mayson agria | district 7 | fin

M A Y S O N

Splinters in your fingers,fingers in the dirt. You've never been good at being soft. When someone trusted you enough to cry to you, you never knew what to say. You kept quiet, all too aware that saying something would only make things worse.

"You shouldn't be afraid to feel, Mayson." Her hazel eyes blinked across the surface of a silent conversation. Younger than you, but forever more in-tune with her individual identity, your sister sat on the other side of the wooden island of your home's kitchen. Something in her words and in her expression implied she expected a response.
"Well, you shouldn't put your elbows on the table. Mom would kill you."

A lifetime of trying, failing, trying again. By now you've come to expect it of her in a sense, of everyone. "Are you afraid of getting hurt?" You look up from the pile of chopped celery in front of you.

"I'm afraid of being the person who hurts everyone else, Sis."

Romance never really seemed like an option after a single night spent together, usually alcohol-induced. Prep school boys who were bored or lost souls wandering next to you through the forests, brief encounters. You hardly ever remembered their names.

Hickeys on your neck, Blake eyeing you as she swept up a pile of wood shavings from her latest masterpiece. You knew she saw it, and you knew she had seen it before, but she hadn't ever been interested enough to ask. Which was a good thing, definitely. Maybe. Sometimes you wished you weren't too damn stubborn to talk about things.

He tasted like cigarettes and night time. You were sixteen, he was your first kiss. Your first real kiss, anyway. Pretty boy with bad habits; raven emblem emblazoned on the jacket that now laid at the foot of your bed, hands running themselves across the length of your back.

His name tasted good in your mouth, but only because it was the first you ever whispered.

"Kyler," you had said. Sometimes you still said it for fun.

Perhaps you hadn't always felt so isolated. You could recall times when you had friends, times when you had plans; you still remembered how it felt to have a life. But people, you had learned, were never as genuine as they cared to believe. They lied and cheated and stole. They were controlled by emotions and hormones, nothing more than well-oiled machines hellbent on destroying themselves and everyone around them.


People called you names once, and your anger didn't help. Clenched fists and elevated blood pressure and hisses at their claims of your crimes against purity, despite their own misgivings on the subject. The names weren't what hurt. It wasn't the idea that they had no idea what they were talking about, or the fact that they were wrong. Actually, it was just the opposite. They did know. They were right about all of it.

Your privacy had always been of the utmost importance. No one's business was meant to be shared, and yet people always seemed to know yours. You hated them for their whispers, but you hated them more for their accuracy.

"You told them, didn't you?" Your pulse hammered against your temple and your head was on the verge of exploding. He stared back at you, blank expression. "What the hell are you talking about?" Clearly, he was either good at lying, or good at being innocent. You hated how perfectly his curls fell into place on his head that day. "It was one of us," You bartered, not caring about the few people passing by on the street, "And I've kept my mouth shut."

He stood then, and you noticed a look somewhere between betrayal and anger pass by in his eyes. "I didn't say anything, Mayson." With that, he tossed the wrapper of his sandwich into the closest bin and walked away.

You didn't talk for a very, very long time, and you knew it was your fault.

First love was always hard to overcome. You knew this from the start. And over the years, you hated Kyler and swore you would never speak to him again, and, at the same time, you loved him so desperately that you would have done anything to keep him.

It was always you getting angry, him being careless, neither of you feeling ready to try again. Hopelessness was more than just an emotion— it became a body part for you, rooted itself between your ribs and your lungs, and kept itself occupied by talking to your heart.

But it wasn't until you heard the rumors about him for once that you truly felt yourself give in.

You had learned your lesson from accusing him before you knew the entire story. That look in his eyes had stuck with you ever since you'd pointed your finger and labelled him a liar. This time, you were going to be civil. Progress.

But when you found him in the hallway of Abadeer, you knew it was true. He apologized with his eyes before you even got the chance to say hello.

"Did it happen?" Was all you could muster. He was quiet for a second, and then, "Do you mean, 'did it happen the way they are saying it happened,' or 'did it happen at all?'" Your eyes filled with tears and you tried not to let him see. "Is there a significant difference?" You asked.

His gaze met the floor.

"Not one you would care to hear."

Splinters in your fingers,fingers in the dirt. You've never been good at being soft. When someone trusted you enough to cry to you, you never knew what to say. You kept quiet, all too aware that saying something would only make things worse.


The one time you tried, though?

It'll haunt you forever.

A G R I A