Lost in Space

Lost in Space



A ray of sunlight reflected off of a small, sharp silver piece of metal that was clenched in her shaky right hand. She took the razor and cut her palm, watching the river of crimson begin to flow over the casket. A funeral was at work; a funeral for a once warm and open pair of arms that cupped her sore heart willingly.
An echo of a voice called her name in the distance. It was her turn to hunch and hide behind a podium that was too tall and pay her respects; pour her sorrows.
As she tried to squeeze her voice out of her mouth, her heart broke and her spirit failed. She clenched the prepared speech she had written so the breeze would not carry it off. She turned it over, so that no words of yesterday would be heard. No words thought a moment back could express the way she felt now.
“I am human, fallen, decrepit, tripping through life, lusting any semblance of satisfaction. I am beast, wretched and hateful, bitter in my attempts at living. I am a murderer. I killed her. Myself, her, them, I've stabbed, cut, shot, and broken every bone in my need and depravation.  I am stain, a deep blood red, stolen from the woman who birthed it to me. I am disease, a scab, picked dry with no hope of healing myself…not without help. I am addiction, devouring all and wanting more. I am wretch, desperate, needy, and worthless in myself. I am convict, seeing my sorrow, feeling my pain, my inability to save myself. I am a thousand dark corners, hiding my sins,” she took a deep breath and sighed as a tear slid down her cheek.
        “You rescued me. The world I built was falling apart, chipping at the corners and slowly crumbling turning to silt at my feet. When the brutal darkness began to mold onto me like my own skin, you were the pillar of fire that strengthened and lightened my way.
You rescued me. When the carpet of life was yanked out from under my path, you showed me the stairs and gave me the strength to climb each one.
My one and only friend, my mother, my angel, I can still hear you sing:
‘Adia I do believe I’ve failed you. Adia I know I’ve let you down. Don’t you know I tried so hard to love you in my way? It’s easy, let it go. . .’ ”
Her voice was barely interpretable through her sobs. The speech had been carried off by the wind that whispered in her ears as her hands used all of her strength to hold up her head.
“She told me we are all innocent, but my hands are red with guilt. I killed her with my greed and selfishness—”
A soft voice interrupted her monologue. “Adia, you’re mother died of drug overdose. You didn’t kill her.”
She collapsed to the floor thinking, if only they knew, if only. Her father’s plane crash. . . What was she to do?
The funeral party left. It was dusk. The sky was already splattered with stars, the only lights that Adia loved. Little specks of hope not too big and not too small; not too close, but far enough that she could never reach them.
She lay by a calm stream that scissored the small forest not far from her house, her house of memories. . .
They would come to take her tomorrow.  She was sixteen, a minor, and in this world, nothing. No matter her intellect, no matter her wisdom, no matter her common sense, she was surely unimportant to this world, now that both of her parents had left her.
She had a strategy for counting the stars. The moon as her starting point, she counted each one surrounding it, layer by layer. When the stars became too dense, she counted again from the moon. The darkness was her one true love. No light to have to look upon that pained her eyes. No light, no hope, no worries is what she had always thought.
The moon was inching closer and closer to the horizon. She could feel the grass become damp and knew she had to get ready for them to haul her to her new home, her fake family.
Adia pulled herself up and walked slowly along the stream following the path that she and her mother had eroded into the soft earth. Making her way to the house, she waited for the last star. She spotted it, though faded, it was brilliant.
“The wish of dawn I hold within is that I may have me a friend.”
She turned the brass handle and made her way through her house of memories.
They knocked on the front door at eight sharp. A man and a woman sharply outfitted addressed her:
“Adia MacKinnon, we are here to—”
“I know,” she whispered quietly.
She glanced at her face in the rear view mirror of the black sedan that they were transporting her in. In the mirror is where she comes face to face with her fears, her reflection.
What is it in me that makes me feel the need to keep pretending?

She lay there thinking. The bed that the fake family had given her was soft and suffocating, much unlike her real bed, firm and supportive. The darkness in this house was much darker, much blacker. The darkness didn’t have a meaning in this house. It was just a time, an absent space, an exhale, a riddance, a pause aching to be put back on resume.
The door of her room remained opened and the house creaked subtly as if a ghost was walking along the old wood floor.
She was scared of the darkness for once in her life. The sounds, the shadows, and the vacancy were all fearful.
She stared at the door, at the figures, at the noises. She called out a warning, whispering it to the unknown, “If you bring a sharp blade, please bring it lovingly and caress my skin softly, slowly, and caringly. If you bring bullets, pierce me for every time I’ll felt alone in this house. If you bring poison, drench me in its heat, its dangers and then let the warmth fill my soul and slowly raise it towards the heavens. If you come with murderous hands, clasp my neck tight and embrace me with all of your strength, for it will be the closest I have felt of love in a long while, since there is such a fine line between love, hate, and apathy,” her ominous rasp ceased as the lids of her eyes closed softly.
The coming of the morning brought fear to her. She stumbled around squinting her eyes, and kept colliding with the unnaturally white plaster walls. The luminescence tore through her skin and made her feel vulnerable. The darkness gave Adia strength and this strange light revealed all of her weaknesses. 
“Well, good morning Adia. You’re up early. What can I fix you for breakfast?” The blank face smiled as Adia took a seat at the clean, round kitchen table.
“I don’t usually eat breakfast,” Adia’s smooth, calm voice answered. “I’m not hungry in the mornings.”
“Nonsense Adia, you must have something to fill your empty stomach!”
Adia gave in and nodded, hoping it would make the blank face stop issuing such racket. The body went to work appeasing Adia with bacon, eggs, and pancakes. She reminded Adia of a 1950’s housewife with an apron permanently suctioned to her waist. The hourglass body, the lipstick, the curls, the shoes were all so picturesque, yet so expressionless.
While the blank face was calmly flipping pancakes, her husband came in with the newspaper. He greeted her with a wink and a wave and sat down across from her with the newspaper permanently held four inches from his glasses, just like his wife’s apron. Adia chanced a question.
“Mr. Kennedy, why are these lights so bright? They hurt my eyes.”
“Adia, these are only thirty watt bulbs we have in here. I know you had the same in your old house,” he replied distantly.
But those lights were never on, she thought. The windows were always open and my mother and I were always outside. I don’t remember lights being so false and uninviting.
“Here you are, Adia, my darling.”
Adia scowled and strictly thought that she was not her darling as Mrs. Kennedy placed the heaping plate of breakfast in front of her. Adia stared at the repulsive mess. She forced a forkful of bland eggs into her mouth and was less hungry than she was ever before.
She excused herself from the table and went outside. This development had a creek and she was glad. Adia had already started a path. The fake green grass already indented by her daily trip to the clear running water. She had an hour until school.
Five minutes before the bus came, Adia went back to the house to grab her bag and school supplies.
“Adia, today while you’re at school, we’ll install a fader in your room to make the light not so bright, Honey.”
“Thank you. I just thought, you know, brighter lights throw darker shadows,” and she left without an explanation.
She could feel the vibrations of the yellow heap scurrying down the neighborhood’s street. It was a hideous thing. Its roaring yell, its creaking arms, its boisterous running feet, and she couldn’t forget its parasites. The little yelping leeches that boarded the bus each day. Screeching for satisfaction and whining for speed. The bloodsuckers never paid Adia any attention, not until today.
Adia made her way through the maze of derision-craving feet, and tried not to stare curiously at the guffawing blank faces. Glancing around the bus, she couldn’t find any empty seats. She would have to sit with someone.
She made her way to the back of the bus where a day dreaming boy sat looking out the window. She sat down next to him and he didn’t seem to notice. Adia sighed, the worst being over and relaxed a little bit.
“My name is James,” he said suddenly.
Adia jumped, a little startled, and she replied, “I’m Adia.”
Nothing else was said, but he looked her in the eyes. Not just at her eyes, but down inside of them, through the green iris, and into her fragile soul. Adia looked away, shyly.

The clang of the bell signaled another dreadful day. Another day of shrinking into the shadows of people who are just there to tell us that we know nothing. Another day of slapping on a cute face and pretending everything is okay.
She held her books tightly against her chest like a shield and squeezed herself through the barely recognizable nooks and crannies of the teen infested hallway.
“Did you hear?”
“You’ll never believe-”
“Oh my gosh-”
“And Jessica said-”

The mess of words and incomplete, meaningless sentences buzzed through her mind as she tried to make her way to class. Finally making it to class, she made a bee line for the back seat. Adia set her folder and bag down quietly and obediently waited for the tardy bell to ring. Ring! The class hastily crammed themselves into desks and class started.
The door opened, and there was James, coming to class late.
By the end of the day, Adia was more than ready to escape the school. It was a screaming building of let-downs and not-good-enoughs. It was time again for all to aboard the zealot; the gladly abiding carrier of the parasitic school body.
Adia found and empty seat this time around and sat there quietly aching to arrive home. Well a home-like substitute. The truth was, Adia couldn’t wait for night to fall so that she could count the stars.
“Mind if I sit here?”
It was James.
Adia nodded and scooted over as close as to the window as she could. She didn’t want him to be uncomfortable.
“I get off at the last stop, Cottonwood Creek neighborhood,” he informed her.
“So do I. It’s nice living near a creek. Don’t you think?” She asked him.
“I’ve never actually been down there.”
She didn’t know how to reply so she remained quiet and focused her gaze on the outside city. She could practically feel the exhaust from the innumerable cars wrap around her body like a cloak. She almost hated to breath.
“Why haven’t I seen you here? Like before today?” He asked curiously.
“I just moved in with the Kennedy’s. They’re my foster parents,” she replied steadily.
“Oh? Why are they your foster parents?”
Well, he certainly isn’t afraid to ask questions, she thought, slightly amused, slightly hurt at the thought of how she could reply. “Well, I don’t have any parents. Both of them died.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. How-”
Fortunately for Adia, the bus stopped before James could finish his question. She gathered her belongings with her back facing him so that he wouldn’t have a good opportunity to finish the pop quiz she hadn’t studied for. To her relief, he got off the bus, and Adia followed making her way towards her fake family’s house.

It had been about ten weeks that Adia had been with the Kennedy’s and had been friends, as he named it, with James. Seventy days at a new creek. Though everything was new, she still counted the same stars.
Every day that Adia came home from school, the door was always already open and most of the lights were off. Every morning when Adia woke up, Mrs. Kennedy did not make her breakfast and the lights were still off for her. She’d walk down to the creek and wallow in the pure serenity of the creek and then she’d sit by James on the bus.
Something was happening to James. His face was gaining features like an artist at work. She came to find out that his eyes were a soft alluring blue that could manipulate and calm the mind of any sadist. His lips were a smooth soft pink and his cheeks were rosy red. She found it strange that she did not notice anything like this in anyone else.
“Adia, you wanna come to a party with me and some friends after school today?”
Adia half smiled and shook her head slightly. She knew she wouldn’t fit in. But James pleaded with her.
“Come on, Adia, I’ll stay with you the whole time, I promise.”
She never had anything to do anyways. So she reluctantly agreed. 

The music blared out of gargantuan speakers. Adia couldn’t understand what the voices were saying and the bass ricocheted her brains inside her skull, but she was fine because James was right next to her.
They made their way through the foreign house. Everything was so new and people covered most of the surface area, it made Adia dizzy. She tried to follow James but he had disappeared to somewhere. Adia spotted a door and leaped to freedom outside. She knew she wouldn’t be accepted at the party. It was a mistake, a huge mistake.
The grass was soft, she could see it. She knelt down and felt the blades intertwine with her fingers. Hugging her legs to her chest, she lay her head onto her knees and cried. Another person had left her, just as she started to have faith in love and friendship. Love is just a comfort of what you hold to be true, she thought. And that faith in love is a blanket, a shelter. But I guess what I have, this depression, is a monster that scoops me into the cauldron of the real scalding truth of the world. Well, I have been boiled past any faith can revive. I was wrong to believe that I had a friend...
A soft pressure on her left shoulder made her turn her head. “Adia, I went to get us drinks, why’d you leave?”
“I don’t fit in, James. I’m not meant for crowds or friends. I live alone and forgotten, existing but not living watching the world go by as I wait behind a window of silence, sweet serenity. I’m a failure to this world and I don’t know why I’m here,” She cried.
“There’s no such thing as failure, my love, because every turn you may think to be wrong leads you another wonderful place. Just like the death of your parents led you here,” he wrapped his arms around the crying beauty.
She spoke through her tears, “How? I have nothing here. I’m so alone and so different and so misunderstood.”
“I care, I know I don’t know much about you yet, but I do plan on getting to know you.” He brought her close to him and kissed her lips gently, sending a deep life-changing tingling through her spine.

Adia became more open to people, but the people closed onto her. In their eyes, she didn’t deserve James, she never would. They eyed her and pushed her in the hallways and talked about her. Now these faces were gaining features, morbid features. Every day, more and more faces appeared with squinty red eyes, firm, set jaws, and pursed lips. When she thought she was going to be accepted, once again she was let down and told she wasn’t good enough, but this time, people watched her squirm instead of Adia struggling in her own confined corner, she tossed onto a stage while a crowd watched her trip and fall and the stage manager was James.
James kept telling her it would all be okay. He was the only thing that was keeping her from letting go of everything.

The black house surrounded her. Its cold hands massaged her eyes and tickled her feet. She had to get up and take a walk. She slipped on a jacket and shoes and crept out of the house. The earth was now eroded. Her path had no grass on it but it sheltered her around the path. She walked down to the creek and sat at the waters edge.
She was amazed at the creek. No matter how many stones she threw in its racing waters, it still moved on and didn’t even look back. How could it be so confident in itself? She wondered.
She turned onto her back and stared at the moon. The moon amazed her as well. No matter how many stars shot at its direction, it’s still just as bright.
She heard crackling in the bushes a little further down but decided it was just a rabbit or another form of an innocent animal.
Adia talked to the moon, and the moon listened, “You know, the most important things are the hardest things to say. They make me so ashamed because the words don’t ever come out right and the mean so much more in my mind than when the come out of my mouth. But I guess it’s more important than that, isn’t it? I mean, the most important things to me lie too close to my heart for anyone to find, and when I make revelations, people look at me weird and don’t think what I thought is important at all. They don’t know why I almost cried why I said it or why it was so important to me. That’s what so bad about me, I keep secrets locked within me aching for someone to understand. I just wish that my words would come out important, do you know what I mean?”
“You need to learn to speak with feeling, Adia that’s all,” a voice said unexpectedly.
Adia shot up quickly, scrambled to her feet, and turned around to see who or what had made the voice.
James came out of the shadows and walked up to her.
Adia sighed. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand, you’re perfect. You have so much to give to people. I mean, you’ve changed my life by just one gesture. I don’t understand how you can have it all.” She sat back down and he sat next to her.
“I’m not perfect. People judge me by my appearance. I’m actually quite shy. Did you know that I write poetry? Yeah, if my friends ever found out, I don’t know what they’d say.”
“You write poetry? I never would have guessed...” she looked into the sky bewildered. The stars were brighter than usual.
“You know Adia. I write about you all the time. The first time I saw you I wrote about you and I memorized the poem. Would you like to hear it? Okay, here goes: If the world gives you the blues, of you wake up in the middle of the night with waves of fear and a senseless panic washing over you, I am your friend. If you’re overcome by desperation that makes your mouth open for a scream that never comes out but just freezes your face in mute despair, then you and I have something in common. If you can’t understand them for the life of you, even though you’ve tried so hard, when that dislocation makes you feel like you’re the only one of your species on the planet, I know I can confide in you. If the endless ghetto of lies and heartbreak, this life-long run of fences and flickering neon signs, night sweats and suicidal urges makes you feel like stopping, just stopping, to stop breathing, wait. Please wait. You don’t have to tell me your name. You don’t have to prove yourself to me. I accept you. If you’re finding life to be the one thing that’s trying to kill you, I want you to stay alive to rise with the sun and fight back.” He took a deep breath and sighed. Adia could tell that he was trying his hardest to hold back tears as Adia’s tears had already begun to flow. “Adia, I love you. If I lose the light of the sun, I will write by moonlight, no light. If I lose paper and ink, I will write with blood on forgotten walls. I will capture the nights all over the world and bring them to you.”
Adia was mortified. She was afraid. She was sad, depressed, and oh, so very scared.
Her tear glistened face looked at James. “I can’t accept what you just said. I’m not anything to treasure. My flame of insecurities is big enough to burn. I’m scorched to a crisp and I don’t want you to get close to me because I’m afraid that you’ll get hurt. I don’t want to be responsible for your heart.”
“Adia, you’re beautiful without me. You’re awesome all on your own. You don’t need me to be anything like you think you do. I love you and I know you love me without saying it. Adia, even brilliant stars envy your pure green eyes.  I love you because you’re not perfect. I love you because you’re beautiful on the inside before the outside. I love you because you don’t want things handed to you; you want to work for them.”
It wasn’t enough for her. She was all those things and she knew it. There was no way to escape.
“In hate there is truth,
But in love there is surrender.
In apathy it is fair,
But love fairly renders.”

It was morning and Adia sat and wondered in her room. She remembered how she and her mother used to go down to the creek and wade in the water and try to catch minnows and how we cried when father’s plane crashed. She knew that looking back on the tears would make her laugh but she had no idea that looking back on the laughter would make her cry...But James was right.
Adia got up and turned on the light. She turned on all of the lights in the house. Now she could see.  She could hear James’ voice, ‘Don’t let life pass you by. Pass life by.’
She had a feeling in the pit of her stomach and she smile for the first time in what seemed like an eternity. She felt stronger.
That day at school, the girls tormented her, but Adia just smiled and laughed.
“Beauty begins at popularity. If you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention,” one blonde ego-maniac retorted.
Adia pulled out three quarters from her pocket. Handing the girl each, one by one, and said, “Conformity, humility, and acceptance- with these coins we are to pay our way to paradise. Open your sunken eyes and learn to see there is more to just looking good. There is feeling good and being good. I would love to be friends.”
Adia left the girl astonished and went around the corner to class. Adia was a fallen angel, destined to fly with a little help and a little love. She was broken, but too strong to let go.