Lovely

Lovely

  Allison Liddelle

  Copyright 2010 Allison Liddelle

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), places, or events is completely coincidental.

  Enter Alice:

  In the words of Krista:

  Describe Alice? I don't know if I can. How can you describe that girl? Most of the world sees her one way. She only allows a few people see her pain. It kills me, because the reason she doesn't want people to know about how she feels is that she doesn't want to burden them. She told me she never did really feel like she deserved us.

  In fact, it was a matter of chance that anyone even knew about Alice’s depression at all. Her parents knew, because it was their damn fault she felt this way in the first place. Lisa and I knew, because we had just happened to catch her at moments when she couldn’t mask her pain well enough.

  So how can I describe Alice? She's beautiful, talented, very clever. She's also the epitome of pain, of sadness, of depression.

  Maybe this memory of mine will help.

  For the rest of my life, I think my most distinct memory of Alice will be of her breaking down. I will always see her in my mind the way she was that night. I still remember it so clearly, even though it was years ago now...

  It was after one of her performances, we were all so proud of her. Well, at least, Lisa and I were proud. Her parents weren't there. Of course they weren't there. They were never there.

  Anyway, she had always been a fantastic actress. The drama teachers swore up and down that she'd be a star someday. She'd put the world's most brilliant actors and actresses to shame.

  In this play, she had landed herself the lead role. It was more than any actor could ask for. Lines, a name... For God's sake, the girl even had her own monologue!

  She had looked so beautiful. She always did of course, but tonight was different.

  Her long, thick golden hair was twisted and pinned in an elegant knot, and the stage make-up made her look so alive. Her lips were pink like cherry blossoms, cheeks red with excitement, eyes sparkling like diamonds. It appeared as though she was floating on a cloud of happiness, an ethereal beauty that was too great for our small human minds to take in. She was rapturous in her joy, capturing the hearts of everyone in the room with a simple smile.

  I should have known then that it was too good to be true. I should have understood in that moment that something had to go wrong. Something always went wrong.

  That's how it works with Alice. Everything seems fine. She seems happy... Then, something like this happens. Something like-- Well. You'll see.

  Her emerald green eyes locked with mine, and she smiled brilliantly before her eyes wandered again. I don't know what happened. I don't know what she saw. I have no idea what she heard. I just knew that one moment she was beaming with pure, shinning bliss, the next she was shaking wildly within my embrace.

  Lisa violently shoved away cameras before turning back to Alice and hugging her fiercely, almost like she was afraid to let go. It could have been an eternity, or just one single moment that Lisa and I held our poor, poor Alice.

  She seemed so frail, broken. I'll never forget the way she trembled in my arms if I live for all eternity. My God! The way she shook.

  And that's how I'll always remember her. Trembling in my arms.

  In Lisa’s words:

  My clearest memory of Alice? The one I think most describes her? It's not pretty, but then again... What part of what was really Alice was?

  I don't mean to say she's a bad person. She's not. Alice is a wonderful person. It's just that she gets so angry and self-destructive, turning selfish in her warpath against herself. When I'm around her sometimes it feels like she doesn't have enough energy to care about anything but how much she hates herself.

  She was very kind to everyone though, strangely enough, kind to Krista and I. Krista and I, the two weird girls in school whom no one seemed to like but Alice. There was mousy haired Krista, whose grey eyes and clothing choices made her look washed out and too skinny. Then there was me, slightly overweight, and not too intelligent. She talked to both of us and became great friends with both of us. So yes, the girl was a good person.

  Maybe I'm just being so defensive of her because I know how badly she thinks of herself. She's probably not as great as we all make her out to be, but someone has to have too much confidence in her.

  Anyway, onto my memory. It'll explain things better than I ever could.

  Most of all, what I really remember is being in shock.

  She was so lovely, so talented. I can remember not understanding at all. I remember how clearly she spoke, the clarity in her bright eyes when she looked at me.

  How simply she phrased it.

  I remember my whole world coming to a screeching halt.

  "I want to die. Please don't tell Krista."

  How in God's name could she say that so calmly!? Just, 'I want to die. Please don't tell Krista.' How could she say that? How could she want to die? I know she had an awful home life.... But how could she want to kill herself!?

  I couldn't understand the concepts of self-injury and suicide. It was a wonder that I didn't run away screaming. But I just listened in a horrified silence as she detailed her entire suicide plan to me.

  "It would have to be snowing," she explained calmly, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world; and to her, it probably was.

  She told me of the lovely white gown she would wear. She had come up with all of the exact details of the dress, down to what kind of fabric the damned thing would be made out of. She told me how there would be a full moon. Snow would blanket the earth. Then, she would climb to the top of the tallest building she could find. (Alice confided in me that she actually wished that it could be the Eiffel Tower, but she doubted she'd ever go to Paris.) Then, she would take a dagger and stab herself, falling to the snow covered ground below.

  "Red on white," she told me, with a sad sort of dreaminess. "Won't it just be so lovely? As least my death can be perfect... Right, Lisa?"

  I couldn't answer her. I was frozen in terror, shock, horror. Any words I could have said stuck in my throat. I wanted to slap her, to knock some sense into her. I wanted to shake her by the shoulders and demand to know how she could even think of being so selfish.

  I wanted to fall down at her feet and beg her not to go through with it. I wanted to do all of those things, but instead, I started crying. Alice looked vaguely concerned on my behalf, her eyebrows knitting together in confusion.

  Her! Concerned for me! When she was the one who wanted to jump off a god dammed building!

  Ha; what a funny place the world is.

  The lovely Alice:

  I don't like writing this. I didn't want to write this, but Krista begged me to. I really don't like saying these things. I don't enjoy having to see the scars every time I look at my arm as I'm writing. The scars that cover every inch of my upper body, some thick and white, others thin and pink. I especially don't like the cuts that haven't scarred yet. The scabs mocking me, telling me I'm a failure at everything I ever tried to do, including restraining from injuring myself.

  I really don't like imagining the blade sliding across my wrist one last time. I don't find any pleasure in thinking so longingly of death.

  And, yet... I do. I would give anything to no longer feel this pain. Anything. Even my own life.

  My name is Alice. My last name should be 'Disaster by Fifteen'. But that's slightly too long.

  People seem to think that I should be happy. I should be proud of myself. I should be self-actualized. I should be doing charity work, or graduating early, or applying

  to all these great colleges, and doing all this extracurricular shit that really won’t matter bu
t will look amazing on a college application.

  Instead, I'm a suicidal teenage freak.

  Lovely.

  That's what people have always called me. Lovely.

  The lovely blonde-haired, green-eyed, talented teenage beauty queen.

  I hate being called lovely! I hate it! I'm not happy! I'm not gifted! I am most certainly not grateful for my life! I don't even want to be alive! And I am most certainly not lovely.

  I'm getting ahead of myself. I've already turned to a bad temper. My apologies.

  I just... I just... It's just that... I'm tired...

  Tired of living. Tired of being alive. I'm tired of my heart aching the way it does. Of this feeling of a flaming knife stabbing into my heart over and over again. Of a wound forever being healed, forever being renewed with a new vigor.

  It hurts... It hurts. It hurts!

  I don't know why I'm still alive. I really don't. I've thought about suicide so often that I should have already gone through with it. I've already comes to terms with the fact that no one can love me. I don't know, maybe it's the fear of a Christian hell. Maybe that's it.

  Fear of God having no mercy upon my poor soul. This life is bad enough, but it's only temporary! What horror to have something worse for all eternity. I pray for the damned. If their pain is anything like mine... Well...

  No one deserves that.

  Imagine all the pain that you could ever want to inflict on a person you hate. Not just hate, but loathe with so much passion that it burns. Imagine that, and then imagine what you think would be too much pain to give them. What would be too horrible even for them.

  That's my pain.

  Perhaps I'm still alive because I have some hope, some small, pathetically misguided bit of optimism that the world can get better. That it will get better.

  Maybe I'm still hoping to see the sunrise.

  You see, I wasn't always like this. My life was rather like, do forgive the comparison, a stained glass window. It was a beautiful picture, and I always pretended it was reality. I would stare at it, and not spare a thought for what might lay on the outside of my window. Oh, my beautiful, beautiful illusion.

  Then, there were a few chinks in the glass. Just a few. Not enough to even distort the image. I easily ignored them. But then, there were a few more. I began to wonder, and my view began to change.

  The pieces started falling. It happened rapidly. Too rapidly to even try to stop. Soon, every last piece of my one wondrous fantasy was gone. The shards tore at my life, my happiness, my sanity.

  Tremblingly, I picked up those last shreds of my life and crawled over to the window ledge, my stomach twisting painfully inside me.

  Fearfully, tentatively, I looked out the window.

  And all I saw was black

  And so, it begins:

  Chapter One

  Alice breathed in deeply, and then sighed, almost contentedly. It was a rare day she felt so at peace. It was rare that she felt almost happy. She smiled sleepily at her voice instructor, and he couldn't help but smile back distractedly.

  Yawning, she stretched in a cat-like manner and curled up against the dark wood of the piano's base.

  The movement caused an avalanche of sheet music, causing Alice to be shocked into a fit of giggles. The annoyed scowl on her teachers face only served to make her laugh even harder, not even phased by the displeasure clearly read in his dark brown eyes.

  "Your singing today was lovely," he noted, moving over to reassemble the piles of sheet music. He didn't appear to notice how all the lines in Alice's normally pretty face hardened at his words. How her breath came in short, sharp gasps, and her eyes suddenly filled with angry tears.

  She stiffened and stood abruptly. Eric looked disgruntled, finally noticing the change in his pupil's behavior.

  "Well, I ought to be going now. Goodbye, Eric," she managed to get out through gritted teeth, bolting towards the door. Ignoring his startled protests, she snatched up her sweater and walked out the front door.

  The crisp fall air pressed against her violently, pulling her hair out from where it was caught beneath her shirt and twirling the many strands together.

  Lovely. Lovely, lovely, lovely!

  How she loathed that word! Lovely, everything was just so lovely! Damn it, how could he say that? Use that word to describe anything about her... How dare he...How dare he!

  But, no. He didn't know. Alice had never said anything about it to him. God, how her life had been ruined by that word! That word had torn her to little bits and pieces time and time again.

  Alice breathed in deeply, trying to reconnect with that feeling of contentedness that she had been in possession of only moments ago. The white-hot anger left her body as quickly as it had come. In its place was the dull, aching sadness that was always just a whisper away.

  Numbly, she trekked the rest of the way to her house.

  She fumbled with the keys at the door for a second before pushing it open. No one was home yet.

  Good. Maybe they would all forget that she even existed tonight.

  That would be a miracle. The last thing that Alice needed now was another fight with her parents. Another beating.

  Absently, her hand went up to her cheekbone to press down on a carefully hidden bruise. Wincing, she let her hand drop down again. It was still too sore.

  She didn't even pause to look around as she walked up the stairs to her room. Alice knew what her house looked like. It was the image of perfection. Walls painted just the right shade of mocha, with the perfect cream trim. Pictures of the family pretending to be happy adorned the walls. Paintings of trees and other meaningless objects that no one should ever waste their time painting were spaced out on each wall perfectly. Just another reminder of how she didn't fit into her parents' dream of a perfect home, a perfect family.

  A glance at her face in the bathroom mirror only proved to lower her self-esteem further. Flinging her jacket off, she splashed water on her face to remove her make-up. Rubbing at her face with a towel to remove the last remnants of the make-up, Alice grimaced at her own reflection.

  A pale face stared back at her, dark purple circles rimmed the bottom of her eyes, and the side of her face was marred by an ugly blue and purple bruise that had blossomed up last night. Angry red lines were easily apparent on her arm, even in the darkened bathroom, along with fading green and yellow marks from where fingertips had pressed in too hard.

  No, she certainly did not fit in at all with the image of perfection. Like the bruises and scars, she marred it, twisting the idea until it was as distorted as her.

  Screw perfection, no one needed it anyway.

  That was Alice's last clear thought before she collapsed onto her bed exhaustedly, falling asleep immediately. She would never hear her mother come in. She would never hear the phone ringing in time to pick it up.

  And that is how it all began.

  Chapter Two

  Alice sat on her bed, trying her hardest to comprehend what had just happened. She remembered pain, and blood, and screams. Silently, she extended a hand upwards to touch the dried blood on her split lip. Something in the back of her mind acknowledged the fact that her eye hurt and she would have an ugly black-eye by tomorrow. But she had been emotionally numb through it all. No tears, no sorrow, just apathy; sweet, deadening apathy.

  But the feeling was wearing off. A sharp, all too familiar pain took its place in her heart, and Alice began to weep.

  All the pain she had suppressed came bubbling up in what Alice had nicknamed her tri-weekly breakdown.

  This time it was different though. Today the pain was worse. It hurt in a new way.

  Alice opened up her drawer and took out a razor blade. She stared at it for a moment before pressing it up against her forearm and jerking it sharply to the side. Blood seeped slowly from the wound. She frowned, noting that she didn't feel much different.

  In a pain filled daze she walked into the bathroom, slamming the door shut a
nd locking it. Turning on the faucet, she let the water run over the wound, the blood flowing faster from the cut, turning a pinkish color as it was diluted.

  Still no change.

  She thought bitterly of her friends. Her so-called friends. She had told them of her pain. They didn't help, they didn't care. Eric? He was no ally. She was just his tool, his protégé. The stupid blonde girl he taught on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It would mean nothing to him if she was gone, if she was dead.

  Death.

  Now there was an appealing idea. Death was the one being in this universe you could truly count on. Why did people fear her so? She was always there, always hovering just out of reach until your time.

  There was no escaping Death. Her embrace would be your last no matter who you were. Nothing lived forever, so everything must meet Death in the end. She did not discriminate, unlike God. She did not hear pleas for her to come and erase the pain and then ignore them. Not like God.

  Oh, yes, He's so ubiquitous and loving. Yet He left her here, in this misery. He was probably ashamed of her like everyone else, and so chose to ignore her, hoping His failure of a creation would take care of itself and disappear.

  Yet, Death was there. Death waited ever-so-patiently for her always. Without so much as a second thought, Alice made two long, deep cuts down her arms and sank at long last into her Lady's morbid embrace.

  That is one of Alice's endings. One, but not the last by far.

  Chapter Three

  The sound of shouting jolted Alice awake and she didn't waste a second before jumping out her bed. Even mostly asleep her body still had the survival instincts that came with living in a nightmare. She didn't know if it was her parents screaming at each other, or screaming at her, although both would have the same outcome.

  "Alice Amanda Hawkings, you get your ass down here this minute!"

  Alice froze where she stood, half in shock that her mother remembered her name, half terrified because she had no idea what she had done wrong. A sense of urgency over-took her. All of a sudden she completely dreaded complying with her mother's wishes, even though she'd never been stupid enough to disobey her parents before.