Page 148 of Paint the Town, Dove
***
I still have nightmares everyday.
I had to get out.
I had to move away from Slater Street.
Living in that basement apartment held random memories in every corner. Her checkered ashtray, pieces of pearl jewelry beads tucked away beneath the fraying couch cushions… it stole hours of my life each day.
A life that should have been hers.
She would’ve been twenty this year.
Instead, I was celebrating her second death anniversary.
I already called up her foster parents, sent my best.
My best.
What was my best?
I still had to steal people’s luggages from the airport, had to sell strangers’ belongings in order for Ryden and I to move up to New York.
He was so busy with the parties and the promoting, [God, Avenue Records really possessed him]that I had to scout for different B&Bs. I had to work at the pawn shop in the East Village just so I could bribe the inn owner, Hank, into letting us stay another month.
I spent sunrise at her grave.
After all, her burial grounds were just eighty-eight minutes away from New York, between Baltimore and Brookyln.
She was the line I drew in the sand, between my old life and the new. I wouldn’t venture past her grave ever again.
I was empty. Drained.
And it only got worse.
… It only ever gets worse.
***
I was sitting across the dining table at Baker and Bear’s after getting a phone call from the hospital back home. Flack had overdosed, died overnight in his sleep. Sinead checked into rehab. Didn’t ask for me.
I wouldn’t have asked for her.
There was a… pinch, in my heart, a small pinch.
This dull ache that I couldn’t place because everything was covered in scars.
I felt like my entire existence was mummified, wrapped in barbed wire, destined for the coffin.
Flack was… well, Flack wassomeoneto me. Sinead, too.
I was someone to them.
Just, no one important.
Scarsscarsscars.
Scar, Ryden’s nickname for me apart from Dove, it became fitting. I grew into it like the cuts across my knuckles from punching the bag. Boxing and biking. My preferred pursuits.
