Clouds That Were (Weathered Hearts) (3 page)

CHAPTER FIVE

Tenley

I
have no idea
why I was so rude to him. I can tell he was just trying to be nice. And seriously, he was hot. Not that I think he was hitting on me or anything. I just don’t want him to know just how awful my life is, and even if he were hitting on me, it’s not like I am allowed to date anyway. There would be no point in getting to know him. Every friend I have ever had or guy I have liked finds out about my mom and runs like hell.

No one wants to deal with the girl who can’t go out or talk on the phone and is sad every moment of every day. I don’t even want to deal with me most of the time, nor does does my own mother, so why would anyone choose to?

As expected, as soon as I walk through the front door, I get my ass chewed out for not coming home on the bus like I was supposed to.

“You wonder why I never let you do anything? This is why, because every time I let you do something, you take advantage of me. You can’t be trusted even to come home from school the way you are supposed to. Get up to your room.”

“I am already going.” I spew back at her.

“Watch your attitude, young lady. You are the one who broke my trust.”

“Whatever. You never trusted me to begin with. I have homework to do.”

“I don’t even know why you do homework; it’s not like you are ever going to amount to anything. What a waste of time.”

“Why do you make me live here with you if you clearly don’t want me? Why don’t you just let me go live with my grandparents? They love me, and they want me there. Wouldn’t that be a win-win situation?”

“You will live with them over my dead body. I am not about to allow you to go and make them deal with all your behavior problems.”

“What behavior problems?” I yell “I have never drank; I have never smoked; I don’t do drugs. I have never had sex or even kissed a boy! What exactly do you think I do that is so awful you can’t even look at me?”

“You exist. Now get up to your room.” She sneers.

I know it isn’t worth arguing with her anymore, and I don’t want to give her the satisfaction of knowing she made me cry so I just keep walking up to my room. I gently close the door, because I don’t want her flip out and say I closed it too loudly. I throw my stuff on the bed, pad over to the window and sit down on the bench seat, still trying not to cry. My room is roughly the size of a sardine can, but the one good thing about it is that I can see the street out front. Sometimes people-watching helps me to forget that I am trapped up here in this room like some kind of sad princess in a book. The tears finally overwhelm me as I sit looking out the window. Since I know now that Chase lives by me, I should not have been surprised to see him standing on the road.

I tried to look away when I saw it was him, but before I could, he looked up and we made eye contact. He stopped and stared for a little while, then gave me a little wave, put his head down, and kept walking. I’m sure he saw my teary eyes and wondered what was wrong with me. I feel like an idiot sitting in the window crying. I watched him for a little while; he didn’t seem like the happiest of people either. I watched him until he got to his house, and other than that one time, he didn’t look up at my window again. This is when I learned that he actually lives directly across the street from me. I am still watching his house for whatever reason when I see a light upstairs turn on, and then I see his face in the window. We can actually see right into each other’s rooms.

Note to self. ALWAYS close the blinds.

We sat there looking at each other through our windows for what seemed like forever. Neither of us could seem to walk away. After what must have been about two hours, he gave me the one-minute sign. He came back to the window and held up what looked like a huge sketch pad with big block letters that simply said HI.

I looked around for a minute and could not find anything other than a notebook from my backpack, but I didn’t even have a marker so I put my hands up in a sorry motion and gave him a small wave.

He turned the page and was writing again and then held up the paper that said CAN I CALL YOU?

I shake my head no. I don’t have a phone, and he can’t exactly call my house.

WHY? He writes on another piece of paper.

I make a pretend phone with my hand and hold it up to my ear and shake my head no. I suppose he could take it as me just saying I don’t want you to call, but somehow he gets what I am trying to say.

NO PHONE?

I shake my head no again.

I CAN FIX THAT.

Then just like that, his light was off and he was gone. I sat there for a while longer just staring at his window thinking something was going to happen, but not having any idea what. Nothing happened, though. No lights. He never left his house. Just. Nothing.

I should have known better than to think he cared. I mean really, what did I think, that he was just going to come over and give me a phone? Seriously. He probably felt obligated to do something since I was sitting there just staring at him like a moron. I don’t know what I was thinking. I was so rude to him that there would really be no reason for him to want to communicate with me. Besides, even if he had brought me paper and a marker or a phone or whatever, it’s not like my mother would have let me have it. I can just picture that conversation.

Chase comes to the door: “Hi, I am from across the street and I would like to talk to your daughter through the window. Could you give her this so we can talk?”

Yeah, I’m sure that would go well. The tears had stopped, but now they flow freely from my eyes again. At times like this, my life feels so hopeless. I know it won’t be like this forever, but I don’t know how I can live like this for two more years. The older I get, the more difficult it becomes. Even at this point, my mother’s actions are affecting my chances of getting into any kind of college worth going to. My grades are mediocre because half of the time I don’t finish homework. Any time there are big projects, they don’t get done. I can only do so much in between classes. I still do my best, but in this case, my best isn’t nearly good enough. I know colleges look at extra–curricular activities, too; but since I’m not allowed to do anything extra, that’s a mark against me too. The best I could hope for at this point would be to get into a technical college, but that isn’t going to do anything to help me follow my dream.

My dream is to be a photographer. The thought of being able to stand safely behind a camera and capture the emotions of other people has always intrigued me. I look at photography books at school whenever I can, and some of the photos are so beautiful, they bring me to tears. The way good photographers can tell an entire story with one photo is mind-boggling. I want to do that. I want to be the one who tells stories through pictures. But you can’t get a degree like that from a technical college. You also can’t get into a decent art school without a portfolio. Building a photography portfolio with no camera is impossible.

These are the thoughts that I can’t seem to move past. I can look at the next two years and think “yeah, I can get through this; there is an end in sight,” but knowing that my future is going to be affected by the way my life is now is too much to handle. All I want is to be a normal teenager. I want to think about normal teenaged things. I want my biggest concern in this moment to be Chase. To sit here and wonder if he likes me, or if he thinks I’m pretty, or if he thinks anything about me at all.

Instead, I sit here and wonder how I am going to make it through another weekend at home with her. Every weekend is the same: I do my chores, I stay out of her way, and I still get reprimanded for everything. My chores weren’t done right. I walked up the stairs too loudly. I woke up too early. Her weekend is spent sitting in her chair in the living room watching
Lifetime
movies and watching me, just waiting for me to screw up. Death is a welcome option. Being dead would be easier than dealing with this all of the time.

CHAPTER SIX

Chase

T
he first chance
I get to talk to her, I blow it. Completely. Not like, well, that didn’t go as planned, more like a nuclear bomb that spells out YOU ARE AN IDIOT in big black smoke.

When I get up to my room, she is still in her window, sitting with her knees up just looking out the window. It looks like she is crying, but I can’t tell for sure from this far away. She looks over when I turn my light on, and we just sit and look at each other. She definitely has tears in her eyes. What is making her so sad? I want to talk to her again. She always looks unhappy, but I have never seen her look this dejected. I don’t have her phone number, so I can’t call her. I certainly don’t want to go over there, since she clearly already thinks I’m creepy. Rightfully so, I guess. I’m sure staring at her from my window isn’t helping that image.

My mind is spinning, trying to figure out how I can communicate with her, when I realize that I can write on my sketchpad and hold it up. I shoot her the one minute sign and scramble to get my sketchpad and a marker as quickly as I can. I write the word HI as big as I can and hold it up. She smiles a little half smile and looks around her room for a minute and then shakes her head and holds up her hands.

CAN I CALL YOU? I write.

Again she shakes her head. Does that mean she doesn’t want me to call her? Or maybe she doesn’t have a phone?

WHY?

She makes a little phone with her hand and holds it up to her ear and shakes her head. I think that means no phone, at least I hope that’s what it means. I can fix that, but I can’t fix her not wanting me to call her.

NO PHONE?

Again she shakes her head.

Well, this is not going to work. I grab my marker one more time and write I CAN FIX THAT.

I need to have some way to communicate with her. I turn my light off and head downstairs to talk to my dad. When my mom died, she left me quite a bit of money, but I have to have my dad’s permission to use any of it until I turn eighteen. I want to buy her a phone so that I can at least text her; this is going to be a tough sell.

I find my dad downstairs in his office.

“Hey bud, what’s up? How was your day?” he asks hopefully.

“Well it was good. I finally talked to that girl I was telling you about.”

“Oh? And how did it go?”

“Um, not good, kind of good—I don’t really know. Something is up with this girl. She is just so sad all of the time. I really feel like I can help her, but I need to know why first.”

“Seems logical enough. Why don’t you call her?”

“I don’t have her number.”

“Why don’t you just go over to her house then?”

“Well, I kind of followed her home, and now she thinks I’m some kind of stalker. I don’t think that would be the best idea,” I mumble.

“Smooth, Chase,” he snickers.

“I tried writing and showing it to her through the window, but she has no paper either. Which is why I came to talk to you.”

“Let
me get his straight: You followed her home, she thinks you’re creepy, and now you are writing notes to her through your window? Doesn’t that kind of confirm the creepiness?”

“Yeah well, I am hoping you will let me get her a phone so that I don’t seem quite as weird watching her in the window.”

“No, you are absolutely not going to take money from your trust fund to buy some girl you barely know a phone. Are you nuts? Not to mention the fact that buying her a phone is over the top. If she thinks you’re creepy now, she will think you’re psychotic if you do this.”

“Dad, you need to trust me on this. She has that same look in her eyes that mom did before she, well, you know.”

He puts his head in his hands and sits like that for what seems like forever. I shouldn’t have brought up my mom, but hell, my big mouth is on a roll today.

“Dad, I just want to help her. Or at least try.”

“I get that, really I do, I just, don’t want you to get hurt. You have no idea what you are getting involved in with her. It may be something that you can’t help with.”

“I will feel more hurt watching her suffer and not even trying to help.”

“Okay, okay, I get it. I will run and get her a phone. My money though, not yours.”

“Thanks Dad, I appreciate your trusting me on this.”

“Just be careful. If she is like your mom, you are bound to get hurt in the end, and this kind of hurt is not easy to get through.”

“I know,” I say solemnly.

Everyone knows how bad it hurts to lose someone, especially to suicide. The years before she actually killed herself were just as bad as her actual death. She struggled with this addiction and that, and in the end, it was just too much. Now everyone we know looks at us with this look that’s a mixture of judgment and pity. Judging mostly, though, because shouldn’t we have seen it? Shouldn’t we have done something?

The thing is, we did see it, and we did try to help her; but she was already gone. I think in her mind she was gone long before she actually killed herself. She stopped going to work, stopped going out with friends, stopped going to my games—she just stopped living. It was all very gradual, and we didn’t even realize what was happening at first. But like I said, by the time we did, it was too late.

So now we have to live with that. She is gone, she escaped her problems, but all she did was leave all of those problems for us to try to figure out without her. It’s not fair. She should have to explain herself. Have to deal with her problems just like the rest of us. I will never understand, and that kills me.

But the sorrow that I saw in her eyes in the months before she did it, is the same sorrow I see in Tenley’s eyes. It’s a hopeless sadness. When I first made eye contact with those beautiful chocolate eyes, I could see it, but the difference is, I could still see life behind that sadness, as though if someone could get in, she could still be saved. I will be that someone. I can save her. I know it.