8:55 pm
After finishing never have I ever, I was grumpy for a little while. But as soon as Mike noticed something was wrong with me, I tried to shake off the memory of my horrible ex-girlfriend.
That was easier for me than it should’ve been. It’s just, I had had so many heartbreaks that I was used to shutting off the memory of them. Normal people would go and talk about those things, but I had trust issues because my heart had been broken so much. It was a cycle and I didn’t know how to break it.
Although maybe, this whole thing was a huge step in the right direction. I decided to almost completely trust a stranger. Not only with my heart, but also with parts of my past. Was that enough to break the cycle?
It was weird. He actually knew more about me than I knew about him. That almost never happened in my life. Yeah, of course I knew a lot about him, but only the basics. Things you tell at a birthday party. I knew nothing about his pain or emotions. Well, accept for the fact that his girlfriend had just broken up with him over the phone.
And about that, I still had the feeling that he was just using me to get over her. But at the other hand, I was using him to get over my trust issues, so I think we were even. This was never meant to last anyway. We would keep each other company in here and after that we would move on. Move on to people we were meant to be with.
“What is the weirdest thing you have ever done when you were drunk?” I ask out of nowhere after a short silence. I had the feeling like we need to keep talking, as a distraction from everything going on.
Mike let out a small chuckle and shook his head. “You don’t want to know.”
I was laying on my back with my hands underneath my head. Mike was lying in a similar position. I had been lying like this for at least thirty minutes and it wasn’t really comfortable anymore, but I was too lazy to move.
“I do want to know, otherwise I wouldn’t have asked.” I said. It was a simple question, but I wanted it to lead to him opening up about something. After the realization that I knew nothing about him, I got more interested in his past. Maybe it was just because I wanted us to be even. He knew more about me than I knew about him and that wasn’t fair.
He moved his head slightly to the right to face me. “the weirdest thing I have ever done when I was drunk was falling asleep in a public bathoom, waking up with an enormous hangover and after that get stuck in an elevator.” He said with a grin on his face.
I shot him an annoyed look. “Ha-Ha.” I said sarcastically. “Now tell me what the weirdest thing you have done really is.”
“Can’t think about anything that is weirder than ending up in an elevator with a stranger for nineteen hours.” He said, but added when he saw my face. “But if I have to choose a second option, I’d choose the time I was at warped and me and a couple of friends were drinking. To say I was wasted is an understatement. I don’t recall why, but I ended up throwing a lot of my drumming equipment in a nearby lake.”
I let out an unexpected laugh. “Wow. Did you get in trouble for that?” I asked.
“Well, let’s just say that management wasn’t happy with me. The boys weren’t mad though. They just laughed at me for the entire tour. Actually, they still laugh at me for it.” He said grinning. There was this weird glow over his face every time he mentioned his fellow band members. I could only imagine the bond that they had.
“Oh believe me, even if we never see each other again after this, I will laugh at you for it for the rest of my life.” I said still laughing. “That has got to be the stupidest thing I have ever heard someone do when they were drunk.”
The smile on his face faded a little, but it still remained on his face. “Well, it was the weirdest thing I have ever done while drunk. Not the stupidest.”
My smile faded a bit too, when I realized this was a serious thing. His smile didn’t reach his eyes anymore. I wanted to know what he had done, but I was pure shit at comforting people, so I would probably just make him feel worse.
Eventually my curiosity won it. “What was the stupidest thing you have ever done while you were drunk?” I asked a little cautious. I said it soft, secretly hoping he didn’t hear it.
But he did. He saw the worry in my face and let out a soft chuckle. “Don’t be afraid, I didn’t rape or kill anyone. I wouldn’t even do that intoxicated.”
I chuckled. He was definitely trying to light up the tension. I recognized it to be something I did too. In some situations when I needed to tell something deeper about myself, I tried to light up the mood with jokes.
I remained silent until he spoke again: “It was a few years ago. I’m not home a lot you know. And when I am, it’s only for a few weeks, sometimes even a few days. So the night before we were about to go on tour again, I went to this club with some old friends. I wanted to celebrate this last day at home, but I took it a little too seriously.”
A little grin appeared on his face, but it disappeared soon again. “I was so drunk, that I passed out. And that says something, because I have an incredibly high alcohol tolerance. It’s because of all the drinking on tour, you know. But well, that night I passed out and I wouldn’t wake up before the next day at twelve am the next day. The guys had already carried me into the bus, because otherwise we would’ve been behind on schedule. The point is: I wasn’t even able to say goodbye to my parents and my former girlfriend. And we were going to be away for seven months.”
I swallowed something away. Damn that was long. I could definitely understand that he felt guilty because of that. I felt sorry for both him and his family. I was suddenly quite aware of how much musicians are away from the ones they love.
“Oh…” I just said. How was one supposed to react to that?
“Yeah, the guys weren’t very happy with me. Especially Vic yelled at me a lot when I was approachable again. Right now, I know I deserved it. But the stupid stubborn bastard I am, I of course yelled back at him. I yelled that it wasn’t my fault, which it obviously was.” He said and I couldn’t help to hear the sincerity in his voice. I knew that speaking his emotions like this was also very rare to him.
“Well, at least you won’t be making that mistake again.” I said, in a pathetic attempt to cheer him up. It wasn’t even true. From experience I knew people made the same mistakes over and over again. Mine for an example was trusting people.
Mike let out a sad chuckle. “I guess so. It was just so stupid. I get to see them too little, Amara. I mean, I love my work, but I miss out on a lot because of it. Friendships break, relationships end and I miss all types of family occasions.”
I never thought about it like this. In the media, people talked about musicians and other artists like they were animals. They just watched and judged. But people forget how hard they work for our entertainment. How much they sacrificed for our sake.
“The people that break things off because of that are not worth it.” I suddenly said out loud. “If they don’t understand you do it for the greater good, if they are not intelligent enough to see that, then they are not worth it.”
Mike looked at me with a look that was a perfect mix of sorrow and surprise. “True, but how much is the greater good worth? I mean it’s very cool that I’m helping people that I don’t know, but what’s the use if I hurt the people I love with it?”
“That’s up to you.” I said calm. “You draw that line.”
He sighed and looked to the ceiling. “I know, but I don’t even know where to draw that line. I mean, I’m almost thirty-one years old. If I want a family of my own, I need to start soon. But maybe it’s even better for me to not have kids, because I won’t even be able to be there for the kid. I will miss everything.”
It surprised me that he had thought it true that much. I wasn’t that good at reading people’s feelings, but that certainly meant that he thought about it a lot.
I knew I wasn’t able to fix this problem for him. It was really up to him, but for some reason I knew that just talking to me had given him some sort of relieve. At least, I hoped so.
I scooped over to his side of the elevator and laid my head down on his chest. He threw his arm around my shoulder and we laid like that for a while. “I’m sorry you have to go through this.” I eventually said. And I meant it. I wished that I could fix it for him, but I knew I couldn’t.
He kissed the top of my head. “It’s okay. It’s the toll I got to pay for doing what I love.” He said against my hair.
I wanted to say something back, but I didn’t really know what. Luckily for me I didn’t need to think of it, as we heard footsteps on the ladder again.
In the last few hours the guy we spoke to earlier, who was apparently called Dave, came back a few times. Most of the time there was a lot of clinging and we suspected that he was trying to open the hitch in the ceiling. He didn’t talk a lot to us, he probably thought we were crazy anyway, but we didn’t dare to talk out loud when he was around.
I heard a pair of feet hit the ceiling of the elevator and walk over it. A few seconds later the familiar clinging was heard through the ceiling again.
I moved away from Mike’s chest and sat up straight. If the guy actually succeeded at opening the damn thing, he would probably think Mike fucked in here if I was lying on his chest. Not that I gave a fuck about what he was thinking, it’s just that sex in public places is illegal and there’s probably going to be a lot of police around here when the thing finally gets fixed.
Mike looked over to me and raised an eyebrow. When he saw me blushing he laughed and shook his head. I guess he figured it out too.
After a few seconds a very loud clash was heard from the ceiling and as an instinct I folded my hands over my ears. Mike was on his way to do the same, but stopped in the middle of the air when the sound ended.
I looked over to the ceiling and I almost couldn’t believe what I was seeing. A small square of the metal was moving and was eventually removed. Wow. It took the guy three hours to open a hatch. We’re not going to be out of here soon, I guess.
I stood up and looked at the hole. It was square and about the size of a book. I saw someone move behind it and eventually a face appeared through the hitch. The man had a grey mustache and bright blue eyes. “Finally!” he said and I heard from his voice that it was Dave. “That took ages.”
“Tell me about it.” I heard Mike mumble from behind me and I tried my best not to chuckle. Luckily Dave didn’t seem to hear it.
“Okay, I’ll give you a heads-up on what’s going to happen.” He said in a serious manner. “I looked at the control system and to the ties that hold the elevator and I just can’t fix this on my own.” I tried to concentrate on what he was saying, but really all I could think about was if he had brought food. “In probably an hour, maybe two, a team will come this way that is specialized to fix these kind of things. Also the police will get here then too. I’m not entirely sure, but I think there has been sabotaged with this elevator.”
That sparked my attention. “Who would do something like that?” The possibility went through my head that it was done on purpose. Maybe someone wanted us to be trapped in here. Was this a weird plan of some sort?
I looked over to Mike who looked just as surprised and shrugged.
“I have no idea.” Dave said. He remained silent for a while. It didn’t look like he cared very much about the fact that someone possibly wants to hurt me or Mike. Or both of us.
“The food, Dave?” Mike eventually said. My heart lid up at the word. Ugh I felt like a junky or something. But I just craved it right now.
“Oh, yeah.” Dave said and his face disappeared from the hitch for a while. Before I knew it a bag of chips, 2 candy bars and 2 bottles of water fell from the ceiling. “Here ya go.”
I stared at the little stash of food like it wasn’t real. Like it could disappear in thin air any moment. I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy in my life to see a bag of chips.
I looked to Mike and saw that he had the exact same expression on his face. He looked back at me with a huge surprised smile on his face, his eyes lighting up. It was adorable.
“Thank you, sir!” I yelled back towards the hitch.
“just doing my job, ma’am.” He said. “I have to go now. There’s really not more I can do for you, but just use this when you need help.” He threw a walkie-talkie through the hitch and I caught it with both of my hands. I knew this guy probably couldn’t do much about it, but I was actually really surprised by how little is being done to get us out of here.
“Okay, sir.”
“Have a nice evening you both.” He said. Yeah right. I’ll spend this evening in an elevator and the rest probably leaving a statement to the police. I totally think it will be nice.
“You too, sir.” I said and then we heard him leave via the ladder again.
I looked back at the food quickly, like I expected it to have disappeared. I wouldn’t even have been surprised if it did. Everything went wrong in the last twenty-four hours. Almost everything.
We stood there for a moment, processing the surprise. It was weird, all this time, I imagined myself jumping at the food whenever it came. But now it was here, I just stood here, like it was unreal or something. It kind of was.
“So, how are we going to do this?” Mike said, gesturing to supplies lying on the floor.
“Well, we unwrap it, put it on our mouths, chew and then swallow.” I said and in my head I suddenly realized I had made a sexual innuendo.
Luckily Mike didn’t realize it. “I know, but are we going to divide the food or just attack?” He looked me in the eyes, looked back at the food and then back at me. Without saying anything we had just agreed. Within seconds we both threw ourselves at the food. I went straight for the candy bar , figuring that I might needed the sugar.
When I took a bite, it felt like I had never had chocolate before. I’m pretty sure it had never tasted as good. We sat down on the ground, practically stuffing our faces, not thinking about table manners.
Within two minutes everything was gone and I sat down against the elevator wall. I patted my stomach, pretty content with the satisfied feeling being full gave me. Mike sat down next to me and let out a loud burp. Normally I hated burps, but now I just laughed, being kind of high of the happiness.
I had found a whole new appreciation for food and I suddenly had so much more respect for people who suffered from starvation. It’s weird, because I always used to click away the ads on YouTube video’s that had to do with people starving in Africa. Suddenly I felt guilty for that.
And there were even people a little closer to home that suffered from this. In one way or another.
My head wondered back to the time I had dealt with someone like that in my life. It was about three years ago. I had found a job as an English teacher on the local high school and to say I was excited, was an understatement. I’ve always wanted to teach and share my knowledge with people that have yet to learn those things.
Of course the dream image I had from teaching I had made up in my mind wasn’t reality. Teenagers always try to take advantage of the new teachers or substitute teachers. What can I say? I was just out of college, I was only twenty-two years old, I was an easy target.
After only one week of teaching I was completely stressed out. The class didn’t pay attention, they didn’t listen to me and when I tried to buy their attention with cake, they threw it at the schoolboard.
When I had been complaining to my former boyfriend Dylan he had said: “Amara, you’re literally the scariest bitch I know.”
“Well thanks that really helps” I said, looking at him with a bitchy face.
He laughed and put his hands on my shoulders. “I didn’t mean it as an insult. It’s actually kind of sexy.”
I closed my eyes and sighed. “Make your point, Dylan.”
“Use it to your advantage.” He said and I opened my eyes surprised. “Yeah, you heard me. You can be really mean, Amara. What makes those kids so scary that you didn’t use that quality on them?”
I realized he was right. I had been a real pussy and if I wanted their respect, I needed to work for it.
The next lesson I walked in with a lot of confidence. And Dylan was right. I eventually earned their respect and their attention. Well, I received the amount of attention one could aspect from teenagers.
You could say I wasn’t really loved at school in the next few weeks. But just like in real life, I eventually became a little nicer to the students that were being nice to me. And still to this day, I wasn’t the most popular teacher at the school, but also not the most hated.
I was fine with this. They didn’t need to like me. I just needed to do my story, educate them and try to let them be best they could. I could say with pride that I was good at my job.
Until the day my boss called me in his office a year later. It was a very uncomfortable conversation, I will spare you the details. In short, he said that I wasn’t making enough of an effort to know what was going on in the lives of the students. Personally I didn’t see the point. They didn’t even want us to know what was going on in their lives and to be honest, I didn’t really care.
But since that conversation, I started paying more attention to the students, unconsciously I guess. I noticed a lot of things, but the thing that I was currently thinking about was one of the first weird things I had noticed around the school.
There was this girl in the cafeteria. Very pretty, blonde hair, tall and her make-up was always perfectly done. At first she seemed perfectly fine, she was sitting with all her friends at their lunch table and they were doing typical things like talking about the latest gossip.
After a while I started noticing that this girl never ate anything. She always took up her fork, stirred around her food and brought it to her mouth making it seem like she ate, but she didn’t. She had all her friends tricked and actually also the rest of the school.
At first I really didn’t get it. Why would she want to do that? I couldn’t seem to understand why someone would pass up on food. If it was cafeteria food, yeah I would get that, but she always took her own fancy food to school.
It really hit me when she was walking out of the cafeteria and a box of laxatives fell out of her purse. She didn’t seem to notice and just walked out of the cafeteria. I picked up the box and looked over the package. I needed to talk to this girl. Not only did she pass up on food, everything that did get in she tried to get out too. I hadn’t had much experience with these kind of things, but even I could see that this girl was probably anorexic.
I just didn’t get it. It seemed like a girl who had everything under control. She seemed confident.
So even though I hated to talk to people about feelings, I called her in after class. I didn’t want to snitch on her and tell other teachers. She would’ve probably been send to a counselor and maybe she didn’t even want that. I knew that those kind of people wouldn’t really been able to help her.
After everyone else had left the classroom, I gestured her to sit down at the seat across my desk. I didn’t really know how to start this conversation, so I just handed her the box. “I believe this is yours.”
She turned very pale, even though she wore lots of foundation to make her look tanned. She took back the package and was fast to put a smile on her face again. “I have very bad stomach aches.” She said.
“I know that’s not true, Charisa.” I said and I tried to sound as caring as I could. “You don’t eat.”
Charisa put up a confused face, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. There was fear in them. “Uhm, yes I do. Why wouldn’t I? I brought today, shall I show you my food? As prove?” she looked away from my stare and started to search her purse.
I sighed. “Charisa, You act like you eat, but you don’t actually do it. You never actually put it in your mouth.”
She froze, still with her hands in her purse. I saw her muscles relax and I knew she gave in. She leaned back in her chair and looked down at her hands. It looked like she was about to cry.
“It’s okay. You can talk to me. I won’t tell anyone.” I said softly and then she just broke down crying. All her make-up washed off and she spilled everything on her mind. It was really horrible to hear such things from a sixteen year old girl. She told me that it started because her boyfriend called her fat and now she couldn’t stop dieting anymore. She thought she was some truly unattractive, fat monster and I just couldn’t believe these words coming from the queen bee of the sophomore year.
After she was done talking, her eyes were puffy and red, her cheeks were soaked and she was shaking from head to toe. I handed her a tissue. “how long has it been since you’ve ate?” I asked and I was scared for the answer. It was moments like this when I just wanted to hide under my bed for all the horrible things in this world.
“two days.” She said and mind shut off when she said that. “well, to be exact thirty-six hours. I’m trying to beat a record.” She shrugged like it was no big deal.
“What is your record?” I asked and I regretted the question immediately.
“My record is forty hours.” She said and I saw a flinch of pride cover her face.
I was terrified of the way she had brainwashed herself. I wanted so much more for her.
“You know this is really unhealthy, right?” I said and I realized that that was probably an incredibly stupid thing to say.
A look of determination covered her face. “I don’t care. I rather be unhealthy than fat.”
“But you aren’t fat.”
“I am.” She said and when I looked into her eyes I saw that she meant it.
I didn’t know what to do. Part of me wanted to turn back time and provide me from finding out, but I knew now and I wanted to help her. I just didn’t know how.
The professionally moral thing was probably to find a shrink for her or something. But hell, these things didn’t work! These people got payed to care and I suspected them to make patients worse on purpose, just so they could keep getting payed.
This girl was not going to start eating just like this. What she needed was to realize that what she was doing was wrong and only she could do that. The least I could do was giving her the feeling someone cared. And from then on, she came to visit me after school every week until her graduation two years later.
She turned out fine eventually. She became this strong senior. Happy and truly confident. Of course she was still having problems now and then, but I told her that she shouldn’t be ashamed for it, so she wasn’t anymore. She even visited me after graduation once. She had given me mug in the form of an apple with ‘best teacher’ written on it. I laughed at the corniness of it. She told me that she was truly thankful for me helping her through these years. Personally I couldn’t believe that I actually helped her. All I did was listen to her, but I guess there was just no one else who did.
Even though everything ended up fine, there was this thing that she had said during our first conversation that had haunted me till this day.
“It’s not the magazines or the movies that make me want to do this to myself. Of course, I want to be like them. More then anything. But I do this because I want to be happy with myself. And I’m not. I want to get rid of that feeling that I’m not good enough. Not for others, but for myself. But I guess that will never end, people are born with a tendency to self-destruct, a tendency to perfect themselves. Even the people that seem happy. Why? Because we all want to know that when we die, we have mattered. That we were worth being on this earth.”

Notes

heeyyy guys

I hope this is sort of good...I haven't been updating both the pact as this story much laterly because I have exam week. I actually want to get out of that fucking school so I take graduating very seriously.

But soo. I want to say something. If any of you guys feel like Charise, or have other problems you want to talk about. Feel free to message me. No one deserves to have no one to talk to. Let's be alone together :) oh and stay strong <3

xxxxxx
Nicky