The taste of iron was not to be
ignored. Maybe it was because of the cold that had swept through the city
around those days, the fact was that the gun tasted like pure iron and the
taste was enough for Felicia to pull it out of her mouth and put it back on the
wooden box her mother kept it in case robbers or someone broke into the house.
Felicia’s eyes were flooding with tears, so she ran to the hallway bathroom and
thoroughly washed her face, trying to eliminate her feeling while doing it.
She looked at her own eyes and
nose and skin once she was done but everything she had been feeling was still
there: her insecurities and self-hatred had not left her body just because she
had taste the iron that made up a gun. She did feel a little bit less agitated and
her mind seemed clearer, as if she had put on glasses or something. She dried
up her face with a small towel, taking her time to appreciate its smell and
texture. It felt as if she had never used her senses until that day.
Felicia then walked to her room
again and closed the door. She didn’t lock it though, because it didn’t really
seem necessary anymore. She had dropped the whole idea of killing herself, only
because of the taste of the gun. But it wasn’t only that, it was also the fact
that she wasn’t really sure about what she was going to do. After all, Felicia
was still a very young woman and had a whole life before her. Something inside
of her told her to wait a little bit longer, to hold on for a while.
The young woman was in high
school and, as with most kids there, she had started feeling anxious when she
discovered how things had change from one grade to the other. Now, all the
girls in her classroom and age would be trying makeup away from teachers,
drinking alcohol, smoking marihuana and even talking about their sexual
experiences. Felicia, at first, thought it was all about a little group of
girls that had changed in the blink of an eye but then she realized it had
affected every single person her age.
She used to enjoy talking to her
friends about the shows she liked, many animated programs among them, and about
some games and silly things that they liked because, after all, they were still
children. Maybe not like her brother Thomas who was eleven years old, but kids
anyway. They couldn’t legally drink or vote and they were still in high school
trying to decipher math problems and having homework. The shift that she had
witnessed seemed rushed and unexplainable but she soon learned she had to adapt
soon to this new state of things.
Felicia realized this when she
started being harassed by some girls in school because of her weight. She had
always been a little bit bigger than most girls but no one had ever said
anything hurtful to her because of that. Now, things had changed dramatically:
some people outwardly said to her how fat she was and that she looked like a
pig or a boar. Sometimes it would be in a low register on the school corridors
but some other times it would be right to her face, as if they wanted to see
how she responded.
She always walked on, deciding
not to engage in any sort of fight. But as the school year went on, it was more
and more difficult to resist. She tried to remember what she liked about school
and so she decided to spend a little more time in the library. Her best friends
were sadly not there for her at the moment because one of them had left for a
neighboring city and the other one had just stopped talking to her out of the
blue. It was probably the worst part of the whole deal.
Anna had been her best friend
since they were toddlers. They had been in each other’s houses and their
parents knew each other very well. They had celebrated birthdays together, as
well as spending some holidays in the same place whether it was Disneyland or a
cabin in the woods. They loved to go shopping together and make fun of
everything and everyone, along with their mutual friend Jeff. They were
basically sisters for more than fourteen years and now all of that had
disappeared for no apparent reason.
They had not talked over the
summer because Anna had left for a long trip with her parents and she never
contacted Felicia after she had arrived. Felicia didn’t think much of it but
she quickly realized in school that everything had changed between them. She
had tried to come close to chat for a while but it was obvious Anna had no
desire to interact with her. So Felicia stopped trying and the relationship
died a sad and unexpected death pretty soon. It was devastating for Felicia.
She even called Jeff to tell him about it and he was kind enough to hear
about all of it but the thing was that Jeff had some problems of his own. His
parents were divorcing and it wasn’t clear what was going to happen with him
after that. He had told his parents he wanted to go back to were he had friends
and family but his parents didn’t seem to care a lot about what he had to say.
They were too busy accusing each other of something, so Jeff couldn’t really be
there for Felicia in any way. He just asked her if she was okay and that’s when
she realized she wasn’t.
After that phone call, it was the
first time Felicia realized that she didn’t really feel great about the whole
situation happening around her. After all, she started feeling alone and
without friends, something a young person is sometimes unable to handle, as it
is a necessity for them to be social and able to talk to someone if they need
help or advice, and sometimes that comes from people their age who have
information they personally don’t have. It’s something they need Felicia
realize she didn’t have anymore.
Her parents were another
problems. They had recently begun showing signs of a certain distance forming
between them. There were no family weekends anymore. Mom stayed at home while
Dad went away to fish or be with his friends. And when her mom went out with
her friends, Dad stayed around to be with the kids. It was nice and all for a
while, but Felicia soon realized it wasn’t very normal for parents to simple
not talk a lot to each other. She wondered if a divorce was looming.
So the bullying at school, which
got increasingly worse, her lack of friends and the tension at home, had all
been enough for Felicia to take advantage of none of her parents being at home
to get into their room and grab the gun, to the point she had it in her mouth.
After she went back to her room, she started crying and she didn’t really knew
why. Maybe it was because she felt weak or maybe it was because she felt very
alone. It was then when she heard the door and it was her little brother.
He had arrived from being with a
friend and Felicia could hear him throwing his backpack and turning on the TV.
Without thinking, she opened the door and walked to his room. He was watching
cartoons and looked at her on the door when she appeared. Felicia tried to seem
calm and just wanting to hang out for a bit but Thomas was no fool. It is a
common mistake to think youth means ignorance when it’s nothing of the sort. He
realized soon something was wrong but didn’t ask outright.
Brother and sister spent a good
chunk of the afternoon watching cartoons and sharing appreciations about them.
Then, they grabbed cookies and milk and also some ice cream and ate it all just
before their parents came back home. They didn’t look as happy as them.
But all of that didn’t matter
because Felicia realized she still had people around who she could trust and
also that she had to take care for. The world was not going to end. She was
going to face the tide with the weapons she had at hand and promised herself to
survive the whole messy thing that is adolescence.
