Page 72 of Apathy
“You need a haircut,” I croaked for the first time in days, taking him by surprise. His eyes widened, lips parted, as if he was witnessing a miracle right in front of him. Truthfully, it should’ve pissed me off, but it didn’t.
“Yeah, well,” he shrugged, “I had more important things to do.”
A small smile played at the edges of his lips, softening his eyes, and as I sat up from the bed, letting my legs dangle from the end, I tried remembering again. I tried to remember how to be normal again.
Skylar
It was weird how everything looked the same when we pulled in front of our house, yet I knew that nothing was as it used to be. Or maybe I wasn’t who I used to be.
Dylan turned the ignition off, staring at the house just like I did, as if it was some entity that could hurt me. Truth be told, I wasn’t afraid of the house. I wasn’t afraid of anything right now, and that was bad.
Fear, anger, love, happiness, all those were part of us so that they could guide us, show us the way, steer us in the right direction, and without them, we wouldn’t be able to function like normal human beings. Without them, we wouldn’t be able to run away from people that were dangerous, because our senses wouldn’t be functioning properly.
Well, my senses were obviously fucked up.
“We don’t have to go inside if you don’t want to,” he mumbled.
I knew I didn’t have to. Dylan would never make me do anything I didn’t want to do, but if I didn’t overcome this, I would let the monster win. I would give the nameless, faceless person power over my life, and I didn’t want that.
I didn’t want to live a life filled with regrets, with fear, and thinking about that night. I didn’t want to let fear rule my life. There were already things I couldn’t control. Things I couldn’t escape, and I wouldn’t let this be another.
The problem was, I didn’t feel anything. I should’ve been afraid, terrified even, because that bastard carved me up in the foyer of my own house.
Instead, I was… I was calm.
Since we left the hospital, I kept expecting the nausea to hit. I kept pressing my palms together, thinking they would be sweaty, that my hands were going to shake, or that my eyes would sting from the unshed tears, caused by fear.
But none of that happened.
Apathy took a hold of my body, and I couldn’t escape its vise-like grip. Not that I wanted to.
Being apathetic was better than being terrified, and right now, I would take any win possible. If I could continue feeling like this, empty and cold, I wouldn’t have to deal with the mess I was now keeping locked away in the back of my mind.
If I could continue being empty, I wouldn’t have to think about other things. The things that, up until three days ago, haunted my days and my nights. The things a seventeen-year-old girl shouldn’t have to worry about.
I shouldn’t have to worry about my phone ringing in the middle of the night, because I always knew it was my father calling for me to play out his sick fantasies. I shouldn’t have to worry about a killer on the loose, who was obviously fixated on me.
“Sky?” Dylan started again, agitation obvious in his voice.
I moved my eyes from the house in front of us—the house that should’ve been my personal nightmare, but it wasn’t—and took his hand in mine, squeezing it tight.
“I’m fine, Dylan,” I muttered as I looked him in the eyes.
Pain. So much pain was reflected in those blue orbs, and for a moment, my breath caught in my throat, hating the vision in front of me. Hating the worry etched in the corners of his eyes, or the dark circles marring his perfect face.
I both hated and loved that he cared about me, because I was a train wreck, a disaster waiting to happen. And Dylan… Dylan was heaven in hiding. He was the pure light, and I was the pure dark.
Some people might say it was poetic, seeing the two of us as opposite sides of the same coin, but in reality, it was nothing but tragic. Life had a fucked-up way of throwing yin and yang references at us, and Dylan and I were the best example of it.
I didn’t hate it because I envied him, no. I hated it because caring for me would only destroy him. Loving me would devastate him because I was a bomb waiting to explode.
As he gripped my hand tighter and placed his other one on my cheek, words weren’t needed for me to know how much he cared about me. He didn’t have to give me a speech. He didn’t have to tell me that everything was going to be okay, considering that we both knew none of this was okay.
But I knew he was there for me. He was the shoulder I could lean on. He was the person I could count on when everything else went up in flames.
“Are you ready then?” he asked, while his thumb slowly worked over my cheek. I leaned into his touch, relishing in the warmth of his hand, of this safe cocoon he was providing me with.
I closed my eyes and slowly exhaled, letting myself feel. Letting myself remember how to be me again, how to live and love and be afraid. And maybe it was a process now. Maybe I would never be who I used to be prior to the entire ordeal, but I could try.
