We fell asleep after shooting up like we always do. I remember watching her eyes slowly force themselves shut in unison with the needle as it emptied into her arm, and then we were asleep. When I woke up, I was sitting on the floor with my head resting against the couch. Juliet was lying on her side, sprawled out across the couch, her right arm limp and hanging off the side. A dried trail of blood accessorized her arm from where the needle had pierced her skin.
I lifted myself using the coffee table for support and sat by Juliet’s feet on the couch. Brushing her hair from her face, I tucked her golden strands behind her ear, snagging her most recent piercing. She was breathtaking. She wasn’t waking up. High and confused, I put my ear to her chest and listened for a heartbeat. I couldn’t make out the difference between the sound of the refrigerator running in the kitchen and the grandfather clock clicking in the hallway, let alone the sound of her heartbeat. I checked for a pulse, and when I didn’t feel anything, my immediate assumption was not that I missed it. Frantic, I tried her other wrist anyway, and her neck, and the other side of her neck, then I put my finger under her nose to feel for breaths. But there wasn’t anything. There was nothing to feel. No breath. No pulse. No heartbeat. No life. Just the body of Juliet, now empty as everyone assumes when they see someone as pretty as her. They only see her body; they never see her person. Saw. They never saw her person.
Now these fake assholes are here, crying. Real tears, like they’re sad. As if they even knew her. Maybe they are sad. But they aren’t sad because Juliet died. They’re sad because they have to attend extra drug classes in school. They have to walk by posters daily with gay quotes like “Pet pugs, don’t do drugs!” and shit like that. They’re tragedy whores. ‘Oh Juliet was in my chemistry class, one time she sneezed and I said God bless you.’ I bet you’re really broken up. Her sneeze was cute, sure, but not worth crying over. What about the way she sat in class? How she wouldn’t speak a word, her participation grade was shit. But if you looked at her notebook, it was mesmerizing. My personal favorite is, ‘She was so beautiful, what a shame’. It’s funny because even though she’s dead, they don’t see the tragedy in her beauty. She was beautiful, and I loved her, but neither of those things meant that she would amount to anything. So I don’t really see where the real “shame” of it is.
Her beauty wasn’t going to get her anywhere. Beauty doesn’t get you anywhere that you want to be. She’d end up in the bed of a frat boy. Not as much as a drink deep, but unconscious nonetheless. She’d wake up the next morning scrambling to find her underwear, walking out of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon house with one shoe, frantic and wondering but really knowing why she was so goddamn sore down there.
Or maybe she would have ended up pregnant at 17. She wouldn’t graduate high school because she fell in love with a fuck up. But she also wouldn’t have the baby. She wanted it; she wanted to give her baby girl a good life, a better life than the one she had. But she couldn’t give it up. She couldn’t give up the one pain that numbed her pain. She wanted to, but she’d shoot up, and eventually, the fetus just couldn’t take anymore. Juliet would be holding the cold corpse of what looked like our child. But that tiny little human would be empty, beautiful, and empty.
Her story doesn’t end well no matter how you play it out. I loved her, but now she’s gone. She was my driving force. She was my reason to get up in the morning. Her laugh, her smile, the way she could make everything feel joyous. But with or without her, I’ll never amount to anything. I’ll be that frat boy. I’ll be that fuck up. Instead of letting my own tragedy play out, I think we can draw the curtain here. ‘What a shame’. Scene.
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