The first time I met Darrel he offered to suck on my nose. I was intrigued. Who was this guy with flaming red hair and such an obvious thirst for adventure? I followed him like a puppy for months, craving his attention.
I was fifteen when I finally got what I wanted. I had his undivided attention for a whole day. We went to the beach together, we held hands in front of everyone, and later, we kissed. Deliciously.
All I remember of the next few days was that I was happy. Extraordinarily happy. Deliriously happy. I became every teen cliché ever invented. The sun was shining, birds were singing. This was what it meant to be alive.
But he didn’t call. I ran on memories for a little while, but that wasn’t enough. I wanted more. And the want grew until I couldn’t wait anymore. So I called him.
“Yeah, I remember you,” he said. He sounded puzzled at first when I announced myself.
That should have been the end of the conversation. “Do you want to go out again?” I asked instead.
“No,” he said. I thought he hadn’t taken much time to think about it.
In my revised memories I say “okay” and hang up. But that’s not what I said.
I said, “What? Why not?”
There was a pause. This, at least, he was thinking about. “Because I don’t love you,” he said.
“So? I don’t love you either.”
But I had his answer. Even though I was just fifteen, and I knew you couldn’t love somebody after just one date, the answer was no.
When I did finally hang up the phone I cried. For two or three days. But then I realized that the sun was still shining, and the birds were still singing. Nature hadn’t forgotten about me, but I was going to forget Darrel.
Months later it was raining outside and I was getting ready to go to school. The house was quiet; my parents had already left for work. In the silence I was suddenly aware of a voice I hadn’t heard before, a conversation I hadn’t known was going on.
“You could do it now.”
What?
“You could do it, they won’t be home for hours, they won’t be able to stop you.”
I was terrified. When had this voice started talking? When had I started to think there was no one that cared?
“I have to get out of the house,” my real voice said. I threw my books together, trembling at the thought of what my parents might have come home to find that night.
Something had taken me over. Some part of my heart had blackened, and I didn’t know why. I didn’t know the word depression then, but I knew that from that day on, things were going to be different.
That was the day that I dressed completely in black for the first time.
Fell on Black Days was originally published in the Winter 2003 volume of Open Minds Quarterly.