"I'm just saying, Suzy. My mother always told me that the only things you really need for a suitcase are clean panties and toothbrush.” I counted in a mild voice, although my lips betrayed me by bowing a little higher. "I think it has something to do with being things you shouldn't borrow, unless you don't care about bacterium, you know?"
I could easily imagine Suzane Johnson writhing in a strange laugh when listening to this, simply by hearing the little pig snoring she let out when she got excited about one of my worst jokes.It was strange not to be able to return the same intensity of animation, although just so that she could not understand anything, I tried hard, and imitated a rehearsed sound of what was once an ironic laugh.I've never been the kind of person who struggled to be funny. I've never had much talent to be the silly court of a circle of friends. But I had a certain reputation for being the one who never let herself be shaken by the misfortunes of life.I always had a joke on the tip of my tongue to make someone forget about their problems for a few seconds. Suzane Johnson was the one who knew my arsenal of dirty and stupid jokes the most. And he was, consequently, the person who laughed the most about all of them.Penelope Maxwell was almost like a brand of a person who was never shaken by anything. A woman in her twenties who had dedicated herself to a life of carefully calculated promiscuities, a very long list of broken hearts, and dreams that went far beyond buying a house and putting a husband and children in it.But this same Penelope Maxwell came into conflict with that Penelope I met looking in the mirror.It had been a year since an accident that stole everything I had most arrested in my life; my freedom.I was run over one night when I was leaving a bar, after fighting with Suzane about our past problems. It was like being punished instantly by Karma. I didn't even say what I really thought was bad about my best friend, or how selfish and icy I thought she was, when a car shot at me and I only remember the pain of the first impact.The days at the hospital were chaotic. I had serious fractures. I almost died more than once. I had to receive blood transfusions. I had to relearn how to breathe, and even with all the effort of the doctors, my lungs still remained very affected by what happened, so I ended up having to adapt to a life similar to asthmatics.Today I have to use a firecracker, and sometimes even oxygen cylinders, because my chest seems to the point of tearing due to the pain of burning due to shortness of breath. I also had to learn to walk, because I spent a lot of time in a wheelchair, trying to make my body remember the most basic movements of human daily life.I had to learn how to deal with depression and the side effects that strong antibiotics and anxiolytics caused me. My teeth were always white, they had to be more carefully accompanied by a dentist. My golden brown hair lost that shine that always made my tanned skin tone even more vivid. And my dark eyes reached a point of opacity that almost couldn't always be said that there was life in my body. The two dark ones lasted longer than expected. Because everyone considered me too good to let me be shaken by the problems. But it wasn't just because of the accident. It was not just for the slow recovery and the effects that almost no one mentions when making a continuous use of medicines. It was because of the weight that was thrown on my shoulders overnight.I was constantly harassed by the press. And don't think that's a reason for me to brag. Unwanted fame only came because of a very complicated and terrible issue. Things that involved the reasons for my friendship with Suzane to be shaken, and the worst of our pasts mixing. And, as if that wasn't enough, there was also the police. The duty of those men should be to protect any good citizen who needed your help. But I didn't include myself on this list. I was removed from the benefit of receiving help on the day my family provided the greatest political chaos in the whole world. Even though it's not my fault. I had to accept the burden of not being the person who, at any sign of a problem, would call the police. It was a nightmare to imagine that they could surround the door of my head at the first sign that I could do something against other people.But the person Penelope Maxwell was, the one everyone knew, could easily deal with those obstacles. Penelope Maxwell, the one who never had an hour to return after leaving home in the company of women and alcohol, was able to totally ignore the police vehicles that surrounded every corner near her house.Penelope Maxwell, the one who did not care about what would become of her life in the future, would very possibly deal better with the expressions of fear and the conspiratorial comments she heard from her neighbors when trying to take a walk on the street.But the Penelope Maxwell I became was not able to do that. And the image that stared at me in the mirror of the closet in my room, revealed to me a woman in wide and ordinary clothes, and eyes disturbingly stained by deep dark circles.The Penelope who stared at me in the mirror was the one who had a firecracker and an oxygen cylinder always prepared for a moment of crisis. She had a closed wheelchair leaning next to the wooden cabinet. There was a list on top of the nightstand with the right times for each medicine I had to take.And that Penelope periodically consulted with physiotherapists to try to get back to her normal. Even though she knew that normal would never fit that body full of scars and brittle by what happened in the past.I knew I had to get rid of that idea of trying to go back to what I was. But it was painful to see the difference, because not everyone could notice it.Because above all the pains and consequences of that accident, there was the lack of hope, sadness, mourning for a life that would have been beautiful. And that kind of thing didn't heal with medicine or adhesives. It took a much greater willpower to deal with that scratchy feeling inside the chest.And I've never been preparing for that. I never imagined that my life would change that way. But I was just a human. And I broke as easily as it is not expected to be possible.“Pen, your mother should write a self-help book with every dilemma she has ever taught you... Not that it's bad advice” said Suzane at the end of her laugh, and her tone of voice, changing to something more serious, made me go back to the present. She was having the annoying habit of saying things and then rethinking them better. That's when I didn't change the subject so suddenly, that I even lost the thread of the strike. I didn't like her to treat me that special way. It made me feel like my brain could have been affected by the accident (not that it was a lie), but I didn't have the courage to be unpleasant and tell her to talk to me like a normal person. “She has the gift of the word. Or you know how to lie very well about this advice.”“I would buy her book” I mocked with a low giggle. I had rehearsed that sound so many times to look normal, that now I even believed it was genuine. But it wasn't. I didn't smile like I used to. I didn't think it was the same fun in the most diver
I haven't been able to say what it was like to leave the house for a long time. I didn't have pale skin from those who didn't sunbathe. I even left the curtains open or went to my backyard to water some plants, and that made me receive some vitamin D. I didn't have my leg muscles totally unprepared for escape situations, because I even stretched myself from time to time to try to get some utensils that were at the top of the kitchen shelves. I would not fail to receive my orders by the postman, because I had put a sign on my mail saying that the letters should be left under the entrance door. But considering that all these things were not something to expect for Penelope Maxwell, then, yes, I wouldn't leave my house anymore and that was not healthy.What no one understood was that I started a period of isolation in my home long before the government declared any sudden stop in its daily lives. I had much more fun when I was alone, without having to force smiles or invent last-minute j
It was a complicated period. Because it was not easy to feel pain for simply trying to keep up with the beat of a song, while his bones were still recovering from a run over, or while his mind tried to devour his good will in seeing the world with colors and sounds, and not in darkness and tears. It was hard. But I tried, alone.The music ended, and while another one didn't start, I sat on the bed, catching myself for looking through the closed window. Outside, on the other side of the garden, another house stood up, and from it I could see open windows and lights on, the sound of the barking of a big dog in the backyard, and the characteristic sound of punches in a punching bag that I knew was in the room where I had a total view of where I was sitting on the bed.It was Colton's house. And where I was looking was the window of your improvised gym. Something he set up as soon as I moved to the house next to his, and when he realized that I would not always go to my physiotherapy appo
Colton said something, but I knocked on the window and closed the curtains, extremely upset and even more shaken. My television stopped in the last song, and to tell you the truth, I wasn't interested in listening to anything else at all. I decided to really sleep, wait for the next day of more pretense and medicine, and then sleep again. That was my routine. Was there a better life than this?I had to have all the trouble to go to the kitchen to get water because I was too dumb to leave a jar in the room, so I crawled through the rooms barefoot and very cold because of the winter that was coming, and that depressed me a lot. Before I loved snow, now I hated having to freeze my ass to go to work, and then go back to an equally freezing house.I was reflecting on how suddenly it seemed so boring to be an adult when my doorbell rang. I couldn't avoid the bad omen that afflicted me. I remembered what it was like in the first months I moved... As my house was always visited by police offi
In a nutshell, one could describe Colton as something irresistibly annoying. In the past, he had been the one I never considered attractive. Not for lack of beauty. For real content. Colton was very serious. There were strange quirks. And I didn't like strange people "I mean, except Suzane. And he annoyed me in ways that no one would consider normal. He didn't even have to be talking to me, actually. We almost never talked. Only, as director of the Marketing department of Suzane's company, I had to deal with him a little too often. His sector was the one that hired the most young apprentices, so he always came to my office to collect resumes and give me those he found most attractive.Since the day I started working at the company that was my father and that was bought by Suzane, Colton has shown himself to be the kind of man who can be genuinely educated and a gentleman. And these two characteristics were not possible to be found in any man. That's why he annoyed me so much. His cour
Because I could say a lot, but I couldn't deny that Colton's help didn't just make my mother's spine not try so hard to have to carry me around the corners of the house, but that I also didn't let myself totally fall into that darkness that took over my chest just for his company. Colton was good at everything. And that annoyed me too. He could sing like a true poet. I could make jokes that left me breathless. And he could brighten my eyes every time he took off his shirt or dressed in an apron to cook for me. But I felt that even if I was naked in front of him, he still wouldn't look at me with desire.Not because he thinks we should start a relationship before having any sex. But because he saw me in my worst state. He carried me on his lap when I couldn't feel anything but pain in my spine or legs when trying to walk. He wiped my drool when I couldn't breathe through my nose and had to sleep with my mouth open. He put me under the shower "still in clothes" to take cold showers when
Colton, on the other hand, made me realize how uncomfortable he felt when imagining me with other people. Especially after everything we went through together. Of all the overcoming of our greatest fears. He didn't admit that he wanted more than my friendship. And I had so little courage to assume that I had a great curiosity to know how deeply he could know me in bed. But the respect he had for me also attracted me in a more intense way. I knew that if you ever let me get carried away and let him between my legs, it wouldn't be just once. Colton was not the kind of man who let himself escape. I was sure of that. He was too reserved, and that was one of the best in sex.So my plan was to make them fall in love with each other and that I could get on with my life, without either of them. Because I wouldn't know how to choose. And also because I already had too many problems to deal with troubled relationships. I wanted tranquility in my life. And neither of them seemed like the kind of
I didn't talk about anything last night with Colton.I didn't have the courage.I didn't even find words that could make sense to that fear.He knew that I was being constantly harassed since my brother turned out to be a terrorist. Colton realized long before me that the whole world would be unable to forget the atrocities that the Maxwell family caused in the name of money. That's why he had been by my side from the beginning; because he feared that I might let myself be affected by that mass negativity. He was right, because it really affected me.Imagining that some of those people who wished me so much hate could have entered my house without me realizing it, made me even more affected. But worse than hatred or fear, it was knowing that the Brotherhood itself "criminal faction that my father and brother gave rise to" was looking for me and, on top of that, entering my house without me realizing it, left things at a much worse level of fear.As far as I knew, my father was impriso