dream about me.

The only thing I ever loved was a ratty little train wreck that wore too much makeup and looked vaguely like a boy. Her self-loathing was painfully evident. We took turns telling each other we were disgusting and I always ate the last three-quarters of her sandwiches.

She'd never been right. She'd never belonged. But neither did I.

There was no predictable pattern to when she would call me. Sometimes it was once a week, sometimes once a month. I would go to her creaky old house and we would talk, or watch foreign movies. Sometimes she never even spoke. So I would watch her, in her room full of half-finished books. She slept soundly, for hours on end, but when I was with her I never slept.

The months with her in my youth dragged into our teenage years. When others were driving and smoking blunts, we were sprawled barefoot on the hardwood floors, high off paint fumes and humming old piano tunes.

My mother loved me, in a strange way. She'd spent so long preparing for my rebellious but technically normal teen years that when I turned out to be awkward but docile, she tried to push me into the lifestyle my brothers had led.

As she introduced me to girls with lip rings, I heard less and less from the girl who had once meant everything to me. Eventually the only words I heard from her were during her sporadic midnight calls.

"I want to die," she would say.

And after a while, I didn't hear from her at all. I only saw her at school, doe-eyed and ghostly white. Beneath her eyeliner I knew there were red-rimmed eyes.

Our senior year, I dropped out. She was headed to college and spent her time at parties with stiff sophistocate boys who wouldn't touch her. She was gone to me now. I hated her sometimes, when I thought of her, because she was sharp and had everything but kept her crying eyes. I, on the other hand, had not heard from my bastard father in weeks.

I didn't speak to her for six months until that night. It was early January but it had yet to snow. The night was wet and warm, the lights from passing cars glistening on the road. I was watching the shadowplay from my porch, turning an unlit cigarette over and over again as if it would give me answers to questions I didn't want to ask.

Down the street, a shadow shuffled across the intersection. Instinct or premonition or whatever told me it was her. All I did was watch.

The shape floated down the sidewalk until it melted into the shadows of my neighbor's house. And then suddenly it darted into the light, onto the street, and into the way of oncoming cars. I acted without thinking, lurching off the porch and into the grass, towards her.

I saw her, really saw her, then. She wore jeans and a worn flannel, with a flimsy sweater over top. The edges of her shoes had holes in the rubber. Her matted hair was pulled into a low pony tail and her eyes were smeared with dark makeup.

As I dragged her from the street I noticed that her eyes were glassy and distant, filled with medicated dreams. Her breath was sweet with hard lemonade.

"Jesus, you're stupid," I muttered, looking into her face. I didn't know where she had come from or what she'd done, what kind of danger she might be in.

She had plump little heart-shaped lips. They didn't say anything. Before either of us knew it, I was on them, kissing her with my hands clamped onto her bony shoulders as if she was trying to get away. She wasn't. Her tongue was halfway down my throat.

It only lasted a moment before I pulled back. She stared at me like I was a stranger. The sensation that look gave me was like being stabbed.

"What are you doing here?" I mumbled, close to her face, a challenge to her presence. A challenge to her desperation. A challenge to myself.

"Nothing." The word was muddled. She didn't know anything. Or at least I told myself this as I shoved her backwards, away from me.

It was hatred. It was hurt. It was the burning in the pit of my stomach, the bile rising in my throat. That was what pushed her back again and said, "You're stoned. Get out of here."

She looked like an animal that had been shot with a tranquilizer. She opened her mouth to say something, but I stopped her.

"Go."

She obeyed this time, pivoting slowly and slouching back down the sidewalk, towards the intersection. I watched with clenched teeth until she was nothing but a shape, just as she had come. Then, I turned and walked back to the porch.

I heard the car horn first. The muffled thud. Somebody yelled, "Oh my God!" out their window. Ten minutes later, the ambulance came.

I never looked back.