Lacey B: September 2008

So today I submitted two of my writtings to the pre-professional conference.

I wrote that sentence yesterday and never finished this entry hahaha. So I went a judged the writings for the pre-professional conference today and I had submitted to works, one fiction and one creative non-fiction. I was one of two groups judging fiction and I snuck a peak at how they judged mine and it wasn't good...well not that there were comments on it. We were supposed to use a check system and I got a check minus. Miriam says it probably had nothing to do with how it was written, but that it might not have been what they were looking for for the conference. So anyway this is what I submitted in the fiction area. Do you think its a check minus? Be honest. Let me know.

Sometimes I feel like dancing; waving my arms around in the air, my hips swaying back and forth in time to the music, my eyes closed, and head bopping slightly. Too bad I can’t dance. Sometimes I feel like writing; pen to paper, lyrics flowing freely, the perfect hook, and a catchy chorus. Too bad I can’t write. Sometimes I feel like being in love; holding someone’s hand while walking down the sidewalk, kissing someone whenever I feel like it, knowing that there’s someone there always, and being able to wake up feeling wanted. Too bad I don’t believe in it. Sometimes I feel beautiful; hair falls just right over my eyes, my jeans hug the curves of my body, the shirt is a perfect color of blue that brings out my eyes, and my make-up looks natural, barely noticeable. Too bad I’m not. Sometimes I feel like painting; blank canvas in front of me, brush held steady in my hand, light blues and dark reds streaked across in dazzling lines, and a masterpiece slowly is created. Too bad I can’t paint.

They sat on the roof of the house watching as the sun began to set on the end of another spring day. Will had a sketch pad on his lap, but his pencil lay beside him forgotten as he watched in awe as the colors ran together in the sky creating pinks and oranges he’d never be able to capture with paint. Sara sat beside him fiddling with a camera oblivious to the sunset. She never really saw the beauty in anything until she looked at it through the lens of her camera. Finally getting the setting she wanted she lifted the camera and snapped a few pictures before the sun was almost completely gone. Will watched as Sara took her pictures and picking up his pencil quickly began to sketch her.

“We only have two weeks left before graduation,” Sara commented breaking the serene silence, “Are you excited?”

Will kept his eyes on his sketch pad as he answered. His dark black hair falling in his eyes, but somehow he managed to draw even as it obscured his view, “I suppose.” He said. Sara nodded he’d already confessed his fear of them growing apart, but she’d voiced her opinion that that was ridiculous.

“Well I got a letter from Harvard giving me all of my information for move in day. Have you heard from NYU? If we plan it right we can leave here the same day and help each other move in.” she suggested.

“August 21st, when’s yours?” he flicked his eyes to the side to look at her profile once more even though he knew every line of her face by heart. He’d been drawing her since he was twelve.

“Mine is on the 17th so why don’t you just follow me up in your car and you can stay with me for a few days and then I’ll go with you to New York and help you move in. My classes start on the 23rd so I should be fine. Besides I’m willing to skip a few days of orientation for my best friend.” She told him grinning. Best friends, she reminded herself, that’s all they were.

“Sounds good to me.” He answered. Sara was used to his answers being short and to the point when he was drawing. Putting her camera down she looked over his shoulder to see what he was sketching. She grinned when she realized it was her.

“You know when you get a girlfriend at college she’s going to wonder why you have so many sketches of some random girl lying around.” Sara joked.

“You aren’t some random girl,” he said finishing up a few lines around the camera and her hands before signing his initials at the bottom and dating it 24 April 2006, “and I don’t plan on getting a girlfriend at college. I’m going to NYU to study film, not girls.” Sara laid her head on his shoulder and smiled.

“What am I going to do without you?” she asked giving herself one moment to be scared of the future.

Will laid his head on top of hers, but said nothing. There was nothing to say when he was wondering the exact same thing. He ran a hand through her long unnatural bright red hair letting the silence consume them.

Her cell phone was vibrating on her bedside table and blindly she reached for it. Mostly still asleep she answered, “Hello,” she mumbled.

“Come outside, you should see the moon.” Will told her. Rubbing sleep from her eyes she sat up and looked at her clock and grinned. She loved getting 3 a.m. calls from Will.

“Let me put on some clothes and I’ll be right down.”

“Sleeping naked again are we?” he asked his earlier bout of depression replaced with his normal sarcastic nature. One of the many things the two had in common.

“You know it.” She replied as she threw back the sheet and climbed out of bed. A pair of jeans was lying on the floor and she quickly pulled them on while holding the cell phone between her ear and shoulder.

“And bring any money you have lying around,” he told her as an after thought. She stopped rifling through her closet for a shirt and walked over to her window. Pulling up the blinds and swinging the window out, she leaned down to look at him. Will was leaning against his old 1988, red Toyota Celica. He waved to her when he saw her. “Nice bra,” he commented. She grinned.

“What do I need money for?” she asked.

“We’re going driving.”

Sara’s bare feet hung out the open window and she was singing along to the radio as Will drove down the deserted road. They’d been driving for a few hours and the sky was beginning to lighten as the sun threatened to come up. Sara loved it when Will took her driving. They’d get in his car with all the cash they had on them, pick a direction, and go. Sometimes it was just for a few hours and sometimes it was for an entire day. Living in Niceville on the panhandle of Florida gave the two of them plenty of choices. They could go west toward Biloxi or New Orleans or east toward Jacksonville and Tallahassee or north into Alabama or Georgia. They rarely ever chose south as it was a tricky business. Seeing as how they lived on the coast and to go south toward Orlando or Tampa they would first have to go east and that just defeated the entire purpose of picking one direction.

This morning, however, the two were headed west toward New Orleans, which was only a four hour drive. They’d passed Biloxi about a half hour ago where they stopped for gas and food and a small stuffed animal that Will bought for Sara because it was tradition to buy a souvenir at every stop. The song on the radio ended and a commercial replaced it. Sara tilted her head to the side and smiled at Will. Alternating between looking at Sara and the road Will smiled back at her.

“What?” he asked, “What is it?”

Sara shrugged, but continued smiling, “Just wondering why you felt like going for a drive is all.”

“Dad,” was the only answer he gave. She nodded not needing Will to explain that he’d started drinking again, “Mom went to go stay with her sister and seeing as how it was 3 a.m. I knew you’d be free.” Sara’s smiled widened at hearing this.

“When it comes to you I’m always free.” The sun was beginning to be visible on the horizon and Sara reached down to the floor of the car and pulled out her camera. Turning at an odd angle so she didn’t have to move her feet she began snapping pictures of Will before stretching herself out to lean against him to get some pictures of the two of them. Will put his arm around her and smiled contentedly. He didn’t know how he was going to make it without Sara there with him everyday. Pulling over to the side of the road Will turned off the engine and got out of the car. Sara followed him, camera in hand. “I thought we’d be going to New Orleans.” She said as she climbed onto the hood of the car and laid down. Will followed her and sighed as he looked up at the sky that was split into night and day.

“I wanted to do something different today. Besides I have to have you back in time for your doctors appointment.” He reminded her.

“Is today really Tuesday?” she asked turning to look at his profile, “Hmm for some reason it feels more like Wednesday or Thursday. I could skip you know.” Will shook his head.

“No, you need to go. It’s good for you to have someone to talk to about everything.”

“That’s why I have you. You’re better than a shrink any day.” Will laughed and kissed her temple.

“Thank you, but you need to get an outsider’s view point every now and then.” Sara sighed even though she knew he was right. She always found it oddly ironic that Will was the one living in a troubled home yet she, coming from a seemingly perfect home, needed the shrink. She gave his thigh a pat and for the first time noticed how tight his jeans were.

“Are those my jeans?” she asked him.

“They always did look better on me."

Sara had fallen asleep on the couch in her living room with a notebook in her lap and a pen still held loosely in her hand. Her cell phone ringing jarred her from sleep and a long thin blue line was made across the page. Yawning she reached for the cell phone.

“Hello?” she answered.

“Hello is this Miss Hunter?” a male voice on the other end of the line asked.

“Yes,” she answered turning her head around to look at the clock on the wall behind her. It was one in the morning. Why would anyone need to call her at one in the morning? Besides Will anyway.

“My name is Dr. Taylor you were the person listed to call in case of an emergency in Mr. Hendricks’s wallet. I’m afraid he was in a car accident an hour ago.” Sara could have sworn her heart stopped, “I’m calling to ask you if you knew if he had a living will or not.” Sara’s mind was blank she couldn’t think.

“Um,” she said as she felt her heart slowly begin to beat again, “no, no we never talked about anything like this. He did say, however, that if anything were to happen to him that I was to make any decisions regarding his well being. How,” she paused not quite sure if she could ask the question, “how is he?” she whispered.

“I’m afraid he’s on life support right now Miss Hunter.”

“What? No, no. He’s what? He can’t be.” She shook her head as tears began to fall down her cheeks. Her elbow rested on her knee and she brought a shaky hand up to her forehead and closed her eyes. This wasn’t happening. In a moment she’d wake up to her cell phone ringing and it would be Will on the other end.

“I’m afraid from what the police can tell he deliberately drove his car off the road and into a tree. He crashed at such a high speed there was damage to his brain from the impact. It also appears as if he was drinking at the time.” The phone slipped from Sara’s hand and hit the edge of the glass table before landing gently on the pristine white carpet.

“They say he may never wake up.” Sara sat in a chair next to Will’s hospital bed holding his hand. Will’s mother stood beside her, arms crossed over her chest as she spoke to Sara.
“Never is a really long time,” Sara commented. Will’s mother had never been around before and it angered Sara that she decided it was now her place to care for Will.

“He’s alive at least. For that we should be thankful.” She told Sara. She shook her head and a sad small smile graced her lips.

“Sure, he’ll be alive; you can keep anyone alive these days on a breathing machine for however long you want them alive. But just because they’re there doesn’t mean that they talk to you. They don’t drive to your house at 3 a.m. and tell you they’ll take you anywhere you want to go. They don’t sit with you on the roof and watch the sunset and talk to you about things that aren’t even all that important in the grand scheme of things. They don’t draw you every chance they get because they want to memorize every line of your face. No, they don’t do any of that. Instead, they just lay there, their chests steadily rising... falling... rising... falling... over and over again, until ‘never’ ends.” Sara had never been this open and honest with anyone, but Will and he wasn’t there anymore. She couldn’t understand exactly why she was telling his mother all of this, but it made her feel a little bit better for some reason. “And you know the worst part?” Sara asked turning to look at his mother, “I can’t decide whether or not I want ‘never’ to end.”

“Everyone’s convinced you were trying to kill yourself,” Sara said softly as she sat on the edge of Will’s bed his hand sandwiched between her own. She’d not left the hospital in three weeks. He would wake up, she was convinced of this. “But you wouldn’t do that would you? Because no matter what we always said we’d believe in each other and that that would be enough and if you went and did something like this. Tried to kill yourself. That can only mean one thing can’t it, that you stopped believing in me.” She had to stop for a moment because she was going to cry and she had told herself she wouldn’t cry until she had said everything she was going to say. “You told me that trying to kill myself was stupid because it would prove everyone right. It would let them know that I couldn’t do it. You said the only way to get back at them, to prove them wrong was to live. I lived dammit,” anger began to replace the heartache she was feeling, “I didn’t live just to have you die on me. Do you understand? We were going to grow old together. You promised me that when we died it would be sitting on a roof at a hundred years old watching the sunset.”

Sara wore a black dress. One that Will had picked out for her when she’d needed to go to some fancy dinner. She knew she’d never wear it again after this, but he’d picked it out for her so she wore it. There were a few rows of white chairs sitting on a black tarp underneath the small tent where the casket sat, still above the ground. She’d given the eulogy at the church and now all that was left was the final words from the priest and the lowering of the casket. Sara stared straight ahead not really seeing the casket or the cemetery or anything that was there. Memories of the friendship she had with Will kept flashing through her mind. Their friendship was supposed to last a lifetime and in a way she supposed it had. Will’s lifetime at least.

Soft footsteps on the tile floor woke her up. Her writing notebook slid from her lap and landed on the floor with a soft thunk.

“I’m sorry Sara I didn’t mean to wake you. I just came in to change the date on the board and write down Sadie’s name for who’ll be on shift today.” Margaret explained. Sitting up Sara nodded and smiled. The beeping of the machines were almost nonexistent to Sara now. Taking a hold of Will’s hand she smiled at him.

“I had the strangest dream that I buried you, but you know I’d never do that don’t you?” she asked him before she sat back in her chair and picked up her notebook to begin writing where she had left off before she’d fallen asleep. She looked up at the board to check the date, April 21, 2016. Sighing she picked up her pen and wrote the same date on the top of a new page in her book.

Sometimes I wake up after dark and lie in my room wondering where the day went. Sometimes I wish the world would just disappear. Sometimes I wish I could disappear. Sometimes I shower to make myself feel better. Sometimes I listen to my music at full blast and dance around my room to try and make the gloom go away. Sometimes I sit on my bed and stare at old photographs wondering where all the happy memories went. Sometimes I get dressed in my closet so I don’t feel like my posters are watching me. Sometimes I sleep because it’s something to do. Sometimes I sleep because it’s a way to escape. Sometimes I drive to the cemetery, but don’t get out of the car. Sometimes I still expect you to be sitting in the chair when I walk through the door.