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By Brooke Tarnoff Submitted by lupschada Date: 2002 May 14 Comment on this Work [[2002.05.14.11.01.25274]] |
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Once upon a time, there was an eighteen year old girl who wanted to start over. She could count her friends on one hand, and she was tired of being alone. She went to college and her only real friend from home came with her. He lived on a hall with a very dirty boy who did a lot of drugs and was smart and tough. The dirty boy took shit from no one. No one. He was a genius. He was a photographer. He was the first male feminist the girl had ever met who really seemed to believe it instead of using it as a way to get laid. He had a terrible nose and he was beautiful. The girl ditched her best friend who took shit from everyone. The girl endeavored to worship the dirty boy until he would take her childhood away. Instead, he took her for a drive. She'll never really know if it was really an accident. She'll never know exactly how it happened, but he kissed her and asked her to go for a ride and she would never have dreamed of saying no. They drove around for about an hour and headed home. The girl was dizzy with belonging, dizzy with being proteced, feeling for the first time in her life like a rebel. They made a few stops. The boy got a speeding ticket. It wasn't a warning. It was 95 in a 55 zone and it didn't slow him down a bit. The girl didn't think that was love, but she didn't want to say anything in case she was wrong. They were 30 seconds from the parking lot. She was thinking about how late it was, how the next morning at 7 she would report to dining services for her first day of work. She was thinking about grey uniform shirts when she saw the wall coming in at the wrong angle. She said "no" and thought one last time of grey shirts and died. No, she didn't die. She awoke seconds or minutes later to the sound of the boy screaming her name. His voice was cracking, breaking. She said,"I'm okay, I'm okay." And looked down. "Oh." Held up her red hand. "I'm bleeding." Her shoes were gone. Her glasses were gone. There was glass in her tongue. In the ambulance, asked the EMT if she would die. She couldn't feel her legs. Her hands were in strips. "I don't know," he said. "We haven't seen the doctor yet." The doctor said she wouldn't die, but should've. He should have said "could've", she realized. Maybe he had. Maybe she'd heard wrong. The police said should've. "I was only a passenger," she wanted to beg him. He said, clearly, "Should have died." Everyone wondered why they'd flown off a wall and into another. Everyone wondered where the girl's mouth had been. The girl thought she was already dead. The girl knew her last thought was of the dining hall at 7 AM. The girl wanted her mom but wasn't sure she still had one. She went home soon and she found someone who would carry her across campus to the dirty boy's room. He took her into his bed and kept her there for two days, bringing her food. Soon her body broke down. She held a temperature of 106, then 104, which lasted for days. Her parents came to take her back to the hospital. She was badly bruised, and the mother tried not to scream when she saw her girl. The girl had never been so ugly. Sympathy lasted for the duration of the fever. "I know you were scared," her friends said,"but you didn't die. You have to let go." She relived the accident every night in her sleep. She died thinking of uniforms. She never cried "Mommy!" She cried, "Wall!" The dirty boy was the only one who'd been there. "I love you." he said,"and I know what the wall looked like from 2 inches away. I know what you looked like unconscious. I thought you were dead." "So did I," she said, but what she meant was, "I still do." And everyone moved on, and the dramas changed before her bruises had even faded, and every night she died thinking of grey. And the horrible dirty boy was the only one who'd been there. |