This is Not Heartfelt
It’s a Teenage Tragedy
Clover didn’t have much time left. She was under no false pretenses about that. Upon first finding the cancer she had gone through a whirlwind of emotions: fear, panic, anger. One would think most people would upon discovering an inoperable tumor in their frontal lobe. There was some relief, of course, when the doctor told her that she was a good candidate for chemo. Sadness quickly followed when it made her feel terrible and her hair fell out.
Yet by the time they informed her that the chemo hadn’t took, she felt only resignation. She was too tired of feeling.
Clover was always tired now. Her head was always aching. She couldn’t even stand from the vertigo. Could barely keep anything down either. The last time she had made it to the bathroom, she hadn’t recognized the thing that stared back at her with orb-like eyes. Her cheeks were sunken in, her skin was so pale from the lack of sunlight. She looked like a corpse.
If she was honest, she just wanted to be a real corpse already. There was no hope of recovery at this point. She knew that. Yet her parents couldn’t seem to accept it. For people who were so smart, they really were being very stupid about all of this. They tried everything, every treatment available. Spent more money then she’d ever known they’d had. None of it worked. Of course it didn’t. Clover didn’t want to live anymore. Not that what she’d been doing these past months could count, anyway.
The only reason she was still here at all was because she was worried about what would happen to them when she was gone, her parents and her brothers. Gordon would be okay, she thought. He was practical, logical. He would process her passing in his own way, but he would process it. Then there was Doug. Her littlest brother, always with one foot in the clouds and the other in outer space.
He was a good kid. Maybe too good. She didn’t want to become the catalyst for a tragic backstory. She didn’t want her death to change him into something he was not: her sweetheart, awkward baby brother. But she was so scared that that was exactly what would happen.
Clover wanted to tell him all of this, wanted him to promise her that he would let her go. Yet that was so much to ask of a fifteen-year-old boy, and every time she tried, every day he sat by her bed after school and told her about his day, she couldn’t get the words to come out right, or at all.
The cancer was already changing him. He just looked so… unhappy. All the time now. Everyone did when they were around her, she supposed. But with Doug it was particularly noticeable. She couldn’t help seeing the happy kid playing on the playground, or showing her his little drawings whenever she looked into the eyes of the morose man he was growing into. This wasn’t what she wanted. Not at all.
It wasn’t entirely her fault, but she couldn’t help feeling responsible.
Despite how it felt like it sometimes, Clover couldn’t hang on forever. She needed to do something. She’d been thinking of the past a lot lately, of things her family had done and said, all the little hopes and wishes they’d had. And so she decided to get Doug one last gift. She got something for Gordon too, of course, but the one for Doug was important.
It was a little joke between them of sorts. Once, Doug had expressed interest in owning a pair of heelys, which their mother had shut down immediately, proclaiming in a huff that they were both expensive and ridiculous. Clover had told him then, just flush with her first paycheck from a new part-time job, that if he really wanted them, she would buy them for him.
He’d turned bright red and mumbled something about it not being worth it if they weren’t converse.
She had no idea why she was so convinced that this would help him. It was a moment that stuck with her. Maybe it had stuck with him too.
Of course, looking it up, Clover had since discovered that no one made converse heelys. But now she was desperate. Finally, after inquiring with so many different Etsy stores that it made her head spin more than it already did, she found someone willing to custom-construct her a pair of black converse heelys. That meant that she had several weeks to come up with what to say when she gave them to him.
Ultimately, she was having some trouble speaking anyway, so she decided to write him a note. Clover went through nearly half a notebook of drafts trying to figure out what to say. Until the shoes were in her hands, she was stumped. But once she saw them, the box open in her lap, the smell of shop chemicals wafting into her face, she grabbed the notebook again, and began to write.
“Hey fartface,” she began, which seemed like the only appropriate greeting. “You talked about wanting these, and I had to cut off an arm and a leg to get them, but here you are. Sorry, I think they might be a little big, it was the only size I could get, but I think you’ll grow into them? Maybe? Unless you’re already done growing, squirt ;P. Love, Clover.”
In a way, she had failed again. She hadn’t said anything she’d wanted to. But also in a way, she hadn’t. The heelys themselves were the message. If this impossible thing could exist, if impossible things could be made possible, then he could make them too. Even if it seemed impossible, he would be alright without her.
She would give them to him tomorrow. She couldn’t wait to see the look on his face. But for now, even the act of writing this simple note had taken everything she had. Gently, she placed the shoe box under her bed, and tried to ignore the sound of beeping monitors as she quickly fell asleep.
Clover would never give those shoes to Doug, because that night she fell into a coma. As the doctors told her teary-eyed parents, it was as if she had suddenly just given up entirely. It was unlikely that she would wake up ever again. A decision was made, one that would alter the Bailey family—what was left of it anyway—permanently.
And so she died.
~~ o ~~
Elizabeth didn’t like her full name. It reminded her too much of her rich-ass grandparents and their expectations of what kind of person their grand-daughter—their eventual heir—would be. It was a family name, of course, so she couldn’t get away from it no matter how much she tried.
Maybe that’s why she did the things she did. Chopped off her hair, chopped up her clothes, even chopped up her name. Lizzy suited a hard-partying girl much better anyway. She didn’t know if she even really liked it all that much: the constant weekend parties, the alcohol, the string of friends with benefits that she dragged home to her family gatherings just to wig them out. The greasy the better was her motto. But at the very least, it satisfied her. To see the look of disappointment on her parents’ faces. Fuck them for trying to dictate her life.
Yeah, of course she knew it was self-destructive. But that’s exactly what she wanted.
Yet despite it all, even she had her limits sometimes, of just how much she could take in one night. That’s how she ended up on the roof of some random schmuck’s shed on that warm spring night.
The party was still raging over in the house across the yard. Lizzy didn’t even know whose party it was, but if there was booze, she was there. Except that at this point she was pretty sure that someone had spiked said booze with something harder, cuz she found herself dizzy way faster than usual, and had come outside to get some air. She had a sudden impulse to watch the sunset, but couldn’t see it over the trees in the backyard. So she had climbed the ivy on the side of the shed and plopped down on its gently sloped roof. Slowly, the breeze began to clear her head a little.
She didn’t think about much as she sat there, at least she tried not to, just felt the breeze on her skin and watched the red of the sky fading into purple. Fuck, she was starting to come down. She should really get back to that place where the music was so loud that she didn’t even feel like she existed.
But something stopped her. Just at that moment, someone stumbled out of the house.
It was one of the cokeheads that hung around with Morgan. Lizzy hadn’t ever really talked to him much, he was always pretty quiet, but there were only so many parties one could go to in an evening, so she had seen him around before, always wearing that same green hoodie.
She wasn’t huge into coke, she’d never liked the crash very much, but tonight she was feeling oddly lethargic. Maybe he had some on him?
“Hey,” she called, taking pity on him as he stumbled around for a minute in the growing dark.
Sweatshirt guy blinked up at her for just a second too long. “Oh,” he finally said. “Sorry, I thought I was just hearing things again.”
Wow. This guy was kinda fucked up, huh?
“How’d you get up there?”
“There’s some ivy on the side,” she shrugged. “You wanna come up?”
It took him a couple of minutes—and a couple of very choice words—before sweatshirt guy scrambled up and plopped down next to her. “Uh, hi,” he said.
“Hi.”
“We go to the same high school I think, right? Your name’s… uh…”
“Lizzy,” she smiled a little. “And you’re… Doug, right?”
He rolled his eyes, or tried to. His whole head kind of ended up going with them. “Real cool name, I know.”
Lizzy scoffed. “Join the club, I guess.”
They sat in silence for a moment, but Doug didn’t really seem like the type for quiet. His leg started bouncing, though it looked like he hasn’t even noticed. Maybe it was the coke?
“So, uh, what brings you to the roof of Jake’s shed on a night like this?” he asked.
She sighed. “Just a little dizzy. Needed some air. You?”
“Started to come down,” he admitted. “Felt weird, so I kinda snuck out.”
“You got any?” Lizzy probed as she noticed his hand twitching towards his sweatshirt pocket.
Still bouncing impatiently, he turned to her. “What, coke? ‘Course. You wanna hit?”
Was she really going to do this tonight? Like, look at this kid. Practically fucking itching out of his skin. But she was starting to think thoughts and that was the one thing she didn’t want to do right now.
“Sure,” she gave in. “If you don’t mind sharing.”
“Nah,” he mumbled, already pulling out a plastic baggy full of white powder. “I’ve gotta start cutting back anyway. Can’t snort it if I don’t have it, right?”
“Right…” she dug into her purse and offered him her rather scraped-up plastic pocket mirror.
He grunted in thanks, and with a razor he produced from god knew where, started to cut the lines. Though his tongue stuck out a little in concentration, he laid them out like an expert. Maybe it was a good thing for him to start cutting back.
“Ladies first,” he said, making an attempt at a lop-sided grin, although his eyes didn’t leave the lines.
“Thanks,” she shook her head a little, but took the mirror back. It burned going down—she prayed as she always did that she wouldn’t get a nosebleed. But not even a minute later and it wasn’t a concern anymore. The air was crisp on her skin, her vision was clear, the weight of the world lifted from her shoulders. Oh yeah. She had definitely needed this tonight.
Next to her, suddenly seeming much closer than before, Doug sighed. He sat back on the roof, leg finally lying still. “Ah, that’s much better.”
“You really are fucked up, aren’t you?”
He turned to her in slight surprise at the question, but then just started laughing. “What tipped you off?” he leaned in a little.
“Takes one to know one.”
She could feel the heat of his body now he was so close. Fuck, coke always made her horny. Doug was absolutely not someone she should get involved with if she valued her health, he might as well have had “self-destructive” sharpied across his forehead. But it was just for one night, and she didn’t want to be alone, and he was pretty cute, the way his intense, green eyes stared at her from under his mop of dark, unkempt hair.
They probably would have fucked right there on that roof if a series of obnoxious cat-calls hadn’t stopped them. Blinking down through the growing dark, Lizzy blushed a little as she caught sight of Morgan and a couple of his junkie buddies leering up at them.
“Sorry, Doug,” he called up, “didn’t know you were, uh, busy.” Chuckles from the peanut gallery. “But listen, this party is kinda blowing, so we’re heading to that college one down the way. Bring the chick if you want. I think we can find room.”
How was she to know? How was he? That getting into Morgan’s car would be the last choice she would ever make? Lizzy was drunk, and high, and so horny she thought she might simply explode if she had to wait a minute longer. And Doug’s lips tasted nice. She wanted to get lost in them, lost forever, so that she never had to think ever again. Even if only for one night.
And then she died.
~~ o ~~
When Jilli made it to St. Adelaide’s, she was extremely jet-lagged. It didn’t help matters that she hadn’t slept much at all in the days previous. There were too many crazy thoughts racing through her brain to allow for peaceful rest.
It had taken her manager and the rest of the idol group’s corporate overlords to figure out what to do with her after her little stunt. If she was a western pop-star she would have gotten some tabloid coverage, laid low for a month or two, and just carried on as usual. But she was a Japanese idol. What she had done was a disgrace to the parent company, and now she had to vanish. For how long she had no idea. She couldn’t help overhearing one of the suits muttering: “This is what we get for signing a foreigner.”
Jilli’s face turned red at that. She had been living in Japan since she was ten. She wanted to scream in that asshole’s face. She wanted to grab another chair. But Jilli had already done too much. She didn’t want to make things even worse for herself.
So they bundled her onto a trans-pacific flight and sent her back to “where she came from.” Jilli wondered pathetically what her mother had thought about all this, but odds were that she had just gone along with it without complaint.
Twenty-four hours later, Jilli found herself at the gates of St. Adelaide’s School for Gifted Youth, with a gaggle of curious onlookers staring at her from the other side. At first the rest of the students were kept away from her as a bodyguard completed her registration, but once they’d showed her to her ten-by-ten cell, she was on her own. She could have just hid in that room, but if she had to spend one minute alone with herself she thought she might scream.
Of course, she was no longer Jilli Nakajima, Japanese Pop Idol. She was now just Jilli, boarding school student. But try telling her fellow students that. The worst part was that none of them even really knew who she was, just that she was someone. She’d first tried the common room on her dorm’s floor. Got swarmed by ogling students. She tried a different floor. Same thing. Finally, she went out to the green between the buildings. It was just as bad if not worse. Everyone wanted to know what the deal was with Jilli Nakajima. Frankly, Jilli wasn’t in the mood.
But just when Jilli thought she was never going to be free from the probing questions from the most persistent clique of rich bitches she had ever met, a knight in shining armor came to save her. His noble steed of choice? A pair of really stupid-looking heelys.
“Alright, Samantha. I’m sure the new girl’s gonna pass out if she has to smell your dick breath any longer, so why don’t you give her some space?” The newcomer slid directly in between Jilli and the offending—supposed—cocksucker.
The first thing she noticed were, of course, the heelys. Those had been popular back when she had lived in America. Who the hell was still wearing them anymore? But she was quickly distracted by his hair, which besides sticking up in all sorts of directions was an odd shade of bright white. It was like he was an anime character come to life in front of her. By that logic, however, he was bound to be either insane or inflicted with the most tragic backstory known to man. The white-haired ones always did.
“Fuck off, Doug,” the head bitch rolled her eyes. “I’m sure you’ve got more experience with that than I do.”
“Can’t say that I have,” white-hair guy—Doug—appeared unfazed. “But I’d be thanking me if I were you, cuz if I did, well, you’d be right out of a job.”
“Whatever,” she frowned. “Come on, let’s go somewhere with a lower freak quotient. You coming, Jilli?”
Jilli just smiled. “Sorry,” she smiled sweetly. “I think I’ll stay behind. Wouldn’t want to mess up your perfect ‘freak’ quotient.”
The rich bitch looked a little confused, and for a moment Jilli wondered if what she said had made any sense. She hadn’t regularly spoken English in years, after all. But then Doug started laughing, and the rich bitch and her posse scoffed and stalked away.
Jilli sighed. She probably shouldn’t be making enemies so early. But honestly, her reputation at an American boarding school was the least of her concerns right now.
“Thank you,” she turned to Doug and bowed a little out of habit. The gesture seemed to make him embarrassed.
“‘S no big deal,” he mumbled. “You just looked a little in over your head, is all.” He leaned on the back of the bench she was sitting at. “You’re the new girl, right?”
“That’s me, unfortunately. I’m Jilli.”
“Doug. So uh, I hate to ask, you know, since I’m sure you’ve been repeating yourself all morning, but I gotta know,” he looked a little sheepish. “I heard you were some kinda pop star, so uh, what’d you get sent here for?”
‘Sent,’ huh? Then it was as she’d suspected as she’d seen more of the student body. Despite the name, this school was a place to send problem children too rich to go to juvie. Jilli had spent the entire morning side-stepping this very question. Maybe it was because she was too exhausted to care anymore, or maybe she just wanted to tell someone, anyone. Or maybe it was because Doug seemed to be the only person here with any sort of actual personality. But she decided to answer him.
“I threw a chair at someone’s head,” she admitted. “In the middle of a performance.”
She didn’t know how she expected Doug to react, but it was not the way he actually did. “Whoa, that’s metal,” he looked impressed. “Decided to stick it to the man, finally?”
“It was more a crime of passion than anything,” the sides of Jilli’s mouth lifted an inch, despite herself.
“Bet the bitch had it coming.”
Jilli actually laughed at his sheer audacity. “Oh you have no idea. But I’m sure she’s off milking sympathy from the fanboys, and here I am, wasting away at a fucking boarding school.”
“Well, you’ll find yourself in good company here. No shortage of sob stories in the halls of good ol’ St. Adelaide’s.”
“So what about you, then?” she asked, wanting to focus their conversation away from herself. “What’s your ‘sob story?’”
“Oh, trust me, you don’t wanna know,” he shook his head.
“What, hair dye accident upset your parents?”
“Huh?” Doug looked genuinely confused for a second. “Oh, uh…” an odd expression crossed his face. “I don’t dye it.”
“You telling me it grows out of your head like that?” Jilli raised an eyebrow.
“If I say ‘yes’ will you believe me?”
“Not for a second.”
“Then let’s just say I had a shocking encounter with a ghost and leave it at that,” he made a bitter attempt at a smile.
Oh god, he was an anime character.
“Are you always this mysterious, or are you just trying to impress me?”
Doug seemed to shake off his funk at that and leaned in a little closer. “That depends on if it’s working.”
Holy hell, American guys were straight-forward. Or maybe that was just Doug. “Hmm,” she tried to look like she was really considering it for a moment. “Jury’s still out on that one.”
“Well, tell you what,” he straightened. “I betcha that despite all the gawking, no one’s bothered to show you around, right?”
“You’re not wrong.”
“Then you can think about it while I do. But I expect an answer by the tour’s conclusion.”
She giggled, standing as well. “Alright, it’s a deal.”
“Dope,” he rapidly glided away down the concrete. “But you’ll have to keep up with me. I go fast.”
As she ran after him, Jilli felt just a little bit of relief. This was the first time someone had treated her like a normal person in a long time. Maybe this sojourn, however long it would end up being, wouldn’t be entirely bullshit.
Before you say anything, just give her a moment, give them a moment, to be okay. Because you already know how this goes. You know that this encounter doomed her to a pretty gruesome fate, if she wasn’t doomed already. You’ve already seen the torment, and fear, and insanity that awaits both of them down the road of fate. You know how this story ends, just like all the others.
Because soon, Jilli Nakajima will die.
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