I'm Sure I Didn't Ruin Her, I Just Made Her More Interesting

Because I was born nearly a year ahead and raised by a very hands-off father, Ava always believed that I could teach her everything she'd need to know about life. More specifically, she wanted me to teach her to be bad.

But the truth was, I never really thought of myself as being all that bad.

Maybe, I didn't follow the rules as closely as she did or put any effort into trying to appease everyone, but I didn't go out of my way to be different. I wasn't just trying to be trouble.

When she asked, I tried not to keep too much from her. I figured if she could live vicariously through me, she wouldn't need to try the things I wanted to hide her from. Letting her live the lives she was too scared to lead was my destiny. Sometimes I even let her watch me do the things she considered bad.

Her favorite was watching me smoke cigarettes. Little embers in her gray eyes would sparkle when I struck the lighter, and though she said she hated the smell, she always breathed in deeply as the smoke rolled off of my lips.

Sometimes I thought she only liked it so much because the smoke and ashes reminded her of the haze she lived in. I wondered if she looked at the cigarette like it understood her in a way I never could.

Once, after she had gotten sick, she asked me if she could have one but I said no, like I was the hero or something. And instead of being angry she just laughed. "Thanks," she said, kicking her feet out in front of her and admiring the hole in the side of her sneakers.

Then, she smoothed the blonde curls around her broad shoulders, looked me straight in the eyes and said "Sometimes I'm really jealous of the way you can kill yourself in public and everyone's okay with it. They don't think you're weird. They don't think there's anything wrong with you."

Suddenly, I was the one that was ashamed of who I was. I wanted to put the cigarette out on my arm like I had when I was sick, and go back to work. I wanted to throw the rest of the pack in the trash and waste the rest of the lighter just flicking it open to fight the dark.

As I stood there, letting the ash burn down to the filter, she smiled and let a little laugh escape her pink lips. Quietly she said, "But I don't think you do it because you want to die, Carter. I think you do it to be in control. That's what I wanna do. I wanna be in control." 

In that moment, we'd never been so alike. It was like we were mirror images of each other. The exact same person, but we did everything opposite. We led totally different lives that somehow managed to correspond with each other. Ava was my only constant and I was her only variable.

So she loved the stories I shared with her. Oh, God, she loved the stories.

Every time I told her about the things I did after her curfew, she listened with so much glee on her round face that nothing felt bad anymore. Never was she angry that she hadn't gotten to tag along. For her, it was more fun to imagine how things had happened than to have actually be there.

She'd laugh that honey sweet, lighthearted giggle at the drunken ideas and sit on end at the close calls. To her, everything was so vibrant. Although I only gave her the shell of the story, she painted all the colors on the inside.

Ava was an artist that way. A poet. A sculptor. Everything she did, she did with beauty and grace. But the romanticism of her art made me feel guilty when sharing the stories. She was so confused about how everything felt and I had no idea how to describe it to her.

Trying to explain the feelings taught me that I had a hard time with emotions. More specifically, I barely felt them, if at all; not compared to her. The words she used—nervous, thrilled, panicked, lonely—didn't make sense to me. I didn't understand them the same way she did.

To her, they were colors. They were verses and mediums. They were alive. Each word made so much sense in the story of her life, because they made her muscles tinge and her nerves spark.

But I didn't see them like that. They were just words that only managed to steal a few breaths in the moment. I couldn't pull the words out of the setting and make them come alive again.

Only she could do that.

And I guess that's why she liked the stories so much. They weren't just a bunch of words I'd tell her. They were movies she'd watch in my eyes. They were stories she'd read in my voice. No matter how mundane they were, she found the brightest, most amazing way to give them shadows and depth.

Stretching her tiny self across the sofa in my living room, she'd stare at the ceiling as though everything I said was happening again just above her little head. "You're a good storyteller," she'd giggle, running her long fingers over the fabric on her shirt.

I'd watch them carefully, hating the thoughts I had.

Because she believed so deeply in me and trusted everything I told her, I was able to talk her into and out of a lot of things. Each of her firsts I stole from her and she trusted that she'd done the right thing for her. For me.

And I tried to feel sorry about it. I tried to be sorry for taking advantage of such an impressionable girl, but I couldn't. She wasn't as impressionable as everyone always thought. Never as impressionable as she wanted people to believe.

More often than not, the wildcard up her sleeve allowed her to control the people she surrounded herself with. But no one notices when the whitespace stacks the deck. They didn't care to see the influence she had on all of us, whether she was there or not. And I thought about that a lot when I looked at her. When I watched the way her hands explored her clothes.

When I tried not to think about the things that kept me up at night.

If I was quiet for too long, she'd look over and catch me staring at her, planning another way to steal another first. "It's what you're best at, I think," she'd say quietly, and I'd nod.

But she was wrong. It wasn't what I was best at. I was a better liar.

Just like she was.