It happened in a moment that was infinite. The innocent falling and dancing of the snow was the conductor to my downfall.
“It’s your fault,” he hissed through the lipstick mark on his neck; the glitter taunted and the pink laughed. I felt the teenage desires sneer.
“Stop it! I didn’t mean to…” The words tumbled out of my mouth, soft and scared and terribly trembling.
He gave a short laugh and slammed his head on the steering wheel that he was gripping with white-knuckle strength.
The world was a demented fun house, the melody of mistakes suffocating us. Outside the Iowa snow was viciously swirling, a tornado of white, whipping against the window. The lights from the car were blinking and screaming. Colors, colors that rose hell to my heart, veiled us. The dashboard of hazardous yellows and the ignitable oranges sent sparks. A blue so sinister and white it seared into my eyes and made me wish with wondrous will of a way free. As Cameron’s phone lit up, he and I blinked under a burning and blazing red. I looked at him. One side of his face was painted with gold from headlights on the reflecting snow, hints of purple in the shadows of his brow, chin, and lips. But the other side of his face—it smoldered with red, his hair glinted with it, every drop of sweat, and the color of his eyes all spattered with the crimson of a warning flare.
I watched as all the colors blurred and mixed into my draining soul.
“I’m getting out of here,” I whispered with the courage of a goldfish.
“There’s nowhere to go!” Cameron’s shout echoed with the colors.
I felt the warmth of his breath trickle down a path of my neck. Each breath, a heart beat, casted way to what was churning inside him. I swore the smell a pleasurable perfume that I did not own stung my nose. The overwhelming essence of my pitiful life took light to my beating heart. With the hysterics of hell did I try to drive open the door.
“Madison, stop it! You can’t open the door! We’re stuck, damn it!”
“Screw off!” I screamed, my voice cracking like my dignity. I then mauled the door for the window button and scrambled out and into a night that was as deep and dark as a little girl’s nightmare.
When I fell out of the window, I found that there was no way to save us. I fell into a pit of dense snow; it’s devilish cold bit into me. It seeped through my clothes, my ripped tee shirt, and to my skin. My veins cursed with ice. The tears streaming down my face started to freeze. But still I climbed; I clambered through the snow and as far away as I could get from my mistake. But, I was drowning in the snow. I was drowning in the frozen cries of a million angels. I pulled myself, burned myself, hauled myself until I got to the icy gravel road. There I noticed with wet eyes, in the solidity of translucent motion, was a small object that killed. A cigarette butt sparkled. I looked down at it and could smell the laughter of teenagers with goldfish eyes, blind to everything, not even blinking when the glass before them was tapped.
I knew I was one of them.
I took everything around me for granted. I expect others to bow down to me while upon my face is smeared with the blood of people who give me things they need to live; because to them, I wouldn’t lick my lips like I had the grandest dessert of all the Kings. There—glittering insidiously like the diamonds cut by a broken man’s broken hand that I have twisted in my hair—lies the small remains of a clouded life. Although the butt is no longer alight, I can feel it melting the ice under my toes. Although the ice is clear, I can feel it staining my papery white skin, tearing it, making it bleed, making me drown in my own monstrosity. I want to beg the dead souls of the people I drained to save me. I shut my eyes.
Crawling, like little ants, I felt pinpricks travel up my toes, skitter up my legs, under my pants, dance on my stomach, up my chest, and to my heart. I felt the little bugs drill and dig into my bones. My heart stuttered and shook as I felt guilt and self-hate infest it. I took a breath, and the snowflakes turn to blades. I hear the howling wind buzz with snide comments about my poor life choices. I hear people turn away as they saw the path I was riding. I hear them getting louder with every shaking breath. The essence of screeching trains, raging rock concerts, sputtering plane engines did voices scream in my ears of how worthless I was and how the winter’s night should just take me.
When I could no longer take any more of the bitter cold and her killing me slowly, any more of my selfish crying, anymore of the appalling wind, I fell to my knees and opened my eyes.
The world expanded before me. Behind me rose a mountain of looming trees laced with cobwebs of silent stars. Before me was an ocean, frozen mid-wave, just as the storm was singing. Each of her crystallized waters blanketed with soft, infinite, starlit snow. Diamonds drifted down slowly, carelessly dancing a sweeping ballet that caught my hair and threw to the shimmering night. The wind caught my worries and like a true Iowan delight, did I sigh.
There is always beauty, I realized.
Even when the night turns black, the stars are sucked in, and all hope seems to lack, does one must know to make their own light. I am but a human wandering around in a world toppled with homework, responsibility, and depression. I am but a teenager suffocating under stress and pressure. With great brilliance, though, did I catch the thought, on the oddest of nights, that I cannot be all, that I cannot be perfect, and that I must create my own light, my own small dream, and accept what I can do.
I tilted my head back, felt the world come into uneasy focus and stared at the stars falling from the sky. Then, with a smile, I held out my tongue.
“They are all missing your mouth,” Cameron laughed from behind me. I turned around and greeted him. In his eyes, in his dark eyes, I saw myself. I saw how the cold wind kissed my cheeks, leaving them pink; I saw how the snow touched my hair, leaving traces woven; I saw how the stars sparked brightly in my blue eyes.
“It’s going to be ok,” He spoke for the both of us.
“I know.” I smiled back and looked up at the infinite dance of a thousand shinning stars.