Chapter 1

I often wondered if there was a god. A sort of thing that controlled everything, watched over all of us, and then determined if we were worthy of eternal happiness. What did that even mean? "Eternal happiness" was always such a vague phrase that meant nothing to me. Happiness with no sorrow would not be happiness. There was nothing to distinguish it in such a way. But no one sticks around for these types of questions on whether or not happiness could really be considered happiness if there was no anguish or pain. Eternal happiness, at least on paper, is enough to draw people in.

My hands quiver whenever I write. I'm often marked down on exams for my terrible handwriting. But my tremors are common all the time. I just happen to have it worse when I try to write. Typing is always easier. I don't have to worry about whether or not my writing is legible because it's always in the same pristine stamp as it hits the parchment. It's a simple issue that can be explained away, maybe even forgotten about on better days.

No one can really forget things done by the mentally disturbed. There's something about the strange and unfamiliar that remains in the minds of the mentally sound. They can still sleep easy at night, but you can never seem to forget the demeanor of that mentally ill man you saw on the street on your way home from work that day. I suppose it's only natural that humans are drawn to strange things anyway. The average middle-class white person doesn't have to worry about much---often blessed with the privilege of comfort and money from early on. Romanticizing or obsessing over things like this is common. If god is real, it has quite the twisted sense of who to give such a privilege to.

God bless the privileged, right? That's what my mother always says. My mother, whose name is Dahlia, had her life planned out for her from the day she was born. A trust fund girl, whose husband was delivered to her practically on a silver platter. I don't know much about my father, Jared, just that he's an average office worker with an average and uninteresting upbringing. Right, no wonder they ended up together.

My sister isn't much different from my mother. With a name like Daisy, how could she be? But even with such an adorable name that any old woman would smile at, I wouldn't describe Daisy as anything other than a menace who was meant to be another copy of Dahlia when she grew up. Not that I really cared all that much about what would happen to her. It was simply an observation I carried with me as I watched her grow up.

That brings it all back to me. Who am I? I'm not entirely sure myself. My identity was scattered in fragments long before I was born and I've been left to pick up the pieces. Quite unfair, if you were to ever ask me. I'm sure that any passerby would see me as just an empty husk, drifting along, and I doubt they'd be too far off. With no idea of what I even wanted to do with my life, or even a semblance of my place in the world, I could be just exactly that, a quiet observer. But not exactly. I don't exactly pride myself on my observation skills and the way my brain works, but I'm at the very least more aware than most people would think. Though I'm often not taken seriously. What kind of normal person takes the word of the gloomy kid with shaky hands and a bottle of pills sitting in the front pocket of his backpack?

My name is Jay. Short for Jayden. Not my idea, but it works well enough anyway. Dahlia spoke obsessively of blue jays, and I assumed that was where she got my name from. More creative than most, if I'm being honest. If I were unlucky like half the boys at my school, I'd be walking around with my dad's shitty name.

I was idly working all of this over in my mind when the blonde-haired girl sitting next to me jabbed me in the shoulder roughly with her index finger. This was Hannah Taylor, my so-called girlfriend. She asked me out at the school's fall festival by a dare from her friends, and not expecting to be answered with a cautious yes, she'd been reluctantly sitting through this relationship with me. We hardly ever looked at each other, despite sitting together at lunch every day and walking home together after school. The only times we went out was when she was with her other friends and the only time we kissed was to prove to her friends that we were actually dating. The kiss lacked anything resembling feeling, and she tasted like stale sweetness mixed with the dryness of a saltine cracker. Still, sitting with her shitty friends and them being forced to put up with me exempt me from the general harassment I often had to deal with.

I looked up at Hannah, her blue eyes stark and more grounding than anything ever would be. "What?" I asked in a low, exhausted tone.

"Darren wants us to go out to a movie on Friday. I asked if you wanted to come."

I pulled a hand through my hair with a sigh. "That's all we ever do."

"Well, what would you suggest?" Darren asked from across the table. He was a friend of Hannah's, not someone I knew particularly well, but someone I was familiar with enough. The day before Hannah asked me out, he flushed all of my medication down the school toilet and ripped up my sketchbooks before telling me to suck a dick. He probably left me alone after Hannah announced we were together in order to stay on her good side.

I rubbed my eyes. "I don't know. If we wanted to watch movies we could just stay home and watch a bunch of video tapes."

"That doesn't sound so bad," Hannah said. "We could all come over to my place on Friday. My parents will be out of town, so the house will be ours."

This caught Darren's attention. "What, like a party?"

Hannah shook her head. "No, not for the life of me. I don't know how I'd even be able to get away with it, my sisters are such snitches." She leaned her chin on her hands. "I'll invite Lucas and Nancy as well. How's that sound?"

Darren rubbed his head. "Come on, not Lucas. He's so dorky."

"Relax," Hannah said. "He's Nancy's boyfriend, we ought to be polite." He crossed his arms in quiet defiance just as the school bell rang. Hannah turned to me as she picked up her lunch tray and slung her messenger bag over her shoulder. "I'll see you in the courtyard after school."

I nodded. "Yeah. See you then."

When Hannah was gone, Darren paused to look at me, with complete and utter distaste in his eyes. He didn't say anything, for his eyes said everything he was thinking. "See you later," he muttered. I watched him leave before sighing and picking myself up. There was just one more class today, and then I would get to go home.

I made my way through the crowded hallways and to my English classroom. It wasn't uncommon for people to stare at me as I stepped through them, the floorboards making not one noise as I walked, as though I were a ghost. I sat down near the back at a table, and crossed my legs in the seat. The table I had all to myself, as there was an odd number of people in my English class and no one wanted to sit next to me. That was fine, I didn't care all that much. As long as they didn't bother me.

I set my sketchbook on the desk and quietly began sketching as the last of the students filed into the classroom. To say I had an obsession with eyes would be an understatement. Always looking and watching, eyes were more than just a window to the soul. The ultimate bearer of knowledge, there is no way one could live without them. At least that's what I always thought. Blind one who's never been blind before, and they will suffer in agony for a while. God bless the privileged but not the blind.

"Alright class, we've got a new student joining us today. She's joining in the middle of the semester, so I hope you all will help her get up to speed with what we've been studying." The teacher, Harold Buckman---or Mr. Buckman, if you wanted to be polite---introduced a girl I hadn't ever seen before. Harold was not unlike what you'd expect in an English teacher. He was probably a bit older than our parents and still didn't know how to talk to teenagers without sounding either pretentious or patronizing. But at least he was trying a bit more than the other teachers would bother to. That's what I noticed the most.

"Hi," the girl said in a voice that was softer than I expected. "My name is Avery. I'm from New York. It's nice to meet you all." Her perfectly straight dark black hair draped over her shoulders, with a side sweep of bangs over the right side of her face. She was perfectly put together, wearing the uniformed blazer and button up, with the tie tied neatly at her collar. The pleated skirt seemed newly bought, and it probably was. And to top it off, the white knee-high socks and her buckled shoes shone against the light pouring in through the window.

"You can sit next to Jay," Harold said, gesturing to my desk. It was at that moment that I realized I was staring and I quickly pulled my eyes away and looked out the window.

I listened to Avery's cautious, hesitant footsteps as the old floorboards creaked underneath her feet and she pulled the chair back away from the desk with a quiet scrape. She sat down, and put her bag on the desk with a quiet thud. Trying to ignore her, I picked up my pencil and continued scribbling in my sketchbook as Harold started the lesson. But she wouldn't let me ignore her for very long.

"Your name is Jay, right?" She spoke to me in a quiet voice.

I looked at her out of the corner of my eye and nodded. "Yes."

"Why are you sitting like that?"

"Because it's comfortable," I muttered. "Why do you sit like that?"

Avery glanced over herself instinctively and smiled slightly. "Right, because it's comfortable."

I nodded again and turned to look out the window at the field. It was empty during the afternoon classes; gym was held during the morning and sports were held in the afternoon after school was let out. The piercing golden sunlight of the afternoon shone through the window in such a way I hated. Even as autumn had progressed as it did, sunny days still persisted. The gloomy days were more bearable, though I hated daylight altogether. And there, a murder of crows gathered in a bare tree.

Avery leaned over to take a closer look at my sketchbook. "What are you drawing?"

"Eyes," I sighed. "Eyes dying, being ruptured, stabbed, conjunctivitis."

She frowned slightly. "Why?"

I shrugged. "Blindness fascinates me."

"You know, my father went blind," she said. "In Vietnam. He says the last thing he ever saw was his troop running for their lives, and he keeps seeing them in his dreams. Like the image is burned to the inside of his eyelids." Avery leaned her head on the table. "No shrink could help him get over that. It's not like this country did much for veterans anyway."

"A man who could see at once loses his vision and suffers for as long as he must live." I scribbled down some words on my drawing and ripped the page out of my sketchbook and held it out to Avery. "Sorry about what happened to him."

She took it from my hand. "You're...you're letting me keep it?"

"Sure. I can take it back if you don't want it."

She shook her head quickly. "No, no, I'll take it. Thank you."

"Tell your father I said hi. And that I'd like to meet him some time."

Avery smiled. "Sure thing."

When class was over, signaled by the ring of a bell, I remained in my seat for a few minutes, watching the crows congregate under the bare trees and the dying grass littered with orange leaves. There was something about them that kept me from pulling my eyes away. They looked normal enough, but something felt just a little off.

"Hey, you wanna go hang out?" Avery asked as she stood up with her bag. "A new cafe opened nearby, if you're into that sort of thing."

I quietly stood up and shoved my things into my bag. "I'm walking home with Hannah Taylor today."

"Hannah...Hannah Taylor? That blonde girl from my gym class?"

"Yes." I pulled my backpack over my shoulders and looked at Avery. "She's my girlfriend."

"Oh." Though I could tell she was trying to avoid being obvious, her shoulders still evidently slumped in disappointment and her eyes fell away from mine. "Alright. That's fine. Hannah's...fine." Without saying anything else, she turned and left the room briskly.

Not many people really liked Hannah. She was nice to her friends, and no one else. Anyone else was free entertainment, according to her. Based on Avery's reaction, I supposed that her run in with Hannah was not a very pleasant one. And I wondered if that affected her view of me.

I met Hannah waiting in the courtyard alongside Nancy. Nancy did not like me. She was one of the girls that dared Hannah to ask me out in the first place, and I'm wondering if she assumed that I would say no when she did. All in all, I found it entertaining that her plan backfired and she was forced to put up with me. The way she stared at me without saying anything whenever I was around, and even sometimes insulted me to my face when Hannah wasn't looking. It never failed to make me smile. Her hair was short, cut to bob above her shoulders. She always wore hair clips with bows on them, often of varying colors. Today was a soft purple with white polka dots in the center. Her amber eyes were trained on me as I approached, and then came her signature stare laced with disdain. As she turned slightly away from me, the silver crucifix around her neck glinted in the daylight.

"Hey Hannah," I said, pausing next to the two of them. "You ready to go?"

She nodded. "Yeah, sure." Waving to Nancy, she said, "I'll call you tonight."

Nancy waved back. "Talk to you later."

I walked next to Hannah as we descended the staircase from the school campus to the sidewalk. We walked in silence through the quiet neighborhood, as the last few autumn leaves still fell from the trees. It would snow soon, I knew that from the weather report on the television. The day it snowed would be nice, at least for me. I loved the cold and I loved the way snow blanketed over the bare trees under a blank sky. It made things feel that much more quiet.

Hannah stopped suddenly as we were passing the park and pointed to a group of crows gathered by the park benches. "Hey look! There's some crows. Do you have anything to feed them?" With an exasperated sigh, I dug a half eaten bag of corn chips from my bag and handed it off to Hannah. She took it and eagerly pulled out some small pieces and tossed them in the direction of the crows. They hopped forward and picked up the chips in their beaks, eating them happily.

"Look at how cute they are!" she said with a smile. "I bet they're super soft too. I wish I could pet one."

One of the crows did not move like the others. It was still, observant, and seemed out of place, and then I realized it was staring at me. Eyes that looked different from any other crow I'd seen, red and burning and accusing as its gaze bore into me. Maybe I was just imagining it, but that feeling did not feel imagined.

"Do you think they're cute?" Hannah asked, looking up at me.

"No," I sighed. "I don't like crows."

She handed the chip bag back over to me. "Why not?"

Tucking the chips back into my backpack, "I just don't. C'mon."

We continued along, but I couldn't shake the feeling that that crow gave me. In fact, I found myself glancing back frequently to see if it was following us. I'd heard about that sort of thing before: crows recognize faces, they have the capacity to hold grudges against people. But I hadn't done anything to the crows, so there wouldn't even be a reason for it. As much as the logical side of my brain wanted to convince me that there was no way a crow would deliberately follow me, the paranoia still ate its way to the surface. A kind of paranoia that I hadn't felt before.

"What do you think of that new girl?" I asked, partially to distract myself and partially because I was genuinely curious. "Her name's Avery."

"Avery Morrison?" she said, turning back over to me. "She's super weird. We had gym together, and in the locker room, I saw that she had a bunch of scars on her arms. When I asked where they were from, she wouldn't tell me. I don't get what the big deal is."

"I see."

"Why do you ask?"

"Just wondering."

We stopped by Hannah's house and she turned to head up her porch. "I want to go to the music store tomorrow after school. Hole released a new album and I want the record. Plus it's my brother's birthday soon and I have to get him something."

"Fine. See you tomorrow."

She headed inside, and I continued down the street alone.

So Avery has scars on her arms.

My parents and Daisy were home by the time I arrived. Our house didn't look any different from the others. That same grayish pastel coloring and the same stone steps leading up to the front door. Just inside, there was the staircase to the second story and two doorways on either side. One leading to the living room, and the other leading to the kitchen and dining room. Next to the staircase, there was a hallway which had the door to the basement and led to the door to Jared's study.

"Is that you, Jayden?" Dahlia called from the kitchen.

"Yes." I locked the door as I stepped inside, pushing my shoes off.

"How was your day?"

I hung up my coat on the rack by the door. "Same as always." I peered into the kitchen, where she was cooking something smelling of beef and onions. Anyway, can I get some money?"

She looked up at me from the stove. "What do you need money for, dear?"

"I'm taking Hannah to the music store tomorrow. I need some pocket cash."

"Oh, Hannah. That's your girlfriend, right?" Her bright green eyes were alight with a kind of happiness I couldn't understand. Her hair was bright blonde, curled tightly with a curling iron and tied neatly behind her head in a ponytail. How she managed to preserve her youth, I could never tell. It was probably a combination of layers of makeup and the way she dressed. All point to signs of someone who feared age, and in turn, feared death.

"Why is she still dating you?" Daisy's voice came from nowhere as she was suddenly walking down the stairs, already in her pajamas. "You're such a freakazoid." Her hair was just like Dahlia's, but straight and short. She had my father's eyes, though, dark and a contrast to her almost friendly design. Her pajamas were plaid pink and light purple, which was about what I'd expect. Daisy's ugly, almost insufferable high-pitched voice was always tinged with menace when speaking to me.

Dahlia looked up with a frown and pointed her spatula in Daisy's direction. "Don't say things like that to your brother, Daisy. It's not nice."

"Why not? I'm only telling the truth, Mommy."

"You know what I always say: if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."

"Sorry, Mommy," Daisy said with a twinkle in her eyes.

"It's alright dear."

I kept myself from glaring at both of them, and instead turned to walk upstairs.

"Remember to take your medication, Jayden!" Dahlia called after me.

"I know," I snapped. "Just shut up." Before I could hear her response, I hurried up the stairs and into my bedroom. The door fell shut behind me with a satisfying click and I sighed with relief as I leaned against my door, sliding to the floor in the dark.

My bedroom was not remarkable in any way. A desk sat underneath the window covered with black out curtains and my bed was dressed with white sheets. My parents wanted me to have white sheets, for a reason I never knew. They refused to tell me, so I stopped asking. I could do with white bedding, though, it was always easier to clean. I threw my curtains open to the gray evening as the sky was starting to grow dark, allowing the natural light to pour in through the windows. I leaned over my desk, looking out at the neighbor's house and backyard. No one was outside right now, and oftentimes watching the neighbor do yard work was the only entertainment I got when I was holed up in my room on the weekends. A tree, orange and red leaves clinging to its nearly bare branches stretched out in front of the window. As I flipped open the lock, aching to let some fresh air into my suffocating room, a crow landed on the branch. I stopped where I was, irritated at the presence of the bird. Pushing the lock back into its place, I figured I may as well deal with the shut window. So I pushed my curtains closed once again and collapsed onto my bed, wishing the world away as my aching body sank into the sheets. But I was unable to fall asleep, and so I laid there in the dark, staring at my bookshelf.

It was when I was finally starting to drift away that I was jolted awake by the sound of knocking on my bedroom door. With great annoyance, I sat up in my bed and said, "Come in." The door opened, the hallway light breaching the darkness and shining over to my bed. It was Dahlia, with a plate of food and a glass of water.

"It's dinnertime," she said simply, attempting a friendly smile.

"Leave it on my desk," I muttered, pulling my knees up to my chest and resting my arms on them.

"It's quite dark in here," she commented, turning on my desk lamp. She set the plate and glass on my desk and slowly ran her hand over the drawings left on my desk. "Have you talked...have you talked to Dr. Kelley about these drawings, Jayden?"

"Why should I?"

Dahlia sighed. "I wish you'd come and eat with us more often." She looked up at me with that specific kind of concern glistening in her eyes---it was the kind of look that only oblivious mothers who held pity but not understanding for their children held. And it was the kind of look that I detested.

"Do you, now?"

She frowned slightly. "Yes, of course. I'd love to spend more time with you, but you're always alone in your room or out late."

I sighed. "You've got Daisy. You can spend all the time you'd like with her." Without waiting for her to reply, I turned away. "Now go away, I'm busy."

"Jayden---"

"Fuck off," I snapped.

A dramatic gasp of hurt escaped her throat and I almost could've laughed at her reaction. She slowly walked out the room and shut the door behind her without saying anything else. I leaned over my bed and grabbed the plate of food left behind, and ate quietly while considering Avery Morrison in my mind.