonda probably would have been right. I would have walked away and never looked back. But I didn’t have a choice. I had to keep looking because it was no longer the past. It was in the present because it was a part of me.

  Brooklyn

  I was utterly lost after I left the hospital. I wasn’t sure what my next step would be. I had been hoping I’d have some vast amount of knowledge after going to the hospital or some great epiphany. Obviously, I had neither. I just knew there was more to the story, but what was I supposed to do with that?

  I contemplated breaking into some office, but that wasn’t realistic. I wouldn’t know which office, how to break in, or what to look for exactly. I thought about hacking into their computer system, but I had no skills to do that, and I didn’t know anyone who did. It wasn’t like I could call up Hackers R Us and get them to do my dirty work.

  I thought about getting a job there and using that opportunity to take a peek at Jourdan’s files, but what kind of job could I get that would allow me access? And if Rhonda saw me and outed me? Even volunteering wouldn’t get me close to her records and would be just as suspicious.

  I felt defeated as I made it to my hotel room.

  I felt so defeated I grabbed one bottle from the mini bar and downed it, then another, then maybe one or two more.

  I felt so defeated after I drank too much for my own good I searched for my phone to listen to my messages before I realized I didn’t have it.

  I felt so defeated I almost used the hotel phone to call my parents and confess everything then call Cassidy and ask her to come save me.

  I felt so defeated I dialed Grennan just to hear his voice before hanging up … if I had enough courage to hang up without saying something.

  I felt so defeated I turned on my laptop and tried to see what Grennan was up to. It was thanks to his fans I saw he was performing, although if I thought about it, I would have known that already.

  There was a picture of his taken from somewhere in the audience, far enough away that he looked like his usual self to anyone who didn’t know him. But I knew him, or rather, I thought I did. He looked … I couldn’t put my finger on it, but he didn’t look like himself. He looked distraught maybe with a shadow of a fake smile cresting his lips.

  My heart momentarily broke for him before I remembered just how much I needed him the exact moment he realized he didn’t need me.

  I slammed my laptop shut, found another bottle … or four, and spent the next thirty-six hours going in and out of sleep, hugging the toilet, cursing myself, throwing insults at the empty room, and wishing for death.

  I had never experienced a hangover like that in my life. I was sure my heartache intensified it, but I vowed never to drink again.

  I was also upset with myself for losing precious time to figure out what the deal was with my connection to Jourdan. The only good thing about the lost time? I didn’t dream. Although, at this point, I almost welcomed a dream so I could get some clues.

  After scarfing down some food, taking some much-needed, even if delayed, aspirin, and finally getting a good night’s sleep, it was like the universe had heard my request. I dreamed. I dreamed of Jourdan and myself as two separate people again. This time, I dreamed I watched her as a patient in the hospital, lying asleep in her bed.

  And then almost as if she sensed my presence, her eyes opened up wide as she stared at me.

  “This is where my life took a different shape,” she told me.

  “Where you died,” I responded as I nodded, understanding what she meant.

  She frowned at my response but then said, “I don’t think you’re ready.”

  “For you to take my body?” I laughed mockingly. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’m not ready for that.”

  She shook her head in disappointment. “If you want to understand everything, no more pity. Action.”

  “I’ve tried.”

  “And failed.”

  “Just tell me what I’m supposed to know,” I demanded.

  “Knowing is one thing, seeing it is something different.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Then go find the answers. You have the capacity. If you want to know it, it will be revealed.”

  “How?” I asked.

  She motioned around the room. “Look around. Look for the feelings. You’ll see them when you look.”

  “How the hell can you see feelings? And why can’t you just tell me what you want or leave me alone?” I was screaming.

  “Look around,” she said once more and then she was gone, and I was left in the room alone with an empty bed. The sheets on the bed tucked in tight, as if no one had just been there.

  The minute I stepped closer to the bed, trying to find what Jourdan was telling me to look for, the dream disappeared, and I was awake, gasping for
breath.

  “How much more can my mind take before it cracks under pressure?” I asked the redundant question out loud. “‘Look around,’ she says and then disappears. What the hell am I supposed to do with that? Look where?” I asked the empty room. And then I was gasping for another reason. I knew exactly where to look.

  Brooklyn

  If you walk into a place like you know where you’re going or like you belong there, people tend not to question it. I learned this from Grennan. It wasn’t something he taught me so much as something I observed. I did just that as I entered the small hospital for the second time that week.

  On the inside, I was a nervous wreck, anticipating either Kami or Rhonda recognizing me and kicking me out. I was worried my obvious lack of knowing exactly where to go as I pretended I knew where I needed to be would be a dead giveaway I didn’t belong.

  I made it past the receptionist, not even glancing to see if it was Kami or someone else, and got into the elevator with no hiccups. I breathed a sigh of relief as I tried to figure out which floor to get off on. Two had always been my favorite number, so it seemed like a good place to start.

  When the doors opened, and I stepped into the hallway, I had a weird sense of déjà vu. I couldn’t remember being in a hospital but looking right and left, it looked just like I had imagined. White. Sterile. Long hallways. A few people bustling about.

  I looked down at my simple outfit of jeans and a shirt, and I realized I stuck out. “What am I doing here?” I whispered.

  Looking around, I answered in my mind. I shrugged and walked toward the left. It looked quieter.

  I honestly had no idea what I was looking for. A feeling. I wasn’t sure if I was on the correct floor or going the right direction, but I figured a hospital was a hospital. Every floor was essentially the same; every room was similar. I’d get just as good a feeling on this floor in this section as I would anywhere else. I didn’t think it mattered if I found Jourdan’s room, as long as I understood what she went through. And I realized that was the feeling I was trying to find. What she felt when she was here.

  I walked slowly down the halls but with purpose, hoping no one would stop me. There weren’t too many people about, and the ones who were didn’t seem to notice me. At least, they didn’t seem to care.

  I had a little shadow of paranoia following me, but I knew I needed to focus. When I let my guard down a bit, I felt … something. I wasn’t sure what. It was just a feeling as if I had been there before, as if I had waded through life there before, like I had some big profound moment. If I was feeling whatever Jourdan was feeling, it made sense.

  They say people in comas could hear, and even those who were dead, but hadn’t quite left us still lingered. I was clearly experiencing that firsthand. But the point was that she’d know everything going on around her; she’d understand the gravity of her situation. She’d feel something deep, almost philosophical. And I was feeling all that.

  I turned right and glanced briefly into a few rooms. Some were closed; some were slightly ajar, most with patients inside. They didn’t notice me either.

  I stopped short when I saw an empty room at the end of the hallway. I looked around and slipped in when I saw no one was around.

  Most likely, that hadn’t been Jourdan’s room. I imagined she had a private suite on a top floor, security outside her door, and round-the-clock nursing staff. This room didn’t fit the bill, but I just wanted to know what it was like to be in one of the rooms. To sit on the bed as if it were meant for me.

  So I closed the door behind me, and I did just that. I sat gingerly nearly at the bed, my eyes facing the door as if I was waiting for someone to walk in and find me to kick me out, or lock me up, or maybe both.

  I closed my eyes, and I was overwhelmed with sensations. Sadness, anger, bitterness, rage, surprise, pain, so much pain, both physical and emotional, and shockingly, I felt almost a comical edge of hope, like it didn’t belong, and really, it didn’t. There was no hope in Jourdan’s life at that point. Unless she counted the ability to possess me, I thought dryly.

  I opened my eyes and gasped as I covered my mouth. I blinked, and the image was gone. I closed my eyes, and I let my heartbeat settle. I hadn’t seen the face of a man, that man in my dreams for a while. And even then, it wasn’t a perfect face, no defined lines, just the outline, the basics. I knew I had seen a scary face before, but it was more of a realization than a concrete image. Not this time. I had seen him, clear as day as if he were standing before me.

  “Stop messing with me, Jourdan,” I whispered as my eyes stayed shut. I breathed in deeply ten times like I’d heard on TV worked, and then I opened my eyes again, and I jumped back on the bed. He was there. I blinked, and he was still there.

  The only emotion I felt was fear. Pure, unadulterated fear. I knew no one was in front of me; I knew it was my mind playing tricks, but I couldn’t stop myself from feeling like a scared little girl.

  “Who are you?” I asked, trying to find some fake courage.

  “The question is who are you?” he responded, and this time, when I blinked, he was gone.

  It took a few minutes for the fear to dissipate, and even then, it wasn’t gone, just buried beneath the other emotions that had reared up again.

  “This isn’t right,” I repeated. “This isn’t my life,” I whispered. And then it was like it hit me. Those words. I knew them. I knew them intimately. I knew them on a deeper level than I realized.

  I raced out of the room, out of the hospital. I made it to my hotel room, and I powered on my laptop.

  I needed to find it. I needed to find the words. Where? Where had I heard them? Seen them? Read them? Said them?

  I spent what seemed like forever poring over articles and videos, live interviews and magazine spreads. It might have been minutes, it might have been hours, but time didn’t seem to matter then.

  And then I found the words.

  “People say you live as if you don’t care about what anyone will think, yet that somehow makes you an important role model. What do you have to say about that?” the interviewer asked in the video playing before me.

  “I don’t know about being a role model.” Jourdan furrowed her brows as she seemed to contemplate a response. “I know there will be people who love me, there will be people who hate me, and everything in between. If I worried about what everyone thought, I wouldn’t be able to live my life. I make the choices I make each day because they are what suit me. If they are considered right, then that’s just a bonus. It’s just that”—she paused and took a breath—“I don’t want to live my life in a cookie cutter box. And too many people do that. I don’t want my life to be forced to take a specific shape, to be a square or a circle. I want to be an octagon on some days and a cylinder on others. If I cared what people thought, I’d be constantly in a box with the lid shut tight, molded to that one shape. And that’s not my life.”

  And then I lost my words.

  Grennan

  Time was a cruel bitch. A cruel, sadistic bitch. The tour was almost over when Brook disappeared, but that was the point—almost didn’t count. Almost wasn’t over.

  “Fuck this,” I raged as I tore the bus apart after I had found Brooklyn’s lyrics — her message — for me. “I’m going to find her,” I said just as I felt arms grabbing me from behind. I struggled, but then there were more, and I was subdued.

  “What the fuck, Gren?” I heard Gav ask as the guys practically sat on me to stop me from moving.

  “She’s gone. She’s really fucking gone,” I told them.

  “What are you talking about?” Trevor asked.

  “I need to go find her.”

  “We’ve looked everywhere,” Trevor responded.

  “She’s not going to be here. She’s probably long gone. I shouldn’t have fucking played tonight. I should have found her before she left,” I huffed.

  “What the hell do you mean?” Cody asked.

  “She left me a goodbye note,” I told
them.

  “So she just needs some time to cool down,” Cody answered.

  “Give her a day or two, and she’ll be back,” Trevor nodded.

  “I can’t fucking go a day or two like this.”

  “Well, you have to, man. We have another stop tomorrow,” Trevor announced.

  “Fuck that. Fuck this tour.”

  “Fuck us too, huh?” Cody asked dryly.

  “This isn’t about you. This is about Brook. She’s my fucking world, and she’s gone. What do you do when you have no world to live in? You don’t exist. I don’t fucking exist without her.”

  “She knows that,” Gavin finally said as the guys loosened their hold but only tentatively. “She’s just hurting right now.”

  “Which is why I need to find her and set her straight, and then we can continue this tour.”

  “Look, Gren, seriously, I don’t know what you’re going through, but I do feel for you. I know how much she means to you and vice versa. Hell, I like Brook too, but you can’t fucking leave the tour.”

  “I can, and I will!” I roared.

  “Let’s set aside the fact that you’ll not only be letting us and the fans down, but also think about all the legal fucking ramifications of doing that.”

  “I’ll deal with all that.”

  “Yeah?” Trevor asked with a scowl. “Like that doesn’t affect us either? We’re a team, Gren. You can’t leave us, or the team falls apart.”

  “There are only a couple of more shows, and the tour is done. You’ll make things right then. We’ll help.”

  “And what do I do until then?”

  “Try finding her the good old-fashioned way. There’s this thing called technology I hear is all the rage,” Cody said in a sing-song voice trying to mimic some teenage girl.

  “Genius, why didn’t I think of that?” I answered sarcastically. “She’s not fucking picking up her phone.”