Everlong: (Book One of the Everlong Trilogy) (13 page)

'No,' I said, 'no, I'm not talking to you because...no.' I shook my head, horrified at the unspoken meaning behind her words.

We reached the school gate. 'So, this is me,' she said.

I put my hand on her shoulder, the touch sent a heady mix of electrical desire and the pain of a thousand knives through me. 'Are you going to be okay?'

She turned slightly. 'Yes, I'm going to be okay.'

She turned and walked into the school without looking back once.

My eyes did not leave her until she had disappeared through the glass doors of Riverside Academy. But I could feel her presence, her mark on my soul, like a fingerprint.

Was that it then?

I dragged myself away from the school gates and headed back to my apartment, my heart torn in two.

No, she didn't feel the same.

Evie

What was I doing? What was I thinking?

I let the stranger walk me to school, trying to avoid those beautiful eyes that sucked me in and made everything far too loud.

No one was nice to me, except for Sam, and look how I treated him. I didn't deserve it.

I left the stranger at the school gates and didn't look back. I just couldn't deal with all that, not now I'd decided what I was going to do.

I kept my eyes on the floor and slunk past the cafeteria, past the theatre and down the steps to the nurse's office in the bowels of the school.

I wanted to turn and run, to hide away somewhere, but I knew I had to keep going forward.

I couldn't go on like this.

It was a matter of life or death; if I couldn't slay the beast inside me then I would die. Simple as that.

I sat on the stained chair outside the nurse's office, just waiting, pulling at a frayed thread on the sleeve of my hoodie. I fidgeted in the chair, played with the clasp on my bag, bounced my legs up and down, wrapped my arms around my chest, unwrapped them, pulled at the thread on my hoodie again.

Time had stood still and I was finding it increasingly difficult to fight the urge to run.

I looked down the corridor, there was no one there, no one had seen me, and no one would see me leave. I grabbed my bag just as the nurse opened the office door. She shuffled out, drowning in a sea of black cardigan. She had a warm, kind look about her that worried me. Like I said, I wasn't good around nice.

‘Ah, hello. Evelyn Anderson isn't it?’

I smiled and nodded.

'Come in, ' she said, holding the door open.

I stood up but my legs were trembling so much that I didn't think I would be able to get them to work. I took a deep breath and entered her office that smelled of bleach and polish.

'Take a seat,' she said.

I sat on the plastic seat, huddled next to her beech desk, and stared at the large couch in front of me, covered in what looked like oversized toilet tissue. The end of the blue roll was perched at the bottom of the bed.

'Okay,' she said, tapping away at her computer, 'Evelyn Anderson, what's your date of birth?'

'Seventh of November, nineteen-ninety-five.'

She looked over to me, her smiling eyes looking over the top of her glasses, 'So what can we do for you?'

My mouth was dry, I didn't know whether I'd be able to form the words. 'I need help. I can't seem to shake whatever it is.'

‘So what’s been the problem?’

‘Er…' Where did I start? I see shadows laughing at me at night, I'm mad, I can't think straight. I tried to kill myself.

'I’ve been tired a lot lately, probably just all the study though, everyone gets like that. Don't they?’

‘Okay,’ she said, her fingers tapping on the keyboard, ‘Anything else?’

‘Er…’ I think I’m going nuts? ‘I passed out the other day-‘

‘Are you eating properly? You do know that a balanced diet is essential.’

I shrugged.

The nurse suddenly stopped tapping and looked back over to me. Her glasses had slipped to the bottom of her nose. ‘You’re not pregnant are you?’

My face went into spasm just at the thought of that. ‘Oh, God no.’

‘Are you sure? It’s amazing what some girls believe.‘

I shrunk back into my chair and flung my hand up to stop her. ‘No. I can’t be, not unless it was an immaculate conception.’

She studied me for a minute, trying to work out whether I was telling the truth or not. She turned back to her computer screen. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘let’s do your blood pressure.’

She placed the pressure pad around my arm and started to pump it up. I hate that sensation where it cuts off the blood to your hand and your arm feels like it’s going to explode.

‘I feel like that,’ I said. It sort of just tumbled out, like half of my internal conversation had suddenly sprouted legs and had walked out of my mouth all on its own.

‘Excuse me?’ said the nurse. She stopped pumping the machine and just looked at me.

‘I feel like my hand now, when you’ve stopped the blood flow and it feels numb and tingly.’ Yep, my words were fleeing from me.

‘You feel numb? What do you mean?’

‘Like someone has filled me up with anaesthetic, and now, now I don't know how I feel.’ A big fat tear drop fell onto my arm lying across the desk. Why was I crying? No one was supposed to see me cry. I couldn't even get that right.

'How long have you felt like this?'

I shrugged.

‘Have you ever…’ the nurse looked troubled, maybe even embarrassed. ‘Have you ever cut yourself?’

I shook my head.

‘What about suicidal thoughts?' she asked, placing her hand on my arm. 'Have you had any of those?’

‘No,’ I lied. That was mine to keep.

‘Okay,’ said the nurse, relaxing in her chair a little. She reached up to grab a sheet of paper from the plastic file on her desk. ‘Can you fill this in for me?’ She handed me the sheet of paper with a list of statements on it. ‘Don’t take too long but read through them, tick the boxes that apply to you, but don’t think too hard about it, okay?’ She gave me a pen, stood up and tapped me on the shoulder. ‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ she said before she left the room.

I looked at the questions on the paper. Did I feel like impending doom was about to befall me every day? No. Did I feel like…

Was this what my life consisted of now? A series of boxes?

A bit fat blob of saltiness plopped in the middle of the paper. It splattered out like blood. I squirmed. I hated blood, just the thought of it. That’s why I’d decided to jump off the bridge. I could do that.

Or maybe I couldn't.

Something in the long list of things I couldn't get right.

I put the pen down just as the nurse re-entered the room.

‘Okay, let’s have a look now, shall we?’ she said placing a gentle hand on my shoulder. ‘Don't look so worried.’ Her tone had changed with me, like I was a delicate ornament that could be broken just by words.

She took the piece of paper. I could see her eyes tracing across the boxes, tracing across my life. She sighed and looked up at me. She took off her glasses, folded them up and placed them on the desk. ‘There’s nothing to worry about but I would like you to go and see your GP. Do you think you could do that as soon as possible for me?’

I nodded, confused. What had she seen in those little boxes of my life?

As if she heard what I was thinking she spoke gently, as if her words could soothe away my troubles. ‘I think you may have depression and from what these tell me,’ she said, pointing at the piece of paper, ‘a touch of anxiety too. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. A lot of people suffer.’

She smiled at me kindly and I thought I was going to explode.

‘It might help if you had counselling, just talking about it can sometimes help. If you wanted you could do that here-‘

‘No,’ I said, cutting her off. It would somehow get around school that I was seeing a counsellor. People thought I was a freak anyway, why would I want to go and advertise the fact that I’d now officially lost the plot? ‘I’ll see my GP,’ I said in barely more than a whisper. I stood up, grabbed my coat and bag and shuffled towards the door.

‘Go home, make the appointment, and we’ll see you back here in a week’s time.’

I nodded and quickly escaped. Escaped from the sterility, from the kindness, from her.

I don’t remember much of the journey home; I spent most of it with my head down looking at the frayed thread of my hoodie, too ashamed to look up in case someone saw through me, saw what I'd become.

My head felt like it was going to implode as I thought about all these crazy scenarios. My mother? What would happen to me if she died? What would happen to me if she died whilst on holiday? What would happen if she got married to Dan then died? Crazy, stupid questions, but I couldn’t help thinking about them, and the more I thought about them, the more confused I became, The more confused I became the more I felt crazy and out of control, like I was hurtling towards a wall, in a train travelling at one-hundred miles-per-hour.

I was out of control.

I stumbled through the front door and dropped my bag down on the floor and ran upstairs for a hot, hot shower. I cranked the shower up. Maybe, just maybe, I could purge myself of the madness.

I crawled out of the shower, my skin red-raw. Even that didn't make me feel any better now. Still wet, I crawled into bed and waited for the demons to come. And they came, laughing and pointing their fingers at me, old faces laughing with the new demons I seemed to be collecting.

Sleep took its time, but I still woke really early the next day, at six in the morning, alert and unable to sleep despite the fact my body was still stone-tired. But I didn’t get out of bed. Instead, I just lay there, under the duvet, trying to pretend that life was not happening. I don’t know how long I just lay there, thinking about the knives in the kitchen and how I might hurt myself with one without knowing. My body was broken, my mind shattered.

There was a banging of doors downstairs. My heart jumped in my chest, I stopped breathing, but I couldn't move.

And then Aunt Celia was at my bedroom door, her face like thunder. 'Come on get up!' she said, putting her hand across her face as if to protect herself from some kind of bad smell. 'Get up!' she screeched, 'I need you downstairs. NOW!' She turned around, sweeping from the room. I heard her footsteps pounding down the stairs.

Somehow, I really don't know how, I managed to get my legs to work and stumbled down the stairs after her.

I entered the living room just as she threw open the curtains, the light was blinding, stinging my eyes.

‘You haven’t been skulking around here all week long have you? Why aren't you at school? Your face is like a wet weekend,’ she said, turning to face me, her mouth curled in a sneer of disgust. ‘You need to pull yourself together!’

Reminds me of that crap joke: Doctor, Doctor, I feel like a pair of curtains and the doctor replies ‘Come on man, pull yourself together. ’I mean, what does “pull yourself together” even mean?

Still, she continued to rant. ‘Do you want your mom to get into trouble?’

‘No.’ I sounded sulky, like a petulant child.

‘Good,’ get this place tidied up, ‘she’s coming home tomorrow. It’s been a tough few years for her Evelyn, she doesn’t need you going off on one too.’

I looked at Celia’s face, her red hair scraped back in a ponytail, her horsey mouth, her big white teeth dazzling against her orange fake tan and she made me want to puke.

‘Okay?’ I hear her finish. I nodded my head dutifully.

‘What time does her plane land?’ I ask, not because I care, but because I know this is what's expected of me.

Celia gave me a you should already know this type of look. ‘Six. Make sure this place is tidied up and Evelyn -‘

‘Yeah?’

‘It would be good if you could stop thinking of yourself for one moment and be pleased for her. Losing your dad like that, and then your Gran, you know.'

I nodded my head. Maybe it was my fault dad died. Everything was my fault.

‘It might be good to get her an engagement card, that is, if you can manage to get yourself out of the house.’

‘Okay.’ So he had asked her to marry him then.

And as quick as she had arrived, she had left. Like a tornado. And I was stuck in the calm after the storm, the memory of it lingering in the air.

I dumped myself on the sofa. Everyone seemed to be happy apart from me. Why could I not be happy? What was wrong with me? Was I such a terrible daughter?

Pathetic, pathetic, pathetic! I hit the side of my head hard, trying to knock out the despair. But it didn’t work.

I looked out of the window at the clouds floating by peacefully, untroubled by nothing but the wind. What it must be like to be free. Sometimes I wished I could be a cloud floating in the sky, not having to worry about being a freak, about not feeling anything. Or a bird. To be able to fly away, to fly high above the clouds.