Free Pieces of a Mending Heart by Kristina M. Rovison Page B

supposed to be the best night of my life, but it was the worst I could have ever experienced. The day went as expected; calls came from friends, cards clogged the mailbox, and my cell phone and Facebook wall buzzed with empty birthday wishes from people I haven’t talked to in a long time.
    The night, however, was anything but expected. I had been driving to the bowling alley with my kind-of-boyfriend, Chris, when he suddenly pulled off the side of the road and parked. Confused, I looked over at him, just as his mouth met mine. The wheels turned in my head as I attempted to process what he was doing, but then I felt his hand glide up the front of my shirt, and I pulled back.
    We had a heated argument, which escalated into a full blown screaming match. I wasn’t willing to give him anything, and he expected me to because I was a year older than I was when we started “dating.” I slapped him, he yelled i n my face that I was a teasing whore and a prude, and then I got out of the car and stomped home, but only after slinging vicious words his way, efficiently ending our pathetic “relationship.”
    It took me almost two hours to walk home, and it had begun to rain substantially hard. By the time I walked through the door, I was soaked to the core and my teeth were chattering. No one was home, so I took an hour long shower before crawling into bed, wrapped in a bathrobe, crying. I stayed awake for hours that night, simply staring at the ceiling.
    The next morning, my parents were sitting at the kitchen table, which was a first because they’re usually gone by the time I wake up every day. My mother looked upset, my father looking impassive. In less than three minutes, they proceeded to tell me that Chris had died in a car accident the previous night, on his way home from my birthday party, which I didn’t even go to. He had a blood alcohol level of .2 and wrapped his SUV around a massive tree near the creek we stopped at. His car was found smoldering at two o’clock in the morning, his body ejected and lyi ng fifteen feet from the crash, slicing in half.
    That school year went by in a blur, nothing eventful happening . My life was completely boring, but had been on a gradual slope downward since the night of my birthday. My grades dropped, (not drastically, but enough,) and one by one my friends began to disappear. Not literally, but they became angry with me for becoming such an unfeeling amoeba, and they left me alone to deal with my demons. Every day I was told how worthless I was, how I would never amount to anything, and how I was turning out to be just like my brother.
    The final nail in my casket, after being empty for so long was the night I watched my fath er strike my mother with a bat . He hadn’t seen me in the hallway, creeping from my bedroom to get a glass of water from the kitchen, but I saw him. It was a mutual understanding in our family to pretend like everything was normal; like we didn’t have fights about my well-being or watch each other get pushed down by my father, mentally and physically.
    I attempted to kill myself the next day, using my fathers’ pocket knife to slice my wrists open. If you asked me why I did it, I’d be completely honest and say that I was simply done living. I wasn’t living, so I guess you could say I was simply done being a zombie. I wanted out of this thing people called life, and I wanted it as fast as possible.
    I wrote David an apology letter before I spilled my own blood, in the same type of notebook he wrote his goodbye letters in. Unlike him, I gave no explanation to my parents for my decision. I remember doubting that my parents would even give David the letter, mostly because they hadn’t talked to him in years. He was like a phantom; present in our lives for so long, but gone long enough to seem like a ghostly apparition; his face was removed from the house, photographs taken from every frame and hidden away from the world like a secret that must be kept