and I recall the push more than the fall

[bloodycrescents]

I've been on the island for more than a month now and I don't understand much of anything anymore. The days bleed into each other, and some mornings I wake up staring at a wooden roof and panic because I don't know where I am. Some nights I crawl under the thin sheets and can't remember what it felt like to watch the dim glow of a bare lightbulb

Comments

[madeuptoerase]

There's probably something a bit morbid about it, wandering back out to the spot where she showed up - not where she died, technically, but where she opened her eyes afterwards, or where she came back to life, some might argue. Carla Jean doesn't mind that much. As far as she's concerned, she gets to be morbid, and anyway, it isn't like it depresses her or anything. After all she's been through, it would take a hell of a lot to accomplish that. It just makes her thoughtful, no longer wondering at the sight as much as she once might have. Besides, it isn't like she has anywhere else to be

[bloodycrescents]

I feel more than see her, aware someone's coming toward me, sitting next to me. It still spooks me when she sits, my head turning to her a second too late, breath catching. My head's pounding as I nod, realizing a moment later that's not an answer.

"Fine," I tell her. At worst, she'll probably just think I'm half-asleep. I hope she will anyway. "Yeah. What are you doing out here?" Same as anyone probably. Some people around here have things to do, but most of us are wandering aimless. I figure I have an excuse, being new. I kind of wish I were one of the people with things to do, though. My body isn't used to all the extra time, my head's not used to an empty house, and Misty's still on my mind. I'm on edge, but it's almost a relief to have her here, forcing me to actually think.

[madeuptoerase]

It's an odd question for such a public place, when there are people out here sunbathing or whatever the hell pointless things they do all the time, but Carla Jean doesn't mind that too much. If anything seems off at all, in fact, it isn't her place to mention it. He'll talk if he wants to, and if he doesn't, it's no loss to her. Lord knows she keeps enough to herself; she's never been one for secrets, never seen the point of it, but she doesn't go making her business everyone else's, either. Especially these days, it seems more important than ever not to publicize anything unnecessarily. There's no telling who'll show up.

"Nothin' much," she answers, shrugging. There's rarely anything to do at all, a fact which she finds relieving and grating in turns. It's nice to have a break, but she's too used to having a home to run, a job to go to, a husband to look after and cook for to really appreciate its merits. Looking at him over her shoulder, she adds, "Could ask you the same, you know."

[bloodycrescents]

I shrug for an answer, and it's not a cop out. I don't know what I'm doing. I could tell her I've been thinking or I could say not thinking, and they'd both be true. It's like one of Callie's paintings in my head, splashes of color and shadow, vague blurs of girls I know, words floating past. It's more the feeling than the fact. I don't know if I'm freer here or just buried deeper in my own head.

"I was heading to the Compound to eat. Then I stopped." I don't know why I stopped. I just did. I guess around here it doesn't even matter why, since there's nowhere I need to be, so there's no one to give me shit for it when I don't get there. The ocean looks beautiful, still kind of grey-blue as it rolls in, and I guess that's a good enough reason, too, even if it isn't the right one. "Not like there's any rush."

[madeuptoerase]

"There's never any rush around here," Carla Jean says, though it isn't strictly true. People have found plenty of reasons, things to do to keep themselves occupied. None of it is mandatory, though, so she thinks her statement holds up well enough. For her part, she's got a sole class two mornings a week and that's it; the rest of her time is spent free, unsettlingly aimless and refreshingly quiet. She's had trouble enough to last a lifetime, if not several. Gaze wandering out towards the water, where the waves meet the sand, she exhales slowly, thoughtful. "I mean, unless you're starvin', but otherwise, might as well stay put a while."

[bloodycrescents]

It used to be I was hungry all the time. We did a lot better than plenty of people, we weren't starving or completely broke, but we were close to it between the four of us. I've been here more than a month now and I'm better fed than I've probably ever been in my life, but there are still days I feel that hunger, like my stomach just doesn't really know any other way to feel yet.

It's gone today, a pit there instead, leaden and cold as I glance over at Carla Jean. If anyone around here has cause to sit around feeling bad about the way their life went, it's her, but she keeps on going. Feeling bad for myself sitting next to her seems like kind of an asshole thing to do. "No, I think I'm gonna stay out here a while. It's nice with the clouds out. I keep thinking I'm going to snap out of it and be home."

[madeuptoerase]

It's a statement Carla Jean can relate to, though it isn't quite the same. For her, there won't be going home at all. At most, she'll blink and be back just long enough to register it before she's fully dead, this place like a long, drawn out moment before the end. While it's been a while now, though, the island feels as surreal as ever, perhaps more so for the amount of time she's spent here, like it's time that's bound to run out, each day one more than she should have been afforded. He knows, though, and there's no point to life if she just harps on being dead. If this is all she gets, she doesn't want to waste it.

"Place this beautiful, almost seems like it shouldn't be real," she says, thoughtful. It's more like a dream or something instead. If that's the case, though, she doesn't mind it. "Mind if I stick around with you? Ain't like there's anywhere else to be goin'."

[bloodycrescents]

In a funny way, it kind of reminds me of the poster on the wall in my parents' room, that big picture of Niagara Falls. The whole place is like a postcard send back from someone's honeymoon. Wish you were here. I imagine sending it back across the void to the girls. To Callie

[madeuptoerase]

"Be pretty damn impressive if anyone's was," Carla Jean says, though she's not sure impressive is actually the right word for it. Impressive isn't a word that should have anything to do with this place, grateful though she is to be here. There's too much that's off about it for that, too much that, for other people, might seem cruel, the disappearances and the lack of a way home. She has no one of such importance to her and no home to go to; she doesn't mind either.

She's glad to have company now, though. There's something about Harley she knows she doesn't quite understand, but of all the people she's met here, he's one of few she seems to be on the same page with regarding this place, and she likes that. When she suspects the bulk of the people here might have been something like brainwashed, it's kind of refreshing. "I thought it was... whatever comes after. You know."

[bloodycrescents]

"There'd be a lot more people." There's only one I'm really thinking about, though, and it's not like he couldn't still show up anyway. It makes me sick every time I think of him just turning up, partly because I hope he will. I don't know why I want to see him so badly. I know there are people who probably wouldn't think I would, but it doesn't really matter. He's still my dad. We still never got our CLOSURE. I just want one chance to tell him I'm sorry. To ask what I could have done different, how I could have been better. To tell him I love him, even if I can't remember his face anymore. I'd still know him if he walked toward us now.

"Anyway, I wouldn't be here if it was." I mean, I know she's figured it out by now, that this isn't the great big what if in the sky, but still, fact remains, I didn't die to get here. Even if I did, I doubt God is going to give me a beach full of free food and hot chicks where I get laid. That isn't how He deals and it isn't like I ever earned it.

[madeuptoerase]

It's a good thing, too, she thinks. Cynical as she might be, left indelibly hardened by all that happened to her in so short a time, Carla Jean wouldn't wish what she got on anyone, especially someone like Harley, who seems to be only just about her own age. Young people die all the time, it's true, but that doesn't mean they should have to, and just because she's been through hell and somehow come out on the other side of it doesn't mean she can't be pleased for every person who doesn't know what it's like to stare at the barrel of a gun and know they're about to die, to count each last breath until there are none left

[bloodycrescents]

I've thought about it, all the ways I could be wrong. Misty coming in and deciding for whatever reason to do to me what she tried to do to Mom, some psycho taking his hate for what Mom did too far, Amber finally snapping. None of it makes sense, though. Amber likes messing with me too much to end the fun and I'd've felt it if something had happened anyway. There would have been something, some pain to usher me out of this world same as it's led me through it. It still feels sometimes like there's no going home.

I lean forward, dusting up sand with my hands for no reason other than because I can. "That'd be a first," I say, matching my tone to hers.

[madeuptoerase]

She doesn't think he means it as a joke, but Carla Jean almost smiles anyway, a wry curve of her lips that isn't quite enough to pass as anything warm or amused or lighthearted. It's still prompted by something, though she can't pinpoint quite what that quality is, maybe the fact that he's able to say so in a tone like that at all. For her part, she isn't sure that being right is all it's cut out to be - she was, after all, about something huge, and there's little satisfaction in that with the way everything wound up - but that doesn't make the alternative all that appealing an option, either.

"You've gotta start somewhere," she says with a shrug, somewhere between teasing and not. "Seems like a good one to me."

[bloodycrescents]

I don't know where to start

[madeuptoerase]

Carla Jean tilts her head to the side, not even close to a nod, but nicer than what comes to mind first. There's no starting what's already been started, after all, and while it's really fantastic to think that her past doesn't have to matter here, that she could give a different name and a different story and no one would ever be the wiser and she wouldn't need to keep looking over her shoulder all the damn time, it isn't that simple. Nothing ever is. It wouldn't get rid of the events themselves; she'd still wake up in the night gasping for breath and half-expecting someone else to be in the room, still remember what it was like to bury her husband and her grandmother within maybe a week of each other, remember the last breath she drew in before she opened her eyes here, knowing there wouldn't be any more. It's nice in theory, but impossible in practice, and not even having a good idea of what they're getting at makes her any more receptive to the notion of a blank slate

[bloodycrescents]

I want it to be true, but the only way any of us could really wipe the slate clean would be if we didn't remember what came before. Even then, I don't know if it'd really be a new start. We talked in biology about nature versus nurture, back in high school, and I always thought it was kind of dumb. There's no one answer to that and anyone doing tests and shit thinking they can prove they are is just waiting a lot of time and money, because maybe how we're raised makes us who we are, but there are some things that are just native. Take away our memories and there's no telling what we'd be hardwired to do or what we'd become instead. And nothing that takes away the physical scars left behind, gives back Carla Jean's life or Tunny's leg or any of that. There are things in life that are clean cut, but not a whole lot of them and not this