My Eyes On You

Bitterness

She looked into the mirror and her green eyes were icy and transparent.

Her cheeks were rosy, but hollow.

She looked out her partially open window at the town.The maple-lined street was peaceful and still except for the gentle movements of the leaves swaying in the breeze. The sun was starting to rise, now, and gentle, amber light appeared in swipes across the mostly darkened sky.

A woman wearing headphones and a sweat suit jogged past. Cool wind brushed open her lace curtains and ruffled a stack of papers from her desk. She rushed to close the window as she clamped her hand down on top of the precious pile. It was her collection of poems. She had been writing one every day ever since that night when Brendan

violated her in the worst way a boy can violate a girl.

She had been twelve then. Now, she had a whole collection. Some were sorrowful and deeply private. Most of them were angry and homicidal. She never showed the poems to anyone, and instead clung to them jealously and fervently.On the occasional times when a guest would come into the house, she would hide them as carefully as she now hid the g*n.

She heard heavy footsteps coming from downstairs. She felt the sickening knot form in her stomach: the same one that had been haunting her for months. She didn‟t want to go to school and face the kids who all hated her. She would rather die than do that.

They thought she was strange. Though she still had her circle of friends (Mona, Christie, and Hope) she suspected that even her friends didn‟t like her very much. It wasn‟t as though they beat her up every day; but in Leah‟s mind, they came very close.

They made fun of her. They teased her about her clothes. They threatened her.

She‟d come close to being jumped by a group of girls on several occasions. They hated her. And she hated them.

But worse was how they‟d treated her two years ago: one person in particular.

That was the person she hated most;that was the

person she wanted to die.Leah had grown a lot in the space of two years. Her hips had widened, her breasts had swelled, but in any case,she had lost a lot of weight. Food was no longer the joy that it once had been, and sometimes she would go days without taking a bite to eat.

But there was a prettiness, a delicateness about her

face that seemed somehow impossible for the features that she possessed: taken individually, she would have been

plain. But put together, the effect was stunning. Most of the time she painted her lips blood-red and powdered her skin until it was next to white. She used

perfumes, nail polishes, glitter roll-ons, and scented lip gloss generously.

She was thin bordering on anorexic, and the black hair next to pale skin made her look even more like a vampire.

The rowdy boys at school still called her a w***e, but in reality, she was a virgin.

At one point she started telling everyone, including

her friends, that she had slept with two older men.

Brendan, probably having heard the rumor, most likely wouldn‟t know what to think.

But Leah didn‟t care anymore what Brendan thought. He had claimed her body once, but he would never do it again.He had degraded her, humiliated her, mortally wounded her spirit, and left her for dead. Oh, sure. They said it was a suicide. But Leah knew who was responsible. She bet that cold-hearted monster even smiled when he learned that her best friend had jumped

off a 200-foot cliff.

He‟d been the reason, the only reason, that Jeremy had

decided to leave the party that night, wander into the

thick darkness, and hurl himself off the rocky edge.

Jeremy was gay. Not very many people knew that. Leah

was the second person he had ever told. The first person was Brendan.

Now, he knew very well that Brendan was not gay. But apparently, he was in love with him. He couldn‟t take another step until he let him know just how he felt about him.

Leah didn‟t blame Jeremy. Brendan had strikingly dark hair and prominent features that were unforgettable. He

was only twelve years old at the time, but he looked

seventeen. He was taller than the rest of the boys, with a strong build and a classic, athletic face. The two had

been friends since the third grade, and since then, they‟d done everything together.

But when Jeremy came out of the closet, Brendan didn‟t react well. He turned on Jeremy. He said he never wanted to be his friend again. He started making fun of him at

school. He told everyone he was only friends with him

because of his money.

Leah rung her hands as she thought of the past.

Jeremy started to look pale and distraught whenever Leah saw him. She demanded to know what was wrong, but he

wouldn‟t tell her.

Finally, one day, he did. Leah was a little bit offended that she was not the first person he told, but she

also felt sick to her stomach that Brendan would treat him this way.

Inside, she was hiding her own feelings for Brendan

Caldwell.But she wouldn‟t let them show. Truth be told, she was ashamed of them.

The night of the party, Brendan apparently didn‟t know

that Jeremy was going to be there. When he and his friends

saw him, they broke into their usual teasing and carousing. To show people that it wasn‟t bothering him, Jeremy drank

and smoked pot with everybody else.

At one point, the two boys found themselves alone.Jeremy broke into a tearful monologue, explaining why he shouldn‟t have put Brendan into such a terrible position,

begging him for forgiveness, telling him he loved him, he loved him.

But when they rejoined the crowd, Brendan relayed the entire conversation to the group. He announced to everyone

that Jeremy was gay.