The Girl Who Waited {Zoë}

My name is Lia Irvine, and this is the story of how I die.

Not really. I mean, maybe it is. Maybe I'll just fall, one day, and not get up again. Although if I'm falling, perhaps the stars will catch me before I hit the pavement at a funny angle or my arms don't crush my body from the impact, and I won't feel anything at all except the rush of being lifted up, up, up into the sky at a thousand miles and hour.

Don't worry, I'm not crazy. Aunt Sharon's book on the coffee table that's open to 'Chapter 15: Teenagers and Depression' she got from the clinic, however, says different. According to it (or her, should I say, because she's circled 1: Engaging in reckless behaviour or having a lot of accidents resulting in injury and 2. Speaking positively about death or romanticizing dying underneath 'Warning signs in depressed teens'), they think I'm suicidal.

It also says that I should be kept under a close watch at all times, preferably by an appointed guardian, but nobody's been home for two days. So much for the parenting books.

Nobody calls. Because nobody cares. There I am, hanging onto that self-loathing thing they all so desperately want to see me clutching. So I let it go, watch it sail out of the window, like a balloon or a leaf caught in the wind. I wish that I could spread my arms and be as light as air, my bones hollow and make of feathers. No longer having to push myself in a direction, but let the wind take me under its wings and let the lights that dazzle in the sky guide me home. The difference between me and my aunt's self-diagnosed 'depression' is that I don't want to die. In fact, I'm terrified of dying. And how dare she strap the suicide label on my head when she watched, sitting right beside me, Kiera slice off her own foot to open death's doors in a nightmare she didn't know was real. Maybe my nightmare is real, too. Although I've lived through it, the frustration of trying to let go of something I couldn't even reach to begin with, to leave behind the memories of parents and family that I didn't even know.

"And I'd be saying that you, you're always holding onto stars" I sing quietly, no pretty tones or soft melodies floating from my voice. Just a dull, bored drone of words to keep me company in this lonely, empty house, to the slow beat of fingers drumming against a wooden table. I've forgotten most of the lyrics (or just never bothered to remember many of them - only the ones that count.) "Growing old is getting old. And it's crazy here without you. I used to think this all was ours. We'd stay up late... say it's all up in the stars..." I force the last words out from my throat, choking back on memories and thoughts I'd pushed myself away from. "Oh God, I miss her so much."

I don't sing the last line. I won't. I can't. I actually hate that song - it starts off like it knows me, like it understands. It promises to walk home with me, to fend off anybody who says I'm crazy, vows to stay lonely for each other, because we have nobody else. And then, just like her, it all falls to pieces. And it tells me that nobody is going to save me, to rescue me from the ground and show me the stars. I threw that suitcase out the window a long time ago, but that doesn't change the fact that I sat outside in the freezing cold on our doorstep, waiting for someone, anyone, to take me away.

"I'm going to have to do it myself, aren't I?" I realise, talking to the darkness through the musty air in our hallways. Nothing's changed, and nothing ever will. "Yes" they reply from above my head, a single syllable deciding my actions. I tell myself that it's always up to me, always my decision, my upbringing of myself - but it's not. Not really. In a huff, I storm out towards the front porch and begin my ascent, feeling like a little girl and a thousand years old all at once.

When stars die, they slowly run out of fuel. The centre shrinks down, and their outsides expand to become what the textbooks say is a red giant. Why would I want to kill myself when I'm already dying? I think as a hand grabs a piece of gate, my bare feet find metal railing, and I haul myself over in an escapade I'd practised time and time again. Memorising where my feet should go, how I should haul my limbs, to the point where I am not scared of my balance tipping or my hands slipping, because, in time and practise, my brain has been programmed to know that I simply won't fall. That part comes later, after tried and tested failures of falling upwards and defying gravity altogether.

I am a Red Giant up here, with the breeze catching at my hair and trying unsuccessfully to blow me over the edge of the rooftop. What does catch me off guard, though, is the voice of a stranger that I might have once known, had time not taken somebody very close to me away. "What are you looking for, Red?"

"Hello, strangely curious sir, I am merely looking for a gateway to the stars in an attempt to defy the rules of gravity and science whilst meeting my parents for the first time (who are stars, by the way) and finding my best friend again (who is also a star but I haven't seen her since I jumped off a roof into a swimming pool a while ago)" just doesn't seem quite the fitting answer. No wonder I've had to lie my way through question after question all my life. But he called me Red, like the stars in the night sky, and I am overwhelmed with the thought that perhaps somebody in this damned District can finally see me for who I am. Or perhaps it's just a prank, an act for people to stifle giggles away in bushes or save for the next morning, surrounded by hoots of laughter at my apparent craziness. Feeling a sudden surge of defensiveness for myself, my rooftop and the ones above me, I sit at the corner of my roof, legs swinging in the moonlight, and peer down at the odd man with a bowtie (what?), suspenders (double what?) and a tweed jacket (what? squared).

"For some privacy," I huff, crossing my arms sternly. "What about you?" I ask, tired of being the one to answer questions about my life and never getting to be the one that asks them. "Don't suppose you're searching rooftops for nothing. What are you looking for?"

For a moment, I thought I heard Kiera whispering in my ear. "You. It was always you."

And then, as the breeze breaks against my skin and I wipe away the inkling of sadness that threatens to leak from my eyes, I silently realise.