My Eyes On You

Almost over

The summer was long and unusually hot. Leah stared out the window every day, refusing to go out and engage in

some summer activity. She didn‟t go out with friends, and lost touch with Camelia.

She stopped drinking for a few months. Instead, she involved herself in her poetry, and wrote two poems a day

instead of one. As hot air blew in from her half-open window, Leah looked up and was surprised to see that the day was almost over.

She had been writing all day, and

then she realized that she had been writing all day every day that summer.

She continued writing Brendan letters every two weeks.

None of them were threatening, but all of them had the undertones of quiet anger and desperation. How many years, she thought, would it take to get over the pain that he had caused her?

And she hated herself for not killing him. She hated herself for not having the courage to take what was rightfully hers.

Two weeks before her junior year, Leah was sixteen.

She was walking outside in the darkness, taking a stroll around her neighborhood, when she realized her true feelings for Brendan. The stars stood out like brilliant lanterns in a velvety black sky.

The warm breeze, which was considerably cooler than it had been during the day, brushed her hair back and kissed her cheeks. A dog was barking in the distance. On the nearby highway, the rush of cars sounded like a distant, roaring tide.

Leah loved him.

She started seeing him everywhere; in the mall, at the airport, in the grocery store buying papayas. She saw him

from the back and was positive that it was him looking at a Tory Amos cd at the record store.

She saw him from a distance, and there was no doubt in her mind that he had

come all the way to Hopeville, and she was now seeing him. Each time, her heart stopped and her breath quickened.

The emotional impact was powerful: afterwards, she would rush home, fall to her bed, and weep.

One time, it really was him. He was taking a train to Seattle and was stopping in Hopeville.

She saw him from the back and immediately assumed that it was just one of

her fantasies.

But when he turned around, her heart lurched. She stopped breathing. She could hear her heartbeat in her throat. She was frozen still for several moments, but then gathered the sense to run and hide.

Sure enough, it was him. He was walking and talking with his father.

She looked at him longingly as they turned a corner and disappeared.

Leah went home that night, and wrote a poem.

School started up again. Girls started making fun of her again, one in particular with a scrunched-up face and

with an eternal expression that was a mixture of disgust

and sarcasm.

She fantasized about coming to her house, breaking into her room, putting the g*n to her head, and killing her. But she never did anything about it.

Leah was losing strength. Every day after school, she came home crying to her mother, who received her with surprise and confusion.

Connie didn‟t know the whole story. She, like most mothers, thought only the best of her daughter, and assumed

that Leah‟s intentions were always pure.

She wanted to tell her mother about her homicidal and suicidal desires, but she knew she couldn‟t. To do so would mean that she would never be able to fulfill any of

her fantasies. Hope, for Leah, would be lost forever.

But at the same time, she knew she couldn‟t, in reality, commit the crimes. Leah, at her most primal level, was a scared,shivering kitten. She wanted her many tortures to be avenged, but at the same time, she feared the consequences.

She was starting to worry about the g*n in her closet.

When she was a senior in high school, she was just about resigned to the reality that she was never going to have friends in Hopeville.

But Camelia, whom she had forgotten about, sat down next to her at lunch one day and started talking with her.

“You wanna cigarette?” she asked casually.

Leah was surprised. Camelia didn‟t strike her as the type of girl to be rebellious. Plus, Leah had never

smoked. She was seventeen and didn‟t know how to inhale.

Nevertheless, she agreed.

Camelia had long, blonde hair and plump cheeks. She didn‟t smile very much, but when she did, it was enough to set any person at ease.

Leah started doing drugs. Her first high was a snort

of cocaine that Camelia had slipped her in the bathroom once all the girls had left the stalls.

Almost immediately, she felt her heart pumping in a strong, steady rhythm as her skin began to tingle. She looked into the bathroom‟s mirror as she was touching up her makeup, and saw the color rise to her pale, yellow cheeks.

The music was loud and her head was spinning. For an instant, she forgot where she was. But then she looked at

the backs of her hands, which were planted palm-down against the floor, and remembered: she was at a school

dance.

The gymnasium was dark and

multi-colored strobe lights were blinking. Leah and her friends had loaded

themselves up on pot just before they had entered the scene together.

She was sweating. She felt a heavy force, like increased gravity, weighing her down to the floor. She knew that she would not be able to stand even if she tried.

Her friends surrounded her. As she squinted her eyes to look at them, they looked like they were having fun. They were dancing and laughing, apparently not as affected by the d**g as she was.

She swept her gaze across the room and lifted a shaky hand to her face. She tried to stand but was unable to.

Candace came to her and extended her hands. “Come on, Leah! Don‟t sit out!”

The beat of the music rocked her, invigorated her. She wanted to stay in this moment forever. Close her eyes and just savor it.

For the first time, she had friends. Lots of friends.

On a constant basis, she was surrounded by peers. She went out every day, dropping in on various people‟s houses,

getting high, walking downtown. They did everything together, shared everything, and were like sisters and

brothers.

Life was surreal at this point. At any given time she would suddenly jump outside of herself and become aware

that she was somewhere entirely different than she had thought—kind of like a time warp.

She walked through life in a haze, grabbing pleasure at every opportunity. Now, at the dance, she was vaguely

aware that she and her friends had put pinches of pot in the donut holes found at the buffet table before the dance.

She wiped the hair from her face and realized that she now had the energy to stand. She got up, a little shakily, and joined her friends.

Such was life.

She experimented with every d**g that she could find. She went to school every day under the influence of something different, reveling in the various sensations that each of them gave her.

It was time to apply for college. Since her freshman year, her grades had been gradually lowering. But she still had well over a 3.0 GPA, and everyone predicted that she would get into a good school.

Leah didn‟t look to the future at this point; she savored in the moment. She remained intoxicated as long and as often as she could. She was waiting to graduate and leave this treacherous place, and chemicals helped her in

the process.

She showed up at parties, not to socialize with other kids, but to take advantage of the products. She hung

around with Camelia‟s crowd and smoked cigarettes with them behind the schoolhouse.

She was neglecting her work. She was taking the exact amount of credits she needed to graduate, but it didn‟t even occur to her that she might fail one of her classes and not graduate until it was too late.

On the day of graduation, she asked her Calculus

teacher if she had passed the class...“You‟ll find out in your report card,” he said.