Friend

I can’t breathe. The air I catch in scattered fragments enters my lungs sharp, cold, fast. My skin is hot.

It’s not real.

But I want to grab her hand and run, escape from the horror grasping at her ankles. It used to be her close friend, a boy. She trusted him, but obsession has twisted him, and he’s not even human anymore, not really, or maybe he’s all too human, all too real.

It’s a story, and I know before the door opens that the hero will save her. It’s not real; it’s just a story.

But I still can’t breathe. My eyes burn, but I can’t cry. I suck down water to douse the fire under my skin. I cry.

It wasn’t real.

My big sister finds me in our room, breathing too hard too fast.

I brokenly tell her, the unreal and the real. She understands. It’s July, and she’s known since last September when one Sunday afternoon I sat on my bed, bawling, for an hour, until all of my emotion mixed with salt had streamed from my eyes, leaving me numb and tired.

She waits until I’ve expelled most of my distress in carbon dioxide, pushed from my exhausted lungs. She distracts me, takes me to watch a show with her friends. She doesn’t like to be touched, but she lets me curl up against her.

He used to be my friend, someone I trusted.

I’m hollow again, numb.