During those six years Veda went missing, something I didn't expect happened. That ticking, pulsating feeling I get whenever I'm close to Veda never faded.
After the morning she disappeared, that sense that she was close by became my new normal. Everywhere I went, I constantly had that feeling that if I turned my head just a little, she’d be there. It would be like nothing ever happened. Every day for six whole years, I woke up believing that surely today she’ll return to me. We’d forget that night ever happened and just go back to being ourselves, and as long as that tick-tick-ticking continued its song, I knew she wasn’t dead. I knew Veda was close by, and on the night she returned to me, I didn’t cheer, I didn’t cry. All I did was breathe, exhaling the same breath I kept in all those six years.
I dreamed of her. I don't retain many dreams, but almost every time I did, memories of Veda polluted my subconscious. Twisted, distorted parts of us danced and taunted me. Some nights, I woke up crying, sometimes I woke up screaming like someone poured bleach into my head, letting it seep into my brain. This cycle of self-trauma possessed me for years, until the night it reached its blood-curdling climax, and then I never dreamed of Veda again.
I remember returning to our old dorm room, everything placed back where it was. I don't remember cleaning after Veda disappeared, only convincing my sister to drive out to grab my stuff for me. I'd spent the day searching. The more time goes by, the more stupid I feel. I know I must look crazy searching for a girl I met back then, now well into my adulthood. I pick her necklace from the ground, and I let all those feelings unspool from my head.
I only took Veda's necklace from that room before running away myself, or maybe hiding is more accurate? From what, I couldn't tell you. Even now, I don't think I could bear knowing what happened to Veda, where she was. Her necklace was all I could think of taking before leaving that part of myself behind. But here it was, lying exactly where it laid the first time.
When I grabbed it, something under the floor boards grabbed back at me. While I tugged at it, fighting to keep my hold, tbe floor screamed at me. It sounded strained and pleading. After that came the heavy banging from the other side of the floor, louder and louder until finally the chain came up with one of the boards. Then everything hushed silent.
The black trash bag didn't move and I didn't dare touch it. Suddenly, that stupid feeling returned as panic seeped in. I stepped back to notice the window flung open. I started to run, but something locked me in. I kicked the door as hard as I could, but it didn't give. I banged and pulled and pleaded for the door to open until something ran its fingers up the small of my back. I turned just enough to catch the way Veda’s detached jaw hung open, though only for a second. Just as fast, her hand palmed the back of my skull and buried my face into the door. She held me there and tightened her grip on my waist. I tried forcing myself from her, but I couldn't move.
All I could do was scream.
When I did, she joined me.
When I finally woke up, I still couldn't move. I thrashed and pulled, only looking up too find Veda sitting on my chest, glaring down at me.
All of her weight on my chest stopped me from breathing.
Dirt and dried blood caked her skin and clothes. Her hair matted down into her face as she looked down. When I finally screamed her name, she turned her head, confused, before sitting up and repeating it.
“Veda,” she said. “Veda.”
Veda refused to speak the rest of the night. No matter what question I threw into her lap, all she did was stare. Her body stayed completely still while I cleaned her off, and when I laid her in my bed, she acted as if I wasn’t even there.
“Hey, Veedie?”
I put as much space between us as I could, my hands in nervous fists.
“I don’t know what happened but…” Her eyes waited on every word I spoke. “I’m sorry, okay?”
Tick. Tick. Tick.
I couldn’t look back anymore. I could barely breathe. In my silence, my mind wanders back to that familiar place. As I watch Veda laid back in my bed, her big questioning eyes searching at me for something, the memory of Veda nursing me to sleep tugs at me until all I can hear is TICK TICK TICK.
“It's just…”
I searched for the courage to speak as Veda sat up to move closer. Every version of my truth sounded like a train wreck whenever it previewed in my head.
I played with the string of my night shorts, the heat of her against me becoming too much. “I'm just glad you're okay,” I said, feeling defeated.
When I looked up, I noticed Veda's face staring inches away from mine, blinking the same curious look.
“Do you think we can start over?”
All she did in response was move closer. When I let out a gasp, I realized I forgot to breathe. I backed onto the floor to make space.
“Veedie?”
She tilted her head again, like a dog given a command it didn't understand, then joined me on the carpet.
“Look! I just need to say something first.” I pushed my hands to make more distance. Veda obeyed and waited. “Veda, I'm sorry I never told you.”
“Veda,” she repeated again.
“I know it’s been six years but—but I shouldn't have taken advantage of you. I'm…”
Veda started crawling over again, carrying herself very gently. Once again, I felt her breath against mine.
“Veeds?”
When she kissed me, she kissed me like I'd run off. Her soft, gentle lips carefully held me in place. Then as the ticking softened in my ears and my heart slowed, something else came to mind, the eerie thought that I'd been here before. It's the realization that tragedy may repeat itself before you notice it's already over, like the final chapter of a book you've read too fast.
By the time I finally got her back in bed, I moved my stuff to the couch for the night. Every few hours, I'd look back to see Veda upright in bed, staring back at me. The same inquisitive look painted on her face like a china doll, never speaking a word other than to repeat her own name.
I spent the rest of the night turned over, pretending to sleep and too afraid to look. As Veda’s kiss ate away at me, I counted the footsteps from behind me until sunrise. I thought back to waking up to her laying on my chest, trying to figure out how Veda even knew where I lived.
Although Gwen was my favorite, I always routed for Owen, just cause of his vibe alone. He didn't have a single toxic bone in his body. Dude just wanted to party with everyone :3
I never grieve for someone twice. As I help my girlfriend shower the blood and dirt from her body, I refuse to worry. I refuse to waste precious brain power wondering where she’s been. By the time our lives go back to normal, not once do I ask what happened. I think a tiny inkling of myself knew it was temporary. Of course, everything in Veda’s life was temporary.
I did enough worrying during those entire six years Veda went missing. Even now, I could think back to the night I lost Veda, and I could paint the whole college dorm in my head perfectly. The perfect storm of rummaged dressers and torn sheets, The window shattered and the doors wide open. I let that memory fester in my thoughts every day until she came back to me. I will never grieve for her again.
“I mourn her already,” Veda said.
Every Friday for almost three years, I spent cozied up next to Veda as we watched our favorite show.
“Yeah…” I said as I played with the many bracelets running up my arm. “I didn’t really get the ending.”
The first Friday after the show ended, I took Veda bar-hopping to celebrate, or to mourn as Veda put it.
“That’s ‘cause you have no imagination,” Veda said.
I turned my nose up in mock offense.
“Okay, that's not fair! Besides, she loses the fight AND her girlfriend. AND my patience. The whole thing was fucking dumb.”
Veda sat her chin onto the palms of her hands, watching me inhale my can of Surfside.
“It's called tragedy.”
“It's called contrived! And stupid!”
I match her mocking smile with my own and there's a beat where no one speaks. By the time I notice, my gut is on fire and I turn back to the bar.
From the moment I met Veda, every second I stood near her, my chest would pulse up my ears and throb into a steady ticking sensation. In the time I spent with her, my nerves resembled a clock ticking in repetitive circles. After the night she disappeared, I wondered if they were actually the timers of a bomb. I had wild nightmares at the fear that maybe Veda’s life always had the same ending already planned out.
I waved the bartender over and talked without looking. My prayers of the alcohol making my stomach settle seemed less and less feasible as the night danced on. For all the good it did, my head swam with the thick waves of the humid air and I began to feel myself drift off.
“Besides,” I said. “I have a very vivid imagination.”
My hands took hold of Veda’s in my last will of courage. The clock in my head ticked harder and louder, but I forced a brave face. I forced my face in her direction while I buried my nose into my can. Her other hand played with the gemstone necklace I never saw her without. I kept my courage and smiled back at her as she continued on with her rant about the final episode. Something about the tragedies of love and loss? I don't know, I couldn't pay attention. Still, the look on Veda's face didn't show any signs of noticing, despite the way her hands gently massaged mine in return. I could've lived with her in that ignorance forever. But God isn't as kind.
There were a lot of quirks about Veda which I don't think she ever noticed. I loved studying her expressions whenever she didn't realize I was looking, which was almost always. She bit her lip whenever I stressed her out, and the cute ways I’d catch her butchering American Idiot when she thought I couldn’t hear. Or in the way she let herself fall back into the crowd, and whenever she did, she skipped without thinking. Everything that made Veda Veda made me wonderfully nervous.
The walk home felt like dancing against her, even though I most likely stumbled all the way back to the dorms. My feet clumsily stomped forward to the ticking clock, and my mouth slurred the lyrics to Veda's playlist blaring from her phone speakers.
Time always felt too slow whenever I drank. I could never get myself to move, or act, or think at the pace I wanted to, and sometimes, I overcompensated without thinking. For what felt like an eternity, but most likely, was just a minute or two, I marched ahead of Veda without thinking. Her song grew quieter and quieter and the thumping in my chest lessened its grip. The clock was gone.
I began to cry. I don't know why, other than stupid typical drunken behavior, but without even knowing the ending of that night, I grieved losing this person. I grieved the three years of keeping my ticking heart all bottled up inside until it broke down on its own. I grieved the thought of never being able to fix that part of myself after the inevitable end of this relationship, no matter how the future would go. I spent those later six years overthinking that night, wondering if my heart knew something I didn't.
“Hey!”
Veda’s singsongy tone that she uses whenever I'm drunk and upset finally reached me while I tried wiping my stupid tears. I smiled back at her like a lost kid finding their mom at the store.
“Veda! Veedie! Veeds!” I sang.
“Jennie!” She sang back. Something about the way she only referred to me as Jennie whenever I teased her with Veedie, I could eat that feeling I'd get with a spoon. Or if I could freeze it and store it for later, I would savor it for as long as I could.
I trotted towards her as she approached me from behind.
“Is it that time of the night, huh?”
I wrapped my arms around her shoulders and my knees buckled into a hug, which fell into Veda helping me up by my waist.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Veda spent the rest of the walk home with her fingers wrapped into mine as my head perfectly fit onto her shoulder.
“You're like my bad kid,” She finally joked. “I feel like if I let you go, you're gonna run into traffic or something.”
“Yeah, but you love me!”
I felt her shoulder pulse as she chuckled dryly, and my legs went warm, that fluttering feeling nesting up into my stomach. There was another beat where no one spoke.
I finally broke the silence. A simple, “I'm sorry, Veedie,” was the single most sober thing I'd said all night.
“mmh.” Veda let the silence run a few moments longer as she chose her next few words carefully. “Jennie.”
She sighed and my head dipped with her shoulders. I let my body fall off of hers when we made it to our door.
“I'm just worried, ya’ know?” Her shoulders slumped down as she spent a minute playing with her keys.
I don't know why, but I searched for a way to assure her that of course I'm fine, but the stress of the day had drained my energy of saying anything else. Besides, by that point into the night, I couldn't form those clear thoughts if I tried.
“You know, you don't have to lock yourself into that head of yours.” She helped me inside the doorway and closed it behind me. I stared at my shoes as my thoughts trapped me into place. I couldn't bear to look at her. If I moved, I'd explode.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
“Jenna.” Veda lifted up my gaze by my chin and wiped the matted hair from my eyes. “You can talk to me, okay?”
Her eyes met mine, her patient smile thawed me out from my spot by the door. She grabbed my hand again and did that massaging thing that kinda freaked me out. She brought me to my bed and made me comfortable, the final good act of the sober friend trying to get the unruly drunk to sleep.
Veda hovered over me in bed while she helped me out of my jacket.
“If you leave the bed, we're fighting,” she said.
I chuckled weakly as I tried to clear my head. That fight became hopeless the more Veda spoke.
“But I'm serious, Jennie. You act like I don't know when you're stressed, and you love to not tell me these things.” She ran her hands through my hair in patient silence. “Don't self-destruct on me, okay? It won't hurt to open up a little.”
Tickticktickticktick–
I sat up too fast and Veda jumped.
“No, go to bed!”
She moved closer to push me back into bed and my arms wrapped around her waist. I squeezed her and realized we were closer than I meant to. Her words somersaulted back and forth in my head as the ticking bled down my ears.
I pushed myself onto her until she was up against the wall, now fully on my bed. My lips were onto hers and I could feel her sigh into me. For just a second, she kissed me back, but her arms stayed at her side. I melted into her anyway. My need to taste her ached in me like a craving.
It won't hurt to open up a little.
“Jenna, no!” She pushed me off of her and we sat in time, staring as I waited uncomfortably for her reaction. For a quiet minute, all she did was anxiously fidget with her necklace while she stared at me in terror.
Veda hurried off to the floor, almost tripping.
“Jenna. Sleep. And don't get back up, please.” Her sharp tone flung at me like stones.
I spiraled. Sitting there in front of her brought the same tears back. I couldn't be there, I had to get away.
When I sat up, she pushed me back down, a little harder. Her impatience with me emanated like waves past her skin.
“No, stop–”
“I'm going to the bathroom, let me go,” I said.
She stepped back and I pushed past her with my shoulder. The last thing I left with her was the angry, defiant tone in my voice.
I left the room with the door swinging hard behind me.
I woke up in the bathtub. The last thing I remember was screaming at myself as my body took turns heaving into the toilet and crying on the bathroom floor. I laid there in the tub until my eyes adjusted to the harsh daylight and my migraine weakened a bit. Mostly, I had to hype myself up to face Veda. The bomb I'd been holding onto did what I knew it'd do. Even so, I feared it until the last second it went off. And now I had to face the wreckage. I had to face her.
But I never did. I opened the bathroom door to our room in ruins. For the first hour, I did nothing but stand there and stare. My rotting, hungover corpse couldn't believe the mess in front of me. My complete denial of it all clung to my back like a parasite, but by the time I finally reached for my phone, and instead found her gemstone necklace, I already knew she was gone.
