School is just like having a job. You have to show up, you have to do your work, and you have to be around tons of idiots or mean people. Now that I think about it, it’s worse than having a job. At least there you get paid.
My name is Danielle. I’m eighteen. I’ve been stealing things for as long as I can remember.
I heard how people sounded when their dreams were shattered, when their lives were turned into a waking nightmare.
It could be enough, maybe, or at least a start, but the problem is that at night I tumble into dreams that aren’t dreams at all. I tumble into memories and wake up aching for a dying world and a quiet, cold life that offered me nothing but sitting in a still room.
And yet here I am. Broken and bleeding on the inside, heartsick, I am here.
Whatever happened to me just now has gotten to me, broken past the fragile shell I’ve built. More than my memory is gone. My soul has wings that beat to a heart I don’t understand and I see things, feel things that I know aren’t from here, but that are so real.
He is nothing to look at, and yet I can’t stop looking at him. There is something beautiful in how his face is made, how all the tiny flaws blend together into something more perfect than perfection could ever be.
I don’t know how I know that, but I do. I can feel the beat of that truth inside me. Taste it bitter on my tongue. Sometimes, like now, I didn’t think I want to know who I really am.
But I know a lie when I hear one.
Something in me, in my bruised heart, wakes up, and even though I’m terrified, I don’t push the feeling away.
You know who you are you just have to believe it.
I want to care, but I don’t. I look at you and all I feel is tired. I walk through school and all I want to do is leave. I wake up in the morning and don’t know why I’m here. I feel like I’m not real.
I didn’t feel anything watching him go. I didn’t even wish I did.
I felt nothing all the time, and it had started to feel normal. It should have scared me, but it didn’t.
The heart is a place with worm holes made by feelings you aren’t supposed to have but do.
Darling, the world doesn’t owe you anything.
I think love is huge, overwhelming. I think it’s terrible and beautiful.
I-I don’t usually go around throwing rocks at people’s windows. Or saying that I’ve wanted to kiss you since your first day at work, when you wanted to know why we had three codes for fish sandwiches when we only sold one kind.
I want to lie down on the bench then, or better yet, on the grass, rest on something living and see if I can hear the dead underneath.
The story of my life can be told in silver: in chocolate mills, serving spoons, and services for twelve. The story of my life has nothing to do with me. The story of my life is things. Things that aren’t mine, that won’t ever be mine. It’s all I’ve ever known. I wish it wasn’t.