Page 109 of Ghosts Don't Cry

I want to throw up, I need to flush the pills out of my system. I have to be stronger than this.

Instead, I swallow another, because the damage Dan and his friends caused me is too much, and the pills numb the pain for a few minutes … until the cycle starts again.

With Lily going out of town, I have no reason to keep track of days. One day blurs into two. Then into three.

The wet sound in my chest gets worse. Each breath is harder to take than the last, air whistling through damaged tissue. The bruises from Dan’s beating have spread across my ribs in shades of purple and black, but that’s not the only reason for the discoloration. My ribs are broken, and I’m sure there is more damage as well.

And that’s why I need the pills …

Pills … I need to refill the prescription again before New Year comes, but I don’t think I could make it to the pharmacy across town even if I tried.

Lily’s voice keeps me company while I lay on the ground and count down the hours until I won’t breathe anymore. Sometimes I think I can smell her perfume. Sometimes I think she’s still here, believing in me and thinking I can be saved.

But I can’t be saved. I can’t write poetry in the margins anymore, and I can’t dream about futures I’ll never have.

I’m no longer the boy who let her light touch him, and believed, just for a moment, that he deserved her.

I write her name in the dirt with a shaking finger, and just that simple action sends pain through my limbs. But I force myself to do it, then erase it, and write it again.

It’s my confession, my truth about her importance.

By day four or five, I’m vomiting up blood. Thick, dark clots that splatter across the floor. I don’t know whether it’s being caused by the drugs or by internal bleeding. It could even be a hallucination because I see Mom sometimes, a tourniquet around her arm, and a needle pressed to her vein. I see Rick’s fist coming at my face. I see Lily’s eyes shining, bright with tears I put there.

Tears Ihadto put there. I have to remember that.

Remember what? Why isn’t she here? Where did she go?

I force myself to think, to remember.

She deserves better than watching someone she loves die. I’ll become a ghost in her story. A cautionary tale she’ll look back on in years to come. A ghost she won’t see cry.

More memories bombard me. My fingers tracing poetry on her skin. Reading Steinbeck aloud to her in the dark. Her laugh when I argued with her about symbolism. The way her body curled against mine, fitting perfectly in all the places that mattered.

Time stops making sense. I lose chunks of it, waking up in places I don’t remember going to. The wet sound in my chest turns to rattling. There’s blood every time I cough now,bright red against my palm, splattering across my clothes. It’s a warning I can no longer ignore.

I’m dying.

Deep down, I’ve known it since the beating. It’s another reason I sent Lily away.

My body is shutting down, piece by piece. I’m drowning in my own blood. Fever is burning through what’s left of me. The pills that were supposed to help are killing me faster.

I thought I could do it. Die here alone, and become another nameless casualty in an abandoned building. But now the time is here, and there’s no way to escape it, I’m scared.

And I’m tired. So fucking tired.

The pill bottle mocks me from the floor, nearly empty now. I’ve spent the past week trying to numb everything. The pain. The guilt. The knowing that I broke the most beautiful thing in my life.

And still the memories come.

Mom in the emergency room. Tubes in her arms. Her voice weak as she promises to get clean.

Me, twelve years old, believing her because the alternative was too hard to face.

Mom, same situation, two years later, only this time frothing at the mouth as she overdoses on the bathroom floor. EMT’s shouting. Police taking Rick away … and me, unnoticed, stuffing clothes into my backpack, stealing what little money is in my mom’s purse, and slipping out of the door before anyone sees.

I can’t die here.

In one brief moment of clarity, I know what I have to do.