Shatter

Hear me out when I tell you that I had absolutely nothing to fucking do with this. She and I were just barely friends before all of this shit happened and I certainly was not the cause of it. That may sound dick-ish, but it’s the truth. I just already feel guilty enough about it, and…I don’t know, it makes me feel better when I actually say it out loud and try to reassure myself. I’m probably not the right person to be telling you about it because I wasn’t really around to help her, I was just one of the assholes on the sidelines; watching and waiting to see what happens. When she started to not even come to school anymore, I was compelled to at least visit her house and try to check up on her, since I lived the closest to her out of all of my friends and she confided in only me about what was going on with her a few days before. Her mother was visibly distraught and looked just as pale as she began to look when she was just beginning to become paranoid. She told me the usual shit when someone wants you to fuck off, ‘she’s just a little under the weather’, and ‘she’ll be back in school in no time’. I knew that wasn’t the truth as well as she did. I had kind of a flashback then, while I was standing in front of her mom at her doorstep in the pouring cold ass rain, of her and me at school. It was around the time that she first told me. “I…I think…I’m made of glass or something,” Gracie whispered; her dark, calculating eyes peering into mine as she cautiously leaned away from my ear. I was dangerously close from laughing straight in her face when I looked into her eyes. I couldn’t really tell at first, because the true panic and despair hadn’t set in at that point yet. But, I could tell that it was starting to. It shocked me, how serious she was. I used to have a crush on her in middle school even though I only just saw her around, I admit. Only because she was always so ridiculously happy and full of life, and…and to see the life draining from her, in her eyes, day by day. I tried to ignore it. Her problems were her own, I had no reason to interfere. We were two different people, anyway. So, I chose to sit back and pretend that I wasn’t watching her basically slowly die right before my eyes. I know, I’m blaming the hell out of myself for it. I know that nothing could’ve been done. Tears fell from my eyes and I was suddenly glad that I was standing out in the rain. Turns out that I was worried as fuck, and that I even kind of fell for the girl. But, as I practically begged her mom to see her and rushed to her bedroom, it also turns out that it was too late for all of that shit as well. She was lying in her bed, eyes closed. Probably scared shitless to even blink in fear of…cracking. I wiped my face and shut her door behind me, wondering if I should say something or not. Maybe it was best not to let her know I was there. I stood there for what seemed like forever and just stared at her; her porcelain white skin, ruby red hair, and light freckles making her look like a life-sized ragdoll. “It’s okay, you can come closer,” she whispered, trying not to move her lips too much. Her voiced soothed me and made me jump at the same time. “Gracie…,” I whispered back, my voice cracking. “I…just wanted to check on y-“ “It’s okay…I’m okay.” She opened her eyes slowly and turned her head just as slowly towards me, then smiled. Something about the way that she was moving creeped me out, and filled my heart with dread. She actually fucking believed this. She believed that she was…made of glass, and would just shatter if she made any more sudden movements. I’ve never seen such a severe level of paranoia as this before, so I was petrified for a moment. She just smiled and lifted a finger, beckoning me over. I still couldn’t move, as much as I wanted to. As much as I wanted to hold her, kiss her, just make her okay again. She eventually stood, moving extremely carefully, standing up from the bed and taking a few methodical steps towards me. “You look so scared.” The last thing she said to me, as she reached out to touch me…then disappeared. Into a pile of broken glass. Millions of bits of broken glass was all she was then, just fragments…of her. She was gone. Disappointed? Well, what the hell did you expect? There was nothing else left of her. Of course, no one believed me and just figured that she ran away or some stupid shit. A huge pile of fucking glass on the floor would’ve been the dead giveaway, but the truth is just hard to see to some people. I’ll always know what really happened. It’ll replay over and over again in my head until the day that I die. I had to see fear destroy someone with my own eyes to truly understand its power. I’ll never underestimate it again.