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 jokes. I felt much more alive when I let myself relax against the couch and stared at the ceiling, in a state of almost vegetation that was much better than watching television - the media, in general, had become very cruel since the changes in the world began. And it is obvious that I would much rather put a song in my room and dance alone, instead of going to some nightclub and letting everyone notice that my movements were hard and uncoordinated, because I had not yet recovered enough for it.If that kind of routine was shown to me before everything had happened, I would have had a good laugh for those who believed that Penelope Maxwell would ever submit to that. I was what everyone affectionately nicknamed "the soul of all parties". It was impossible that one day I could let myself be shaken by any black cloud of depression or socialization difficulties. But that became my reality, without me even realizing it, without being able to do anything to change.Before I had a real excuse to escape all the family reunions that Suzane invented. I just needed to fake a tired and groggy voice, stay in bed all day, or refuse calls so that everyone believed they could be side effects of analgesics and antidepressants. It was very easy to act that way. It was nothing as exhausting as spending hours listening to my friends complain about problems that were nothing like mine. Nothing as stressful as pretending that their voices and laughter made me feel more and more out of place. So I played a very good role as a victim who needs rest.But at that time, with the wounds healed, the movements partially recovered, and only two types of medicines to handle, they began to realize that I was doing it on purpose. Even if they didn't have the courage to expose it to everyone else. Some members of that circle of Suzane's friends realized that I was no longer so adept at the baladery customs of before. That being surrounded by people didn't give me any pleasure. But even if they noticed, they wouldn't avoid calling me. I wouldn't accept it. Sometimes I even pretended that I didn't see my phone ring, even if I was using it, just so I didn't have the trouble to invent that I was sick or with some pain that the medicines couldn't help.It wasn't right, I know that. My friends tried hard to fit me into a world to which I no longer belonged. There was no normal life after all the traumas and the consequences of that terrible past. I couldn't want to believe that one day I would feel comfortable again in a laughing group of people and that I could drink without seeing the time to stop. I couldn't drink anymore, I couldn't dance anymore, I couldn't laugh anymore. And those who allowed themselves to see the harsh truth of what I had become, also saw exactly what would happen if I continued like that.I've never been against my own life. This type of internship was more difficult to be acquired by someone who has always admired life and freedom. No. The point is that I'm not sure if I would try to divert if any runaway vehicle appeared in my way. I don't know if I would avoid reacting during a robbery with a gun pointed at my head. I don't know if I would avoid taking rain showers in the middle of a torrent of lightning falling to the ground. I don't know if I would avoid death if she came to me. But since she never arrived, I just existed. That's why I think many around me respected when I said I didn't have the time or courage to go out. Because they feared that I couldn't stand the weight of the world when I got home. Because they also feared that I wouldn't run away from death if she came to pick me up.That was weird. Even if I didn't confess anything to anyone. Even if I ran away from all the conversations that promised to involve my new apathy for the world. I still couldn't let myself feel like a strange soul, in a fragile body. I could very well have died in that accident, and this part still alive to be just a spark of what was once a living fire of a person who loved to breathe and feel. I could be just one of the other people who realized that the armor that kept her alive had also become a shelled prison. Because the person who stared at me back in the mirror of my room, while I held my cell phone against my ear, and pretended to hear Suzane vent about her day, was not the same one who would have taken pleasure in commenting on the boredom of her best friend's life.It was bizarre to say that overnight, the person who shook new encounters and nights watered with drunkenness and sex, has become an animal who is ashamed and afraid to go out in public, to face afflictions and problems. It was strange to be a kind of creature who no longer liked the sun and the loud conversations, nor the acoustic music of some bar, nor the alcoholic beverages of dubious shades. I wasn't like that. Many things were different now, but what really left me to pieces was to realize that all the people around me — including Suzane — were always worried that my loneliness would make my brain atrophy and that I would become a merciless assassin like...“Pen?”“Hm... Suzy, I have to go" I stuttered in a hurry, because I felt that that thing was coming back again... The feeling of anguish, the fear, the shaking... Reflexes of post-traumatic stress, they said. But I used to call it "time to go back under the covers and forget the blood I carry"."Do you feel bad? Do you want me to go there?" She asked in a worried tone."You would know the answer if you considered that you are not the only one suffering from the mistakes of the past," I wanted to contradict, but Suzane did not deserve this. She didn't deserve anything I could have said in recent years. It wasn't fair for me to take out my frustrations on her. Not after all.“No, Suzy!” I let out another rehearsed, false laugh, and I think this time she realized the pretense. “Please finish your bags, and keep me informed of everything. I love you, and Hunt, and your babies with strange names. Bye, Suzy."I hung up before she whispered for me to wait. And, immediately after releasing the cell phone in bed, I pressed play on my remote control and the television returned to transmitting the sound of the only song I've been listening to since the last four months. Pumped Up Kicks gradually increased as I let myself be carried away by the cruel and wonderful lyrics, forcing my body to dance, despite feeling that emptiness closer and closer, threatening to break into tears as in every night.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
I knew I was jealous. I knew it wasn't right for me to be bothered by that. But nothing stopped me from simply leaving my dishes for another time and going to take a shower. Nothing made me think twice while I chose a dress of blue and white flowers and dressed up all over to make an innocent visit to my best friend's house. I had a perfect excuse to visit her without implying that I was only there to see with my own eyes how many the relationship of my two unfinished loves walked. I stroked my hair in curls at the ends and filled my face with some basic makeup while going out.The party took place at Suzane's house, so I had an excuse to go there. I even bought a gift for my goddaughter, her daughter Eylem, as a perfect pretext to suddenly appear in the celebration of her family for the meeting with Mikaela's perfect boyfriend. I didn't know how they had been so dumb to believe that Mikaela had even been related for years at a distance with someone, and that that someone would be ric
"Your family from Vegas and... you know, Mika "I encouraged in a low voice, already noticing the brightness of the sun shining through the sliding door at the end of the living room, where the green lawn was already shining to receive us.”"I thought you were talking," said Suzane in a tone of reflection."No, we haven't spoken since the Thanksgiving party.”"How strange... Lawrence says she's always lovingly talking to someone in the corners.”I avoided performing a mouth thing, because I knew Suzane was keeping an eye on my reaction. I loved Suzane, but she was so curious and nosy, that sometimes she gave me a slight anger. But I was all that in an even higher percentage. So I couldn't complain. I smiled, my turn. It didn't bother me that Mikaela could be going out with other people. I doubted that she would be able to maintain that facade of relationship with Colton without having an escape valve for later, but still, I was slightly upset that she did not consider that I could be h