Into The Woods

The smoke floated over his head in a lazy haze, his head leaning back against the wooden wall of the barn.

“She was really cool, you know?” Mark said, but I was too busy downing the last of my father’s ridiculously expensive whisky. The taste was revolting, but it was numbing the pain.

The ache in my chest. The hole left in my heart by Lucy Watson. My best friend since kindergarten, the most popular girl in school and now the girl who had her own memorial where her now empty locker stood.

Car crash. The medics said it was quick, like that was a constellation prize. Everyone had been posting over her socials. Reminiscing about how amazing she was, a valedictorian in the making. Did they really know her? Really?

“You’re the only one who truly gets it, Cat.” Mark said tearfully, taking another drag of his joint. His bloodshot eyes were a mixture of drugs and crying.

I don’t even know why I’m sitting here in Mark Taylor’s family barn, of all people. He was meant to be driving back from that college party, but he got drunk and Lucy had to drive. How is it she died and his drunk ass didn’t. Life was fucking unfair.

“Am I?” my voice slurred, leaning against a bale of hay. Wonder if there was a needle in there. I met his eyes, wanting to punch his perfect jawline.

“Yeah,” Mark said, nodding to something I hadn’t said “Lucy was wild spirit. Carefree. Like that girl from that Wuthering Heights. Not really meant for this world.”

You arrogant little… anger raised up in my chest, I could taste bile in my mouth. How could Lucy find this guy attractive? Sure he was pretty, but I thought Lucy had better taste. There’s a lot of stuff about Lucy I’ll never know.

“I’m glad I got this scar, it reminds me that she loved me…” he said, not noticing the glare I was giving him “it’s like she never left me.”

If I had bile in my mouth earlier, acid was cursing through my body right now. It was almost in disbelief that I sat, knowing despite his drug haze - he was genuinely serious about that. Like he owned Lucy. Like her memory was just his. Selfish bastard.

“She was going to,” I said, almost under my breath. Not quiet enough, his eyes snapped towards me.

“What?”

“Lucy. She was going to break up with you after graduation,” I muttered, downing the last of the whiskey bottle so as not to throw it at his slack-jaw face “you were just one of her play things. Come on, Mark. You’re just a small town jock and Lucy actually got accepted into Harvard. Do you really, honestly think you and her would have lasted the distance?”

I laughed cruelly, apart of me hating that I was causing him pain. Another part, relishing in it. His eyes built and overflowed with tears. Good. It felt good to see my pain reflected in another’s eyes. It felt good knowing I had shattered his image of Lucy. And God, it felt good knowing I was forcing this ugly feeling out of the pit of my stomach and onto someone else.

He shook his head, those puppy dog eyes in complete denial. Even now, with that knowledge he would rather believe the illusion of Lucy. She wasn’t perfect, far from it – but people would rather believe the good parts and ignore your flaws in death. The slates wipe clean the minute you leave this earth, by your mistakes… No one lets you forget them while you’re alive.

“You’re lying,” he barked, his eyes turning darker and soon that hurt look turned into a sneer “Lucy only hung out with you out of pity. At least me and her made sense. I never got why she was friends with a freak like you.”

“Freak? What are we in some cheesy high school musical?” I shot back, finding it hilarious he was clinging to the imagination of a hierarchy structure he was so familiar with. Truth be told, the quarterback always peaks in high school. They never see past those glory days and I was pretty certain this will be the same for Mark.

What? Because I decide the time my hair red, identify as goth and refuse to fit into society’s version of normal that made me a freak?. This time in my life will be a blip, I may even grow and change if I want because I can do that – Mark will be forever stuck in the past and I don’t need to be a seer to figure out.

“I loved her-”

“And I didn’t?” I flared back, pulling myself to my feet and swaying as the barn shifted around me “people like you always get the sympathy. Even now, you have the nerve to make her death about you. You! When we all know she’d still be here if it wasn’t for you!”

Why did I even agree to hang out with him? Pity? A weird obligation to Lucy? No, I don’t need to make Mark feel better for some think he caused. I don’t need to go out of my way to make a privilege boy feel good about himself. Even the fact we’re sat in his family’s estate and he’s allowed to walk around as the chief mourner makes my blood boil.

He doesn’t own her. Other people loved her too and other people have the right to mourn for her on their own. Screw this. Screw him!

“Cat!”

Tears blinded my vision as I turned and headed for the barn doors. What happened next, I had no idea how it happened and neither did he. As he grabbed my arm and turned me to face him, I angrily pulled him to me and crushed my lips against his.

His lips tasted of weed and whatever vodka he was drinking before, but bizarrely he was kissing me back. And I didn’t put away, I forced my tongue into his mouth instead. Not one part of me was attracted to this boy, yet here I was in his arms and I felt shameful for it as my lips pressed harder onto his.

My hatred for him made this confusing, but even now I was thinking about her. I was thinking about how his hands had held her, caressed her, made her feel feels I could never.

I wanted to kill him, but in a twisted way he was my last link to her. I hated how he had that over me, how are you knew her in a way that I never well and never got the chance to.

I shoved him away from me and yanked the door, straining my arms as I forced it open wider and ran out into the country manor Mark called his home.

I ignored his shouts, his pleads for me not to run out into the dark alone. I was already alone. He just didn’t know it. Somehow my body lead me through the woods off the estate, the muscle memory taking over my conscience thoughts.

As a kid, I was told to never go into the woods alone and the thought of it still scared me a month ago. Ha, if Lucy could see me now.

My chest aches as I continued to sob, blindly following the path back out of the woods and the country road that lead into town.

When I told Mark I loved Lucy, he had no idea how much. She was my best friend, but even that was a secret I wasn’t ready to tell her. And now I never will get to say it to her.

“I love you, Lucy.” I said into the night air, the ache feeling heavy as I spoke my deepest secret into the darkness “and I think you knew that, or suspected it. What does that even mean? Did you just not want to ruin our friendship… or…”

I was drunk. And I must look like a crazy person declaring my love to a dead girl. Maybe Mark and I weren’t so different. Maybe neither of us knew how to love a girl we held up on a pedestal, because she was just human. Beautiful and amazing, but flawed and completely.

If I could have one wish, I’d want to remember Lucy for who she was. Not who I wanted or wished her to be…