Adam Carter. That's my name. I think. Little is clear in my head. Little has been clear since she left me.
Who I am.
Why I still live.
Why everyone leaves.
What part of me is broken? She couldn't handle me, she had said. It wasn't my fault, she had said. She just couldn't handle my intensity, my clinginess and need for her, she had said. Of course I needed her. She was the only light in my dim world. Maya had been my saviour. Now she would be my killer.
The door to my room is closed. Locked tight like the heart that for some reason still beats in my chest. I can't let people see me like this. Not in a society where emotion is weakness.
They say everyone struggles. Everyone cries. Does that mean I'm alright? That this will all pass? I try to stand up, but that simple action takes up so much energy that I fall back down on the bed. Since when was my weight too heavy to be carried by my legs?
My hand reaches for my phone. Since when was it so heavy? And why does simply reaching my arm over take so much energy? I avoid social media. All I'd ever see on their is how perfect everyone's life is. Last time I checked, Louis had a new car, Cameron started dating his crush, Daniel was going on vacation to Cancun in a week, and Logan has been going to a million parties. All while I've been crying about a girl. I go straight to my messages with Maya.
Words. They're senseless to me. I scroll mindlessly. I see flirting and joking. A picture of her, snow white hair cascading down her shoulders, contrasting her glowing golden eyes. Her lips were always parted, as if she's about to say something. I'd stared at those lips a lot. I'd tasted them three times. Three of the best moments of my life. Three moments that would never be replicated again.
Her last words were I'm sorry. She texted it two hours after breaking up with me. Though I'm the one who should be sorry. For not being good enough. Not perfect enough for her. For ruining my only chance at happiness.
My life had been messed up far before she broke up with me one day, three hours, and thirteen minutes ago. I'd looked at myself in the mirror before sitting down on this bed, disabled and unable to move to look again. When I'd looked, I'd seen someone else. I didn't recognize myself.
Why was I weak? A question I'd asked a lot. Why did tears stain my eyes whenever I locked the doors to be alone? My father told me men don't cry. I was seventeen. I should be a man. I shouldn't have tears in my eyes. But I do. Why?
The time is close to seven thirty, AKA school time. I'd set my alarm to wake me up early, planning to try and clean myself up before my father came in. Before he gave me another lecture about manning up.
But I had too little energy. I could barely move. My bones felt like boulders. Why get up only to be pushed down again? Why live to be abandoned? Why walk to be hurt?
Against all odds I manage to get onto my feet. I feel mountains resting on each of my shoulders. Why were thoughts and emotions so much heavier than weights?
I make myself look presentable. Normal clothes that normal people wear. I try containing the explosion of curly hair atop my head, but just as every other endeavour in my life, it fails. I walk downstairs to the breakfast table, where my father is sitting.
"You're up early," he says lazily. I envy how little effort it takes for him to form that sentence. Still, I try to form my own reply despite the clouds hiding away most of my brain.
"I wanted to get some fresh air before we leave," I reply with effort. My voice doesn't show the effort. I'm surprised by the sound of it. Sounding so incredibly normal. So like everyone else. Maybe it's all in my head. Maybe I am normal, just a teenager going through difficult years.
Better yet, maybe this is all a dream. Maybe I'll wake up and still be with Maya. Be able to look in her radiant eyes, gaze into a reality where I don't wish for death. One where I'm truly happy. But even if it was, I know everything else wasn't a dream.
Maya had temporarily lifted the two mountains on my shoulders, but they'd been there for years, far before I even met her.
Now they were back, with the weight of her memory adding to the hell. Yet the struggle did not show in my face when I looked at the shiny, reflective door of the microwave.
The young man looking back at me with calm brown eyes and fair skin didn't look out of the ordinary. I likely wouldn't recognize my own reflection if I ran into it on the street.
"You have a history test today," my father asks, his green eyes meeting my brown ones. I'd forgotten about it. No. I'd chosen to forget about it. Chosen to think about Maya instead. History was my worst subject, a blur of names and places and dates that couldn't stick to my crowded head. George Washington can't fix me. The Treaty of Paris might've brought freedom to America, but not to my mind. "I hope you studied."
I hadn't told him about the break up, but I still knew his exact response. He'd tell me to man up. As he always did. Not to dwell over some girl in high school, that once I grew up and matured I'd be fine. He'd tell me that grades are what important right now. That love is silly and to forget it for now.
"Of course," I lie right through my teeth, plastering a smile on my face. My reflection is even more of an alien now, short black hair in a contained chaos on my head. The smile looks so real, so genuine. But I see the cracks. The smallest details that nobody else could see that showed that the smile was only on the outside.
Breakfast is a blur. The car ride to school is a blur. I don't even realize I'm at my locker, standing there staring at the door like an idiot. I snap out of it, opening my locker and getting my things sorted.
I hear a footstep behind me. A specific footstep that I'd memorized the sound of. The feel of. The twins, Carla and Elijah Vivienne. The Viviennes' and their little minions had been bullying me since my father settled here one year, four months, one week, and two days ago. I brace for the inevitable impact of their words and fists.
"What're you doing? Standing there alone all depressed cause your girlfriend dumped you?" Carla mocks. The news has spread then. I wonder how. I wonder if Maya had went around telling everyone. I hadn't told a soul. "Good for her. Dating a weird emo kid like you is not a fate I'd wish on anyone."
"Gonna speak? Are you mute or something? Do you want to be?" Elijah threatens. I've gotten used to this. Used to their "jokes". But at least I had Maya as a light at the end of the tunnel, something to look forward to, a reason to endure the painful moments.
"Maybe if you spoke you wouldn't be such a loner. Seriously, when was the last party you went to?" Carla's voice is laced with amusement. I'm silent for a moment, until I feel a sharp pain in my shoulder when Elijah slams his fist into it and pins me to the lockers.
"When we ask you a question, answer it. Or do I have to rip your tongue out of your mouth and reattach it for you to speak?" I try to speak. But words use energy. Thinking of them, then rolling them off your tongue in a way that you aren't bullied for. Your voice can't be too high or too low. Your accent has to be the exact same as theirs. You can't talk too fast or too slow.
Even if you do everything right, chances are they'll find something wrong.
"Cat really ate his tongue, huh?" Carla says, glee dripping- no, flooding from her words. I'm preparing for something. To be stuffed in my locked, beat till I'm bleeding, punched until my nose is broken. But my saviour comes in the form of a teacher walking the hallway.
In seconds the twins are gone, leaving me with an aching shoulder and body that's weight is gradually increasing with each energy-consuming step I take. I don't have friends here, no one to run to for comfort. I don't have friends anywhere.
Each class takes me closer to history, and I hear the "whispers" that are louder to me than shouts throughout each one. Whispers about me, the weirdo and loner who just got dumped. I pretend not to hear.
When I get to English, the period right before history, I find out I forgot another homework assignment. There are more than five of them now I need to turn in. Halfway through class she catches me on my phone as she talks, looking through old texts with Maya as I'd been doing all day. That earns me detention. Great. Dad's gonna kill me.
When history arrives, I'm very sure that I failed the test. Just another thing to disappoint dad and to add on the growing list of reasons why my being born was a mistake. Another failure. I try to think of a time I'd succeeded. I was good at math. Not the best in the grade, so not good enough to matter. I had a good memory, but nothing good to remember. It was more a curse than a strength.
Speaking of, next class is math. Ms. Renyolds is a good teacher, but also one I catch looking at me often. She's kind, but I think she's one of the only people to ever get a peek behind my facade. Now I was a puzzle to her, one she was clearly concerned about. She'd written a note on one of my tests asking if I was okay. I came up to her after she handed them back and made it clear I was. She pretended to believe me, but as a person who lies a lot, I could tell she was lying.
"You did good on the last test," she tells me as I walk out of class. The last test was a week ago. It was obvious she was trying to give me anything to be happy about, trying to fix me. But I'm broken beyond repair.
I don't even acknowledge her words and just walk out. My father isn't happy when I text him about getting detention. He says we'll be having a talk about it when I get back. If only he'd talk to me about something that wasn't grades or detention or how to be the emotionless machine society calls a man. Maybe then I wouldn't feel so dead.