Photo by KayKay Stine

“Since I was young, I have always known this: Life damages us, every one. We can’t escape that damage. But now, I am also learning this: We can be mended. We mend each other”
― Veronica Roth

Kali sat on her new bed in that bare, gray room on the side of the diner.  She’d boiled the sheets and the bed was comfortable, but the room had none of the trappings and nice things she’d had in her home with him. None of the pretty dishes and little bottles, and thick towels he’d searched for to complete the place for her.  He’d worked so hard to give her a home, to make her feel safe, secure, untouched.  She knew that she would wonder for the rest of her life if she had made the right decision.  Right or wrong it was done, her motives inconsequential, and there was no going back, she was sure of it. Even if he happened to miraculously show up in Arklay, he wouldn’t give her a second glance.  Not after the way she left him.

So now what?

She wasn’t sure.  Sure, she’d taken over the diner, given herself a purpose, but she wasn’t the same. The place wasn’t the same.

She’d gotten back the wooden trunk that held the things she couldn’t bring herself to throw away but hadn’t taken with her when she left. At the time she’d been sure she’d never see them again, that she’d never return to Arklay, but maybe, in the back of her mind, she had wanted to leave a piece of herself behind to be remembered by. Looking at them now she wondered if someone would have eventually thrown them out. Had she returned just in time to save them? Two months was a long time nowadays, at least for her. One week without seeing someone and she would almost stop thinking about them to avoid the pain of wondering if they were alive somewhere and needed help, if they had simply left her behind, or if they were dead. Had Arkaly thought she was? Perhaps not. Her ‘treasures’ lay at the bottom of the trunk exactly as she had left them. There was the black velvet box with the words ‘Tiffany and Co.’ embossed across the top, a few well-read, dog-eared romance novels, and her journal, among other things.

She’d laid these “treasures” all out on the bed, but it was the journal she picked up first. She’d written so little in the past, and hardly anything happy. When she was happy, she was too busy being happy to write anything. Turning the pages now, her eyes scanning the written lines, she realized she’d only written through dark times, that writing had steered her away from The Velvet Box.

Squeak. Snap.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d opened it, let alone used the things inside, but she could picture them now, shiny, clean, neatly laid out on the faded satin fabric inside. Buck had gotten her a toggle choker from Tiffany’s–the box had been from Tiffany’s anyway. She’d found out later that the necklace, though real gold, had been a knock-off. She didn’t know where the necklace was now, but she’d kept the box. The golden letters that had spelled out words “Tiffany and Co.” had long faded, but the box was real, and though the velvet had worn off on the corners and edges, it was still pretty, an illusion of what was inside, just like it had been when she’d first gotten it. She remembered opening it a few times and not touching the contents. She had been content with just looking at them, secure in the knowledge that they were there should she need them. She could still hear the squeak of the hinge when opened, and the curt snapping of the lid when it closed. At one time she’d even considered those sounds comforting. Could she let herself hear them now and not touch the things inside?

Squeak. Snap.

She wasn’t so sure, so she wrote.

“I don’t like not having options, or losing the ones I have. It’s kinda like being hungry and having only a candy bar left. I’ll try to hold out as long as I can because once I eat it it’s gone. What if I get hungry again, hungrier? The option to have something to eat is gone. So I’ll hold off as long as I can. As long as I have that candy bar I’m good, I have the option to eat it whenever I want. I can go another 5 minutes, then another 5, and another.”

Squeak. Snap.

She could hear it in her head, calling her. It was almost as if it were saying “C’mon Kali, just open me, you can close me right back if you want to. No one will know. And so what if you touch the things I hold inside? Use them? No one will know. No one will see.” But she knew. She wasn’t afraid of losing the option to open it if she needed to. It wasn’t’ a candy bar. She could open it a hundred times. She was afraid of losing the ability to close it after. That once she opened it and saw the shiny, clean, well-kept instruments inside she’d open it again and again and again, until she was lost.

“I can wait another 5 minutes, or a little while at least. It’s not going to go anywhere. It will still be there if I write a little more. And so what if I did it? It’s getting cold out, not like I’m gonna be walking around in shorts or tank tops much. No one would see, and if I’m really careful I won’t even have much of a scar.”

Squeak. Snap.

“Fuck me. I need to write about something else.”

She looked at the box once more, and resisted the urge to tear out what she’d just written and start over. She wanted the evidence of her thoughts. A reminder of where she’d been and her intended destination.

Squeak. Snap.

“Arklay feels different.  Coach’s is no longer my home, people are gone, changed. Someone else is at the garage and they’ve fortified it like Fort fucking Knox. Like they don’t trust anybody around here. I can’t blame them because I don’t either. The Keepers are gone, of course, no one is patrolling the streets anymore. I imagine Paul has his hands full just keeping Peaches and the bar safe, let alone having to walk around to protect a town that obviously didn’t want the help. And I don’t want him to feel responsible for me too. I have a gun. I’m good. I don’t panic anymore, or close my eyes or even blink when I squeeze the trigger.”

Squeak. Snap.

She could. No one would know. She had moonshine. It would be clean, no infection, right?

“I can do just one. A little one. No one would know. No one would see. I can be careful. I know how to do it. Just one to make me feel again, to remind me this isn’t a nightmare, or some fuckin’ movie, that I am alive. And one to pay for it all. For leaving, for walking off, for being ungrateful, to pay for the things I got and didn’t deserve.

Just one- for each.”

Squeak.