Dissolve

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Acknowledgments

About the Author

DISSOLVE

A novel

By L.V. Hunter

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2016 by L.V. Hunter. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means.

ONE

AGE FIFTEEN

I stand on the edge of the dam, and I wait for a sign.

The water is a hundred feet below me, glinting like a sheet of polished onyx in the full moonlight. All it would take is one step forward. I edge the toe of my converse over the dam’s lip and keep it there, like a promise. Up here, I’m alone. I can see the world for miles in all directions - trees, dark and quiet, and then the city - bright and loud.

I’m not bright and loud. Not anymore. Not since that day.

I am a tree, silent and unmoving. I can’t move. My roots are too deep. If I bend too far, I’ll break.

I look down at the water and think about how easy it would be to die. Just a few inches forward, and it would all be over.

I’ve bent too far.

This is what it looks like when a tree breaks.

I clutch my crumpled note in my hand, and let it go. The wind pulls it this way and that, toying with it like a cat toys with a wounded bird. It’s gone in the blink of an eye, the night swallowing it whole.

I’ve practiced this before. I’ve taken walks up to the dam after dinner, long walks. Every time Mom asked where I was going, I’d say the dam. There were no lies. I never lied to her. Except once. Except after he touched me with his wrinkled hands, held me still with his wrinkled arms.

I lied to Mom, and said nothing was wrong. I’ve lied to her for the past three months.

It’s time to stop lying.

I pull my hair back into a ponytail. It’s a small, stupid thing to do right before you die, but I’ve done nothing but small, stupid things my entire life. This is the last thing. I’m allowed to do one last small, stupid thing.

“Eve!”

The desperate shout pulls me away from the edge. A shadow runs at me, skinny and short. He trips over his baggy jeans and the streetlight illuminates his panting face - terrified brown eyes, caterpillar eyebrows knit in confusion. A smattering of bumpy pimples all over his cheeks makes it hard to see his face definition clearly, but I know who it is.

“Kyle,” I sigh. “Why are you here?”

He doesn’t answer me, grabbing my wrist and yanking me from the edge with surprising strength for such a small, skinny thing.

“I won’t let you!” He shouts, tears streaming down his face. “I saw you - I saw you writing the note in Math. I tried to tell my Dad but he wouldn’t - he wouldn’t believe me, so I took the bus to your house, and your Mom said you were here, and you can’t do it! For shit’s sake, Eve, you can’t do this!”

“I want to,” I snap. “Who the hell do you think you are? You don’t know my life.”

Kyle recoils like I slapped him.

“My life has been hell, Kyle. And you wouldn’t understand. You can’t understand. So just go home and leave me alone.”

Kyle’s face hardens, so unlike the scared and timid expressions I see him with in the halls at school. I watch in shock as he steps up to the dam’s edge, too.

“If you’re going to do it, then I’ll do it too.”

I almost laugh. “C’mon, don’t be an idiot. You’ve got a lot to live for.”

“Like what?” He snarls. “You don’t know about me, either.”

“You’re right. I don’t. We don’t even talk at school. But you saw me writing the note, and decided I was worth coming out to this dam for.” I scoff. “Don’t tell me - you have a crush on me.”

He’s quiet, suddenly the timid boy I’m used to.

“I thought so,” My own voice is so cold, but I can’t stop it. It’s like I’m watching myself say it all from a third perspective, outside my body. “You’re pathetic.”

“I know!” He shouts, voice echoing in the cement hollows of the damn, his face flushed bright red. “I know I’m pathetic! I’m weak, and cowardly, and pathetic. So there’s no reason to keep living.”

I’m quiet. His tears are flowing freely, now, but he still stands upright on the dam, determined. Brave. His shoulders are shaking. For a second, I see myself in him. My anger softens, and I sit on the edge next to his legs.

“You’ve got the best GPA of all the Sophomores in the school,” I say.

“Yeah, like that means anything,” He scoffs tearily. “My Dad hates me. He wants me to die.”

“The library lady likes you,” I insist. “I like you. Liked you, past tense. You were quiet, never bothered me like everybody else. Then you had to ruin my last night on earth by showing up and shouting at me.”

He freezes, looking down at me. “Y-You…like me?”

“Not like, love, but you’re okay. You’re the only okay guy in the school, really. Everyone else is loud and annoying and obsessed with sex.”
And young girls who trust teachers blindly.

But I don’t say that. That’s a secret between me and the water, and it always will be.

Kyle sits hesitantly. I fish around in my pocket and hand him a crumpled tissue.

“Your nose is dripping.”

He frowns and wipes his nose with his face away from me, like he’s ashamed. We watch the city twinkle below us in utter silence. The wind blows through the trees, and for a moment I don’t feel like a tree. I did, standing on the edge. I was still and quiet and ready on the edge. But then Kyle had to interrupt, and make me talk. Make me react. Make me angry. I’m not a tree now that he’s shown up. He stopped me from bending. I had to stand up straight to defend myself against him.

Kyle cares. Kyle took a bus from Georgeton to Bellsview - an hour both ways - to get to me. Kyle doesn’t speak unless spoken to, stutters, and doesn’t have any friends. He flinches during PE at every thrown dodgeball and started crying when we watched Titanic in class (skipping over the love scene, of course). He’s the butt of every joke by the varsity basketball team, and he’s never had the guts to tell them off.

But he came here. He summoned up courage from somewhere inside him and came to stop me.

Something in me comes back. Something that’s been missing for months comes back as we sit on the dam and watch the night move without us. It’s soft, and gentle, and settles over the gaping wound in my heart I’ve been nursing for months. It doesn’t heal it instantly, but it cools the raging fire of the burn that man inflicted on me. I watch Kyle’s face as he stares at the distant lights, enraptured, thinking deeply on his own problems, or my problems, or both.

“It’s not gonna stop hurting,” He says suddenly. His voice is creaky like all pubescent boys’ are, but the words carry weight. “Whatever happened to you, it won’t stop hurting. But it’ll hurt less, someday. And less and less as time goes on. If you can hold on -”

Kyle looks to me, dark brown eyes clear, if watery with the last remnants of tears.

“If you can hold on just a little longer, I can promise you it’ll get better. Just hold on for a few more months. And if it doesn’t get better, you can, I don’t know. You can punch me. Beat me up. Whatever you want. Just don’t do it. Not yet.”

I thought I’d cried all the tears I had left months ago. I thought I was dry, numb, frozen. But his words, so innocent and hopeful, break me. The tears start, and I bury my head in my hands and weep for the first time in what feels like forever.

***

I hold on for two months, like I promised Kyle. And he was right.

It gets better.

We eat lunch everyday. He invites me over to play videogames. People make up rumors, and give me shit for ‘dating’ a ‘short loser’.

We ignore every single one of them.

But I can’t ignore Mr. Dowell. Not while he still roams the campus, looking at me like a crocodile does a deer.

It gets better, but only barely. Mom finally decides a move is best. A new high school, a new start. I can’t not agree with her. I’d do anything to get away from this school.

But I leave Kyle behind.

I promise him I’ll email, facebook, but life drowns those promises in new friends and new classes and applying for college and trying to forget the darkness and before I know it, I’m graduating.

TWO

FOUR YEARS LATER

There’s one rule I’ve set for myself in life, and it’s this; Sex is all guys want.

At nineteen, I understand it’s a little jaded of me to think like that. But it’s how the world works. People can deny it, romance movies can try to disprove it, but I know the truth; men are single-minded. Not that I blame them for that. It’s just obvious in the way they move, the way they look at you, the way they talk about you or to you. ‘That girl’s so hot!’ or, ‘did you tap that, dude’? It’s always something along these lines, and tonight in this cheesy college bar, it’s no different. Guys line the walls and crowd the tables, eyeing every girl that walks in the smoky bar with the same hungry look. They don’t even try to hide it.

“Hello? Earth to Evelyn?”

A hand waves in front of my face, and I turn to my best friend and roommate, Trist. Her perfect pout and angelic blonde hair are getting more of the hungry looks than usual, and her bright blue mini-dress has them practically frothing when she stands up to use the bathroom or order drinks.

“Sorry,” I say. “I was thinking.”

“See, that’s your problem,” Trist giggles. “Too much thinking, not enough doing. Well, that’s not true - you do plenty of homework and shit, but that’s not the sort of doing I’m talking about.”

She winks at me exaggeratedly. I roll my eyes.

“Trist, please.”

“Oh, come on! Can’t you let your hair down just once and live a little? That’s why I dragged you out tonight - you spend way too much time cooped up studying.”

“Unlike most people here,” I motion to the college students around us. “I care about my grades.” I point at Samantha, a sophomore in a black dress. “She’s slept through Biochem for months now.”

Trist shrugs. “Well it’s not like the kids here need to study, or anything. It’s Montcrest University - most of them are going straight to jobs in their dad’s corporations once they graduate. College is really just a formality for them.”

“And a way to kill time with a lot of booze.”

“And sex!” She chimes in. “Speaking of sex…”

She trails off and I follow her baby-blue gaze to a couple kissing against the wall. The girl is a flaming red-head with soft curls down to her back, dressed in a tiny white skirt and tank top. She’s the prettiest girl in the room by far. Everyone’s been looking at her - male or female. She’s just got that Irish-y gorgeous look. The guy she’s kissing is lean and tall, with tousled dark hair and a leather jacket like some Breakfast Club wannabe. But he’s much better looking than anyone in that movie; his lips are full, his nose proud and romanesque, his eyelashes longer and darker than any girl’s. They kiss with fierce passion, raw sexuality dripping from their every caress. They’re so good-looking it’s like watching an ad for fancy perfume or something. Why are they even here, in this tiny Connecticut town? They should be in New York, or LA - somewhere a lot more glamorous.

I realize I’ve been staring at them too long only when the guy’s eyes catch mine. My heart nearly stops, but not because they’re so beautifully blue or any sappy bullshit like that. His eyes are just two different colors - one a bright, clear green, the other a rich brown. I read about this in biology - complete heterochromia.