A Sensitive Heart (prologue)

Her only friend was gone—dead—bullied into suicide.

Clare Windless felt herself screaming and falling—burning and suffocating—and still, without any shape or form of understanding, she could not protect herself from the irrefutability of the certitude before her. Laura was dead, and there was no euphemism to trivialize that reality, no denial to shield her from the harshness that one simple fact.

Her friend was dead.

Silent screams penetrated her as she stood among the small congregation in the decaying graveyard. Brittle leaves fell sadly upon and between the cracked and calcified marble shrines, torn by the cold, damp wind from the jagged willow trees’ boughs that had formerly imprisoned them, and, as if on fire, they shrivelled in their flight. A few bolts of bright-blue lightning glimmered in the late afternoon sky, but it was not at all the kind of lightning that bewildered or frightened; it seemed more in the nature of sorrow or lament. And deep within, yet zoned out, the silent screams became ever-increasingly deafening.

About ten people, a few businessmen and a handful of middle class workers from miscellaneous construction jobs across the city, had shown up to the funeral of Laura DeVoir, and over half of them were dressed in casual hoodies, jeans, baseball caps, sunglasses, and running shoes. It was as if they had been compelled by obligation or self-reproach to appear: their clothing was disrespectful, their eyes dry, and the topics of their conversations about the upcoming playoff hockey game between the Vancouver Canucks and the Boston Bruins, the H.S.T. (Harmonized Sales Tax), the majority government being the outcome of the latest federal election between Harper’s Conservative Party and Layton’s New Democrat Party, or some other stupid thing along those drought-ridden lines. Their miens were so shallow, so bereft that you could see right through them with not but a glimpse.

No-one cared.

Even the frizzled preacher, who probably acted this role at least once a week, spoke with a bored, disinterested monotony about him. “We have gathered here,” Reverend Kalle said hollowly, “because of what we might perceive as a tragedy. Always suddenly, the hand of death takes those we love most. Whether they’ve been dying of cancer, or whether they have just been in a fatal car accident, it is always sudden. All we can truly do to respect this fact is to cherish every moment we are with them, never take it for granted, and never say anything hurtful.”

A slight outburst of air cast Clare’s soaking strands about her, and she smiled, making no effort to suppress it. She enjoyed such feelings. It was a revivification of her senses—something to remind her that she was more than just an android or a zombie like she had long-since thought she had watched herself become—a silent testimony to the fact that she was still, somehow, someway, alive.

At the age of seven, she’d received tutoring from a Buddhist monk, and had learned to meditate. This monk had taught her to always focus on the moment—to realize that the past could not change, and that the future was still yet to come. He had said that the only real beauty was in the moment—the place where she could hear the songs of the birds, see the glare of the sky, and smell the dirt of the earth. For many years she’d not been able to understand his logic. But then, all of a sudden, it had clicked. She’d been crying over her failures to understand the fundamental theorem of calculus back when she’d been fourteen, and the monk, her teacher, had offered words of positive spiritual guidance. These words had helped her address the fundamental theorem of calculus with a more open-minded approach; and she had discovered the answers to her questions within the space of a few days.

“How is it,” the monk had said, “that you can gain knowledge if you dwell in a past that has already been lost? You must always remain mindful if you are to achieve perfection and insight. Take this wasteland of the previous and fill it with the flower of the present—and make this flower bloom of the beauty within you!”

Although the white sun was now hot at its zenith in the sky, a slight drizzle of rain still fell. It caressed Clare’s obsidian-black hair, dress coat, and dress pants like broken antennas—and it scarred her shock-pale cheeks, offering, to some minor extent, an obviation of the tears that drowned her vision. The funeral was pathetic. Surely Laura deserved so much better than this. Like no other individual, Laura had been someone you could share your thoughts with, someone who could understand your problems, and someone who would never reject you or go out of her way to hurt you. Like no other individual, Laura had been someone who would always love you back, no matter how fucked up you were, or how broken up inside, or how socially awkward. She had been schizophrenic—jittery, socially inept, delusional, and hallucinatory—but Clare had loved her, cared about her, and felt that she would give her life for her without question or deliberation.

But now Laura was dead—someone Clare had felt close to, someone she had laughed with and enjoyed spending time with—someone she had hugged and loved, someone she had shared pains with and celebrated triumphs with—dead—gone forever.

It shocked her. It left a gaping hole in through the nucleuses of every atomic molecule in her being.

“And when death finally does take them,” the preacher went on. “You can either be left with guilt and suffering, or you can be left with the sad smiles and glimmers brought to your heart when you remember the times you spent with them. Ah, life is fragile indeed! But is that not what makes it so precious?”

One fond memory of Laura Clare particularly remembered was when they had gone for ice cream—a little shop called DQ located on Belmont and Sixth—during lunch hour at N.W.S.S. (New Westminster Secondary School). April 4th, 2010 had been a warm day, the sun glowing in the azury sky like a gem as it approached its maximum, and the two friends had worn the most non-emo apparels you could think of—flip flops, tank tops, plastic earrings, and Lulu Lemon miniskirts. Still albino from the winter, their skins had absorbed deeply, almost hungrily, the ultraviolet. It was an invigorating sensation—a feeling of aliveness, which she had long-since forgotten.

“What’s your favourite ice cream?” Clare had asked as they casually strode on a sidewalk parallel to Canada Way.

Laura had said, “Bubble gum is best—.”

Laura always seemed to stutter, probably the resultant vector of nervousness added to schizophrenia, but, although her voice and words had always been on pins and needles, Clare had always been able to understand them somehow. And on the rare occasions that she hadn’t been able to understand, she was able to nod and fake a smile to show that she did. That was how they got along most of the time, and, although it was awkward, the two of them were best friends.

“Mint,” Clare said. “I like minty. Gives good breath and it protects your teeth from cavities.”

“It doesn’t actually stop cavities.”

“I was joking.”

“Joking?”

“Trying to be funny.”

“Why be funny?”

Clare shrugged dejectedly, helplessly. “Laughing is good for the heart,” she tried to explain. “It makes you happy—whatever that word means.”

Laura had laughed then, only her laughter was so messed up and weird—so forced—that Clare had had no other choice than to laugh with her.

After walking a short distance, Laura decided they should jaywalk across Canada Way to avoid “wasting time” at the stoplight up ahead. They jaywalked—or jayran, whichever one preferred to call it—directly between two fast-moving semi trucks, which were separated by a time gap of no more than a few seconds. They were normally pretty reckless with their lives, but neither of them had much to live for anyway, especially Laura, who had endured enough bullying and rejection to last a lifetime. As much as you could say you were depressed and miserable, being suicidal did have its fun parts. Being in the darkest depths—it was as if you were immune from fear of loss, or even from loss itself. Loss had, in a manner, become a part of you.

After they had bought a medium Cookie Dough Blizzard (Laura’s favourite) and a medium Oreo Cookie Blizzard (Clare’s favourite—they always argued which one was better), they walked into 7-Eleven and purchased two Monster Energy drinks, which they shared equally among them.

They sat down at a table in the back corner of the D.Q., fully willing to enjoy the air-conditioned coolness after their long walk in the searing summer heat.

After enduring a wave of “brain freeze”, Clare glanced at Laura, whose eyes were still etched downward into the tabletop and refused to push past their insecurity. Laura was always insecure it seemed, though Clare knew that Laura wasn’t the type of person who found friendship easy to come by, and this was a quite legitimate reason to be self-conscious. As a schizophrenic, Laura’s only true friends were the voices that tormented her own mind, and having a real friend now, and knowing what intense loneliness was like, she became frightened of losing Clare. If Clare had actually been a normal person, she would have been repulsed by the insecurity and abandoned Laura—but she had chosen that she was exhausted by the typical. Being friends with a freak (freaks had their own nonconformed character) on the other hand, was nowhere even close to boring.

“So why do you want to be my friend?” Laura asked, looking up and finally making eye contact with her.

This time it was Clare’s turn to feel insecure. The psycho-stare of those grey orbs caught her off guard, and she felt vulnerable somehow, as if this schizophrenic girl knew everything, every sick secret she possessed. A cold sweat broke out across Clare’s back, and she blinked against her sudden dismay before she was able to accost the question.

“Okay,” Clare said, choking on her own words, “the truth is—I can’t go on with my old friends anymore. I’m not like them. Even when I pretended to be, I wasn’t—facile—.”

“So you chose a freak,” Laura said. “Why?”

Clare shrugged. What kind of answer could she give to that kind of question? In all reality, there was no answer. She had chosen Laura because she, herself, was a freak. It had not been because they had endured hardships together, because they could make an alliance and be stronger, or because they had been in the same rooms at the same times, or even that they had similar personalities. Even if they were freaks, they were not at all alike.

Finally Clare spoke, although unsurely. “I have no friends. Since you don’t either, I figured you’re the only person who would understand me. I’m lonely. I figured you would know loneliness, too.”

“You have lots of friends,” Laura protested. “I see you with them all the time. You smile in the hallways and everyone looks at you and likes you. You’re popular and idolized. Guys love you. Everyone knows you. Why do you tell me that you know what true loneliness is like? I mean, you can’t know.”

Clare realized that Laura’s statements were accusations, and that they held justification, although not conviction. In reality, Clare Windless had suffered deeply from loneliness for as long as she could remember. She was hammered to the point of desperation for just one person to talk to—just one thing to share—just one chance to be understood. And although her loneliness had never been as potent as Laura’s, that did not mean she was unacquainted with it.

She picked at the scratches on the table with her cold fingertips, searching futilely for some kind of restitution. How could she offer Laura proof that she wasn’t just another spoiled brat?

“I have no friends,” Clare reiterated. “They would watch me jump off a bridge and not even care. They just—tolerate—me. Everyone I know—none of them can understand me.”

“Why do you think someone who has no friends is different?”

“I see them,” Clare described. “They sit on the stairs at lunch hour all alone by their selves, their heads buried in their knees, their arms wrapped around their own fragile hearts—as if they are doing everything in their power to keep alive. All of my friends, me as well, call them the loners. They mirror me. What I am inside. I want to befriend people who understand sorrow.”

Their conversation had opened up after that. Laura accepted her and then moved on, not taking a moment to ask questions.

“Valid enough,” Laura said. “Do have hobbies?”

“Hobbies? Thanks for the randomness. Yeah, I’m an artist. It’s the only thing I’m decent at. What about you?”

“I’m and artist also,” Laura said. “A different kind though, I’ll give you that. I’m a writer. Into reading books—philosophy and psychology.”

Clare laughed. “I wanted to be a psychologist once. I thought I’d be someone who could understand people who were suffering because I’d always suffered.”

“Suffering...” Laura’s voice trailed, as if she had some kind of emotional attachment to the word. And she seemed to look inside herself for some—other—discrepancy between rage and rectitude. And then her vocals became empty, although she spoke with a kind of intelligence, a certain depressive charisma that, counterbalanced by the message of the words, was quite alluring. “The psychologists can never understand. Pretentious. Trying to say they understand suffering and misery and grief and loss when all their minds really have is textbook knowledge. Because they degree, because they college and diploma, they think they have been betrothed to genuine suffering.”

Clare smiled. “Makes you think, eh?”

On their walk back to school, they laughed hysterically as the sugar high began to take effect. Sugary substances always seemed to change things. They had their way of making the most depressing day in the world seem tolerable, like there was some kind of reason to rise above the blankets of depression. In some rare instances, sugar—with the right combination of music—could allow for a brief feeling that life was somehow better than death.

As they walked, Laura decided to pour sips of her energy drink into the ice cream and then consume them together. Clare eventually and inevitably tried it too, and finally poured her entire energy drink into the Blizzard. Drinking it whole made her extremely ecstatic—and despite the fact that she’d been diagnosed with a psychiatric condition called major depression, she became hyper. Most people would become nauseous just thinking about it, but Clare just enjoyed the excitement and the hope for a better future brought on by the experience. What if every day could be like this?

They fed off of each other’s joy like maniacs.

That one day, April 10th, 2010, turned out to be one of the best days in Clare’s life. She would never forget the times they had shared together, no matter how scant, no matter how disintegrated and stained by time. Those memories were something to cherish, and unlike photographs, which could be burned and torn, nothing could take away from her. They were hers.

Laura! Her heart wailed the name like a self-destructive qualm, a sudden devastating attack of depression from which there was only one logical escape. Laura had deserved to die. She had been weird, hadn’t she? And surely she had never been socially adequate. She’d been “awkward”, and that’s why she had been bullied to death. This is why she had been condemned—why they had set her fucking hair on fire—because she was not as gloriously “cool” as they were.

In a few days, Clare would be done her first year of high school. After that, there would be a two more years—grade eleven and grade twelve—and then she would hopefully be leaving school. After this, life would just be a simple matter of finding a job and getting enough money to pay the bills. But would it really be that simple? Was life ever that simple? Would she be able to heal from what they had done to her? Or, even worse, would bullying continue after school was over? Perhaps, she thought, I’ll spend the rest of my life living in the suicidal depths—or perhaps—suicide will eventually find me.

After Laura’s passing, Clare had immediately taken on a feeling of guilt. She had been one of Laura’s many abusers before she had somewhat—accidentally—befriended the schiz. She’d been one of the people blameworthy of Laura’s suicide. Clare remembered becoming Laura’s friend—but that was only because the groups of bullies at N.W.S.S. had turned around and attacked Clare as well. The common denominator for their friendship had been their enemies. If it had not been for this, Clare would likely have loathed Laura to the last minutes of her life.

It was in this guilt that Clare had learned to hate herself—and sequentially, she had resorted to heavy self-mutilation, especially burning her arms with cigarettes, or cutting herself with dull razors. As a kid, she’d always self-mutilated. When she was twelve years old, she remembered, she would slam her fists into her head to punish herself for not being smarter in school, or for displeasing her control freak dad, or even for the sheer emotional ambience of feeling pain. She was mentally sick—and it frightened her to even think about the potential suicide of letting her thoughts get out of control again.

The preacher, or whatever they were called nowadays, said in the same, monotonous platitude, “In this cold, dark hour, we gather to mourn the passing of a girl who no longer walks among us today. She died in the coldest, darkest way that it is possible to die—in a place so unbearable that she took her very own life to escape. You may be thinking that she died alone and abandoned—but don’t lose hope! The Lord was strongly with her, and is still with her—just as he is with us all!”

Clare hated funerals in this respect. There should not have been any religion involved—it just felt wrong. In addition to the fact, it undermined everything Laura had gone through—the “all-loving” had not been with her when she slowly asphyxiated to death. In fact, no-one had been with her. Her passing had been just as barren as her funeral gathering was now.

For over an hour the preacher rambled on, yapping about stuff he could not possibly hope to understand. He looked at suicide as just another kind of death—another kind of sin or crime that was worthy of eternal punishment in Hell. He could not know how much more was involved. He could not know the reasons one had to take their own life.

When finally the congregation was over, all seven people departed immediately, including Laura’s parents. After everyone was gone, Clare took a few steps forwards and stood before the grave of her friend. Lightning flashed violently in the air, but Clare’s tears continued to flow undauntedly. Knuckles of pain ground her throat, forcing her to swallow thickly.

Another flashback hit her.

“I found you a flower,” Laura had said. “I picked it this morning at home. We have lots of them.” With both hands she had passed the flower to Clare, who had taken it awkwardly.

It was a full-grown sunflower (they had stocks that were three centimetres thick and heads must have weighed two pounds—not the type of flower you were supposed to give as a present), and Laura had given it to her boisterously in the middle of their Planning 10 class. At the time Clare had thought it to be one of the most embarrassing moments of her life, but, looking back; she could not help but to smile.

“Thanks,” Clare had said. “Sunflowers are my favourite!” She’d actually, at the time, thought of sunflowers as awkward, oversized, hives full of seeds that people liked to spit, but, to be polite, she told a lie. She had kept the flower in her room, sitting carelessly on her desk, and every time she had decided to do her homework, she had longed to trash the thing. But she’d been too lazy. For over a month the sunflower had dried and crusted in her sight—although its colours had never faded—and Clare had never removed it or scorned it.

After Laura had died, Clare had been forced to hide the flower from her sight just to keep from crying—but she’d never disposed of it. And whenever she felt she needed to cry, she would hold it in her hands and remember.

As salty tears flowed into her mouth, she spoke through the spheres of pain before her. “Laura? If you’re listening—if you’re listen—” grief choked her voice “—I’m sorry. I never wanted to hurt you.—no, I did. I wanted nothing more than to hurt you. I wanted to see you kill yourself so that I could have something to joke about with all my friends—so that I could do prank calls on your parents and anyone else who ever gave a damn about you.”

Self-hatred throbbed in her heart, and she forced herself not to scream. She was fully blinded by tears now—snot and rainwater coagulated disgustingly on her face, scrolled downwards, and eventually fell to the black mud like glimmers of lifeblood. She could not remain standing. She fell to her knees and buried her face into the rain-soaked dirt.

Only after she had regained some of her composure was she able to lift her head, her muddy hair. With every morsel of her self-resolution, she faced the innocence of the Laura’s grave, and she begged the slab of rock for something—anything. “You deserved to be loved. You deserved to be loved more than any of us, and I don’t know why they didn’t see it. I don’t know why they didn’t realize what an honour it was to be your friend—”

She remembered the times they’d had—sharing ice cream, hanging out in the park and picking flowers, laying on the summer grass and trying to guess the shapes of clouds. She remembered the times they had laughed, shared honest truths, or simply talked about their favourite types of music. As of now Clare could not tell if it had been ten years ago or ten seconds ago. Maybe it was just the fact that she would never converse with Laura again that made it seem so distant.