CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I’m pretty sure I know why everyone is gawking at her. She looks just like me with her pale skin, plus she’s wearing black shorts with a black strappy shirt. It’s definitely not uniform and there’s not a single goose bump on her bare skin. The people closest to her lean back, trying to keep their distance.

Does she remember me? I ask myself. But of course she remembers me. Why else would she have held my gaze so long? And why else would she be here?

Out the corner of my eye, I see Caden, his head whipping back and forth between Sarah and me, but for the most part, I ignore him, listening to the thoughts spinning around inside my head like they’re drunk.

They found Sarah. The council found her.

Why did they bring her here? What were they thinking?

Then: What do I do? Should I approach her?

I know I have to do something – I can’t just stand here like I’m brain dead – but what? What do I do?

I’ve been standing like this too long now to act like it’s nothing but I’m scared to talk to her. What if she’s changed? What if the people who have been watching me are watching now? As if on cue, the hair on my arms stands up and a tingling sensation comes to life at the back of my neck. A voice in my mind tells me to sit down and another voice tells me to get the hell out of here. Someone is calling my name, others are simply staring at me and the only thing I can think to do is stare back.

The more time that passes, the more eyes that look my way, but I’m not noticing them. I’m noticing the sun beating down, a steady heat that cause sweat to break out at my hairline, and a bird screeching as it soars through the air above my head. I’m picking up on the details: the smell of a tuna sandwich, the buzzing phone in someone’s pocket, the crack in the wall behind Sarah, the wind brushing my skin.

 “Melissa!” Lauren’s voice finally reaches me and the details are lost. I see a crowd of people, hear an ocean of undistinguishable sounds, and smell nothing.

In the few seconds after Lauren speaks, my body makes up my mind for me and I sit back down, aiming to look as casual as possible. But nothing I do now can change the fact that I’ve just spent god-knows-how-long staring into space like I’m insane, so I expect the stares that Lauren’s group hurl my way – the stares that seem to say are you on crack or just plain retarded?

“What was that?” Lauren asks, looking at me like I’m crazy.

I don’t bother with making stuff up. “I – I know that girl over there. We were friends when I was young. I haven’t seen her in forever.”

Lauren frowns but doesn’t say anything. Opposite me, Kira pipes up, “Are you alright?” but I can’t tell whether she’s genuinely concerned that there’s something wrong with me or if she’s just being nice in asking. Either way, I find I don’t know what to say back. I can still feel Sarah’s presence; like a heavy stone resting on my vital organs, the fact that she’s standing here, in this school, and I’m not doing anything about it manages to make breathing harder and ignites a pain in my chest that shouldn’t be there.

“I’m fine,” I say in the end. It’s the most common lie there is, and yet people fall for it every day, again and again and again like young children: way too trusting and way too believing. They’re goldfish with ten seconds memories; they’re dogs blindly trusting their owners, never opening their eyes to the fact that not everyone is honest, and not everyone is bad at lying.

Everyone in the group is still staring at me while others around us have returned to their lives, their eyes on their friends and food, their ears listening for the words leaving their friends’ mouths. I don’t know what to do or how to get myself out of the situation I’ve put myself in unthinkingly. What can I possibly to say to them that will make them see me as less of the freak everyone thinks I am and more of the girl I know everyone would see if they only looked past my disease?

“Is she related to you or something?” My ears pick out Piper’s voice and I reply with a shake of my head, looking at her face, but not her eyes. She obviously didn’t hear me when I spoke to Lauren.

“We were friends when I was young,” I say, my voice shaking slightly, unnoticeable except to my ears, which cringe, rejecting the nervous fearful sound.

The stone resting on my vital organs presses harder, squeezing the air out of my lungs, compressing my heart and rattling around inside my stomach, piercing the walls as it moves, as if trying to escape. Sarah is here and I’m ignoring her. Sarah is here and I’m not doing anything. Sarah is here. Sarah is here.

My brain is turning to mush, my thoughts resembling those of the dumbest animal. I need to talk to Sarah, but I can’t. I need people to know I’m normal, but I don’t know how to make them. I need to get this stone out of my chest, but it seems impossible.

“You look really pale,” one of the guys says – Jake, I think.

Somehow, I manage a joke. “Don’t I always?” I crack a nervous smile that wobbles at the edges and melts back into my normal expression too quickly, aware of the fact that it doesn’t belong on my face, especially not now.

I don’t think I’m gonna be able to sit here much longer, with everyone’s eyes on me, so I say, “I’m just gonna go to the bathroom,” and I get up and leave before anyone can say anything further, not looking at Sarah as I head for the nearest school building, or Caden as I walk past his group. Everything in me is solely focused on reaching my destination, on getting away from the watchful eye of my peers.

It doesn’t take long to reach the first hallway, and it takes even less time to reach the bathroom and enter, praying that it’ll be empty. It is.

I feel everything I’ve been holding in come out at once, a tsunami of pent up emotions and fears. I place my hands on the edge of the sink and lean into my palms, my head down, my breathing heavy and fast. My squashed heart is working in overdrive, pumping blood way too quickly and my lungs strain for air. I take huge gasping breaths, hoping to slow my heart rate, calm my nerves and dispel the feeling of panic.

When my breathing and pulse have slowed, and the emotions squirming and twisting within me have become peaceful, I look up from the dirty tiled spot on the floor that I had been staring at and face my reflection in the mirror.

Pale skin; blue eyes; dark hair. My nose is still small, my lips still only several shades darker than the ghostly skin surrounding them. My face is thin and my eyebrows are neat even though I’ve never plucked them. There’s only one difference: there’s no storm raging in my blue eyes today. They are calm – the sea on a day without wind.

And I suppose that should be odd, considering what I’ve just gone through. Why are they so calm and normal when the rest of me is screaming?

I touch my fingers to my face and feel nothing. My skin isn’t warm or hot; it doesn’t have any discernable temperature. But I know it does. I know that if anyone else except me touched my face they would pull away with fingers burned from the cold.

I close my eyes. Maybe when I reopen them, I won’t be me anymore. Maybe when I reopen them, I can start again as someone else with tanned skin and a normal life.

I open them.

And in the mirror’s reflection, I see Sarah standing by the door. Startled, my heart leaps into overdrive and I can feel my pulse everywhere: in my arms and legs, in my hands, in my head and in my chest.  I turn away from the mirror to face her, my movements the only sound in the silent white-walled room.  

A minute passes. A minute in which Sarah’s face bears an expressionless mask and mine puts all of my emotions on display, like artworks in an art gallery waiting for scrutiny and judgement. She stands still and straight, her blonde hair resting messily on her shoulders; I stand shakily, using the sink behind me to stay upright and on my feet. Her breathing is calm; mine comes out in short and sharp breaths – small intakes of air that tease my lungs by only giving them a taste of the oxygen that surrounds me.

Then, suddenly, a tear escapes Sarah’s eyes and a plethora of contrasting emotions break out on her face: sorrow, relief, joy, desperation. She crosses the distance between us in four short and hurried strides and tumbles into me, hugging me tightly.  For a couple of seconds, I don’t know what to do. My arms hang limply by my sides and my body going rigid. I haven’t seen her in years; she’s changed – I’ve changed. We aren’t the same people we were as children.

But I find that I’m able to put all of those lonely years aside with ease the moment I realise just how much I’ve missed her and her friendship. Suddenly, I’m hugging her back, tears spilling onto my cheeks.

“I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” she chokes out.

For some reason, her words just make the tears come faster. “You have?” I say, and I realise that their tears of joy. All this time, when I thought I was alone and that nobody cared, she’s been looking for me, thinking about me.

I feel her nod, her chin hitting my back. “You’d think it’d be easy,” she says through her tears, and I can hear the smile in her voice, “but it’s actually surprisingly difficult. For a girl who attracts so much attention in the media, you’re incredibly hard to find.”

I laugh slightly. “Sorry. I didn’t know anybody was looking.”

We both pull back at the same time. “How have you been?” she asks

“Not the best,” I say honestly, but with a smile.

She smiles too, the tears in her eyes already drying. “I think it’s time we changed that.”