My Eyes On You

long hours

“And I‟m sorry I yelled at you,” he said, then reached over and hugged, then kissed her.Everything was fine until a week later. Coming back from class with her bookbag over her shoulder, she found him searching through her things.

She stopped cold. “What are you doing?” she demanded.

“What, do you have something to hide?” he jeered. He

pulled something out from behind his back. “What‟s this?”

Glinting in the light of the afternoon sun was the shiny, metallic object that had given her such t*****e in years

past. It was the g*n. She‟d brought it with her to school, afraid that someone would discover it if she left it at home.

She stammered. “Th-that‟s, my protection,” she said.

He did not look impressed. “Why do you have a g*n? A

goddamn g*n?”

She swiveled her hips and placed her fists upon them.

“We‟re d**g dealers, aren‟t we? We‟ve got to make sure no one comes and steals our loot.”

Cameron wasn‟t buying it. “You‟ve got to start giving me some answers, and I mean now.”

Defeated, Leah clamored over to the bed. “Alright. I‟ll tell you.”

She had told herself that she would never tell anyone about Brendan. Her past with him proved to be even more

personal to her than her sexuality ever was, and she guarded her feelings closely and possessively. But when

Cameron discovered the g*n in her possession, she knew she would have to tell him the truth.

She proceeded to tell him the whole story, beginning with Jeremy, but still,

leaving out the all-important detail that she loved him. Cameron was silent for a long time. Leah thought he had lost his voice or something. But when he did speak, his voice was calm and controlled.

“Why didn‟t you tell me about any of this sooner?” he asked.

She looked down at her palms. “I didn‟t think it would matter to you,” she said.

He closed his eyes, as though containing his anger.

“You didn‟t think it would matter to me? Leah, we shared everything together. I told you about my life, so why didn‟t you tell me about yours?”

His anger and disbelief seemed to be growing. “I thought—“

“No, Leah, you didn‟t think. A g*n is serious business. Planning to take someone‟s life is serious business. To be honest, I don‟t know what to think about all this.” He shook his head from left to right.

“I‟m sorry, Cameron.” But it was too late for apologies. The next day, he turned her in to school authorities.

The police picked her up, handcuffed her, and took her to jail for a night.

While there, she told them where Cameron‟s stash of drugs and paraphernalia were.

Both of them were expelled from school.

Her parents loaded her clothes and furniture from the dorm onto the back of their dusty station wagon and drove her back to Hopeville. Everyone was staring in hushed awe as she left; they all knew what had happened.

Leah felt powerless and humiliated as they went to the administrative office and turned in her key, where she then had to explain to her parents that the remaining of her stuff was in Cameron‟s room.

At home, the sudden and complete withdrawal of drugs from her system wreaked havoc on her system. She had

frequent bouts of violent temper tantrums.

During one such episode, she went out back and slammed a rake into the ground again and again, so hard that it bent the rake askew and deformed.

Her mother panicked. When Leah wasn‟t looking, she went searching through her room.

There, she found an old twenty-dollar baggie of m*******a that Leah had forgotten about. Instead of confronting her daughter, however, she went straight to the doctor.

“Bring her to the emergency room,” he said. There, they injected her with Haldol and diagnosed her with “d**g-induced psychosis.”

Leah started screaming. The hospital, which smelled thickly of alcohol, was buzzing with activity but no one had been to see them in over four hours.

She demanded to speak with Cameron.

“Call him!” she screamed. The nurses were holding her down, preparing to strap her to the bed. Connie told them

it was alright and picked up the phone.

“They were dating in college,” she explained. As she dialed the numbers, Leah watched her mother‟s face

carefully.

“Yes, I know…yes, I understand that, but…” her voice faltered. “Please. She really needs to speak with him.”

There was a long pause. Then her mother handed her the phone.

“Cameron?” she asked, after she had grabbed it.

His voice sounded weak and distant. “I can‟t talk long, Leah,” he said.

“Oh, Cameron, I love you,” she said. “I‟ve loved you since that very first day in Justice‟s room when you turned to me and asked me about the acid.

I hate myself for everything that‟s happened, and I hate myself for letting

everything go down the tubes.”

“Leah, it‟s over,” he said abruptly.

“But Cameron, please.” Tears were dripping down silently from her face.

“You‟re in the hospital now, so let them help you,” he said. “Because I can‟t.” He hung up the phone. She started screaming again. The nurses held her

down.

“The sedative should kick in very soon,” one of them said. Leah screamed until she lost strength. Soon, she fell asleep.

They put her on a heavy anti-psychotic d**g meant for

schizophrenics.

The first side effect Leah noticed was

extreme thirst. Then the fatigue and slowness overtook her. She discovered the meaning of the phrase “Thorazine

shuffle.” She felt like a non-human—not completely herself. Her senses were dulled, and her thinking was not what it used to be.

She had lost everything—her place in school, Cameron,

her g*n, her dignity, self-respect, control, even her power. Not to mention Jeremy. She would never forget him.

She felt n***d and vulnerable, stripped of everything she had once treasured. She was beyond agony. She got a call from some high school friends of hers.

Camelia had killed herself. Leah reacted with shock, then silence. She couldn‟t remember Camelia ever being

depressed during the time that they had been friends. She was a shy, sweet girl, and didn‟t even socialize very much

until she was a senior in high school.

Leah didn‟t go to her funeral. Not because she didn‟t want to, but because she forgot. In her drugged, hazy mind, the days and weeks all seemed to blend together.

This plunged her into an even deeper depression. Camelia, who had so much to live for, managed to escape. And yet Leah, the one who really needed to, was still here.

On a cold day in March, Leah, stripped of her resources and power, went into the garage and fetched a bottle of anti-freeze. She took it to her room, and after her mother had said good night to her, she drank the whole thing.

She didn‟t wake up for another two days. Her mother had heard her moaning from another room. She went in to check on her daughter and discovered her

sleeping on a wet pillow—drenched from tears. She nudged Leah, but she wouldn‟t wake up.

Soon, she began vomiting and wetting herself. Connie held out a bucket in front of her face, trying to keep her hair out of the way, and periodically changed her panties.

But Leah was projectile vomiting. She was filling up buckets. A decision was made to take her to the hospital. Even though later Leah remembered nothing of this, as her father carried her to the car, she helped him along by standing and walking on her legs.

They determined the cause of the problem. The doctor was grim as he briefed the family. Truthfully, they weren‟t sure that she was going to make it.They fed alcohol intravenously into her veins.

They pumped her stomach and then put charcoal into it. They hooked her up to all sorts of tubes and machines, and when that wasn‟t enough, they decided to transfer her to another hospital so that she could get dialysis.

Her parents were concerned about brain damage as they rode in the ambulance to the other hospital. It was a long trip. A lot could happen in a couple of hours.