She Cried Golden Tears

Moonlight dawdles solemnly through the window, shining down on hunched over shoulders. Golden tears trickle down from her ebony-colored eyes as she gazes into the mirror. A single tentacle composed of ink streams down her legs, curving over her discarded, red-stained swim clothes, before slithering up to her shoulders and bunching them tight in an inhuman grip. Her body stiffens like cardboard, the oxygen rippling from her lungs as the spiky feeler inches close to her eyes.

“Helaena! What’s taking so long?” A voice full of annoyance calls out. Another knock sounds at the door. “Helaena!”

Chantel’s booming voice causes the tentacle to thicken. The anxiety fuels its power as another one slinks up her shoulder and wraps itself around her neck, ready to make the deadly knot. “Helaena!” She yells again, pounding on the door.

The feeler gets closer…and closer. The spikes begin to scratch the underside of her gold-smeared eyes before the sound of a harsh kick makes them both dissipate into thin air.

“I’ll be out in five minutes. Promise!” Helaena replies in false glee. She rubs her eyes aggressively, smearing yellow on her cheeks before she starts the shower.

Loud music booms from the speaker as three girls enter the yard, clad in dark, predatory colors. The tight, plum dress Chantel bought for Helaena stings her skin as she uncomfortably readjusts the strap on her shoulder and follows her leader through the throng of dancing teens surrounding the pool. She hates dark colors. The image of the pastel pink halter dress she saw in the mall earlier burns itself into her mind.

I wouldn’t buy that dress for my dog. Chantel’s words continue to circle her head along with her sickly, witch-pitched laugh. It wasn’t her tone that made Helaena scared, but the possibility of having to deal with whispered judgment all night. Just thinking it makes her want to grab a jacket and hide.

But before she can, an arm slips around her shoulders, not as tight as the insecurity from before, but still as lethal as it pulls her into a chest.

“You made it!” Mack smiles, planting a kiss on her cheek. His grin resembles a crazed crocodile as his shark-like eyes gaze down at her mischievously. She smiles at her boyfriend as he guides her into the crowded house, leaving her two friends to slither away like they’ve done many times before. As they walk, the corner of his lips slope downwards as his brown eyes slide from her face to her outfit. “And you dressed up…” His eyes look mute as he smiles wryly. “You look…nice.”

“Is something wrong?” She stops.

“Nah, nothing, it’s just the color’s a little…Well you know plum has never been my favorite. And your lipstick is …” Helaena didn’t like her dress but she didn’t think she looked that bad.

“Chantel told me to wear this—-”

“And it’s fine, so why are you getting so mad?”

She scoffs, irritation filling her veins as she subtly moves away from his hold. She wasn’t mad, but how else did he expect her to react when he basically insulted her look? She didn’t want to start a fight though. Last time she and Mack fought, their friend group didn’t talk to her for a week until she apologized. It was her fault for thinking his friends would side with her though. Still, their absence left her with a feeling of dread. No friends, no outings, no dates meant that she stayed inside. And anything was better than that house of horrors.

“You're right,” she reassures him. “I’ve just been so stressed due to finals and—I shouldn’t have put all my insecurities on you.” He kisses her on the forehead and a bomb implodes in her mind asking the question, Is this really what you want?

Before she met Mack, and the others, she was already out of place. To the Ridgeshore public, heck, even to her friends, she was either too quiet, too loud, or too boring. There was nothing special about her. But to Helaena, being in horrible company in an already horrible life was better than trying to survive it alone. She wasn’t strong enough to do that.

A weird scent of bubblegum, desperation and sweat engulfs Helanea’s nose as Mack guides her to the seating area where the usual gang was sitting. As they approach, Granite, the other friend she came to the party with, is in the middle of an exciting story. Her blue eyes shine as she lets out a loud, obnoxious laugh that seems ridiculously forced.

“You guys should’ve seen it! As she was about to enter the pool, we threw a cherry slushie on her, she slipped and fell in. Literally no one could stop laughing, even the lifeguard almost tripped down the ladder from his watch tower. It was so funny.”

“What’s funny?” Mack asks, bumping fists with the friend closest to him at the edge of the couch.

“Oh, didn’t Helanea tell you?” Her friends' eyes drift to her innocently as she raises her eyebrows.

“Tell me what?” He smiles, stepping closer so he could hear.

“Oh we just pulled a little joke on Ms. Hamster here. After our mall trip, she seemed so sad we just thought she could use a little cheering up so we—” Threw four iced cherry slushies on her and watched as she slipped into the deep end of the pool knowing she couldn’t swim. “You should’ve just seen as she flayed and yelled, “help, help.’ It was so funny.” Embarrassment floods Helaena’s face as shame covers her insides like a heated blanket. It was so embarrassing. The urge to cry bangs on her eyeballs as she remembers the pointing, the laughs from lounging families and the lifeguards face as he took his very sweet time getting to that side of the pool.

She could’ve died. But instead of bringing that up, she laughs along weakly as Mack bumps her in the arm, laughing the hardest of everyone. Chantel, on the other hand, twirls her hair and props her elbow on the shoulder of Max Morgan, a popular basketball player in their grade, who sips on his cup and pays no attention to whatever she’s saying. It is no secret Chantel had feelings for him; her desperation could catch bees. It was just a shock that she liked such a chauvinistic airhead.

As if proving Helaena’s point, Max tips his cup upside down, and when nothing comes out, he lets out a dramatic sigh.

“I need a soda refill,” he hands it to Chantel and she takes the cup from him with a giggle.

“Helanea, refill his drink for him.”

“Yeah, can you get me one too?”

“Me too?”

Mack stays mute, looking away as Helaena stiffly nods.

“Thanks, you’re a doll.”

After journeying past jumping bodies that made a mosh pit out of the living room, she reaches the table of different assortments.

“You know, being their servant won’t fix anything.” Helaena’s head snaps to the side to see a familiar boy taking a laid-back sip from his cup. Chills spider web across her spine as she avoids his eyes and continues carrying out her orders. The boy chuckles, unperturbed at her coldness as he adds, “It just makes you miserable.”

“I’m already miserable! You of all people should know the consequences of listening to wants and ignoring survival.”

“Like how you didn't want to give Granite the essay you spent a week on? Or how you didn’t want to sneak out to the bad side of town with those twin rats and they jokingly said they’d tell their parents it was your idea since yours wouldn’t be sober enough to care? How long until you realize we aren't meant to just survive? ”

Swallowing the blockade in her throat, her hand stills as she tries to prevent herself from doing what most days she did. Thinking. At what point does survival turn into death? She didn’t look in the boy's direction again as she turns and heads aimlessly back to the group. She hands everyone back their drink only for Chantel to sneer at the cup and pour it out on the blue, zig-zagged carpet underneath her.

“Jonah is going to kill you!” Granite laughs as she sips her drink.

“Yeah if he catches me!”

“Speaking of catching, how would you guys like to do something fun?” The group of five stays quiet as Mack suggests something that even makes Helaena subconsciously move back. “You know that old doctor couple with that vintage Thunderbird?”

Everyone knew them. The Mclinskies were the nicest couple on the block and even helped Helaena with her bruises a few times.

He better not suggest what I think he is.

“Well…they go to bed at seven and a little birdie told me they keep an extra pair of garage keys under the welcome mat in case they lock themselves out of the main house, which apparently is always. I say we go on a little joyride. It’s not like they’ll hear us,” he shrugs. “It’ll be a nice time.”

“No, no!” Helaena yells, whipping to her boyfriend. “We can’t do that-”

“Sounds like fun,” Max contradicts chilly, followed by everyone in the group. Helaena shakes her head quickly and looks at the group hesitantly.

“I can’t—”

“Oh stop being such a prude Helaena, jeez! You’re always like this! Whenever someone suggests something fun or risky, you crawl into your little turtle shell and like a good little girl, hide. I wonder why we even invite you to stuff.”

“Maybe we should stop,” One of Mack’s friends, who is as thin as a toothpick suggests with a shrug. “We already know her answer anyway.” At this point, she can’t tell the difference between any of them. Their heads morph into each other, thickening into individual tentacles with circular mouths full of white, sharp rocks for teeth on the top. Instead of words, all she can hear in that moment are monstrous gurgles trying to kill her with every next word.

“This isn’t risk taking; it’s grand larceny,” she attempts one final time. The tentacle shakes its head, roars loudly and makes a move to stand. Why aren’t they listening? Why do they always have to do this! Sweat crowns at the top of her head as defeat begins to swallow her whole.

It is only when Mack talks to her that the imagined version of them disappears.

“Either you come or you don’t. Your choice.”

So she stands there, goosebumps crawling up her arms as the cold winds brush past her barely covered body. The guys, with careful precision, open the garage and drive it out of the driveway. The girls aside from Helaena all whoop and applaud.

“Are you coming?”

Tentatively, she makes her way to the car and slowly joins the backseat only for Mack to suggest she comes to the front. Toothpick agrees, moving to the back as Helaena hesitantly makes her way to the front and buckles in. Without buckling in, Mack quietly exits the driveway before peeling down the road at dangerous speed. It’s on their third lap that Chantel suggests driving to the pier.

“It’s not like we don’t have all night. Those old birds are gonna be asleep till six.”

Helaena turns to Mack with a wrinkle between her brows as she glares, “You promised a lap, the pier is-”

“Five minutes away,” he interrupts. “Come on, live a little!” Helaena shakes her head, the unease biting down into her intestines encourages her to choose herself.

“Drop me off. I want to leave.”

Mack scoffs, opening his mouth to gaslight her again only to be interrupted by a noise behind them. His face falls. Sirens.

The interchanging colors of red and blue light the back of the car and reflect in the rearview mirror.

“Crap, crap, crap.” Mack slowly pulls to the side.

SMACK.

“YOU WRETCHED GIRL IS THAT YOUR PLAN? TO BE SENT AWAY SO YOUR MOTHER AND I COULD LIVE WITH THE DOGS?” Her father’s hateful words fade at the sound of her own sobbing. She clutches her cheek protectively and watches as gold droplets fall beside her mother’s new black and red pumps into a half-full bucket that is below its desired marking.

Why? She thought. Why her? She didn’t ask to cry gold or become the cash cow of her family. She didn’t ask for her value to lessen from daughter to a strange being.

She looks up slightly to see herself in the mirror. The girl looking back at her was dreadful. A mess to society. She wouldn’t be recognizable to anyone if she left this room.

Come on, yell back, she thinks, like the mirror was a television and she was a character. Why are you standing there like a weakling? Stand up to him! But she doesn’t. After everything occurring tonight, no words will summon themselves out of her throat.

And she couldn’t feel more ashamed.

School stinks like garbage fire after that night. The crease of her palms, her silk-white pillowcases, the handles on her bathroom sink—they are all covered in gold which made her parents happy and the beatings harder.

There is no other option.

She sits in between the wide gaps of the StoneStory Bridge, looking at the bright sky. Her ink eyes are devoid of anything as she stares into the obsidian-colored ocean that roars in each jungle-width wave it gives out. With faltering breaths, she looks between the ocean and the sky as she clutches one of the cold steel poles beside her. It takes one minute to lose air in the brain. It takes three to reach unconsciousness under the water. She could hold on for three. You just can’t think about it. Her sight steadily takes in the open sky. She wonders if anyone up there would scorn her? She wonders what they’d see.

Out of everyone who torments her, her parents, her school peers, her teachers, she hates herself the most. She cares so much about what others think that she doesn’t even know who she is anymore.

A silhouette who gets beat every other day? A girl destined to follow knees-on-the floor around people she thought could protect her? She is nothing and it isn’t fair.

The girls are ruthless with insufferable daddy issues. The guys are mostly Mack’s friends and have no problem aiding their friends' manipulation. But he is the worst of them all.

Mack knows all about her problems at home yet uses them against her any chance he gets. She never even wanted to date him! Everyone just kept pushing and pushing until she finally gave in. It is always some form of ultimatum.

But despite being humanity's worst creation—how come they are able to continue to live in this world karma-free while people like her get consumed relentlessly by suffering and torment?

Just don’t think about it.

But she can’t stop. Besides the overwhelming imagery of water filling her lungs, one question taps her brain.

Why does she have to leave?

She didn’t isolate a girl in middle school so badly she had to go to a psychiatric facility. She didn’t intentionally spill a drink on a stranger's carpet. And she didn’t steal a car!

Her death wouldn’t teach anybody anything. It’d be talked about for a week as one of those stories before she’s forgotten and those evil beings who she spent half her high school life trying to please moved on.

She’d leave behind a legacy of servitude and nothing more. Watching her feet dangle over the ocean, her mind continues to unravel around her.

Sitting next to her, nothing short of an apparition, the same boy from the drink table looks down at the waves with an appraising look.

“I’m still down there.”

“We’re different.”

“We’re not different, Lae.”

“Connor, please. Not right now.”

“Look at me,” he commands.

It’s basically already over…

“I said look at me!” He clutches her shoulders and wrenches her in his direction. Helaena blanches, hands covering her mouth as she peers into two dark, empty eye sockets that have gold still littering down the cheeks. “You see it, don’t you? What I can’t.”

“Put them back in,” she says between breaths, shutting her eyes.

Her fingers begin to twitch as the rough, cold air swishes past her body.

“This won’t teach them anything,” he continues. “This isn’t fighting. You're cowering again and I thought you were tired of that.”

“You fought! You didn’t cry, you didn’t give Dad what he wanted and he plucked out your eyes and dumped you i-i-in,” she looks back to the ocean. A deafening silence hit them both as she shakes her head and refuses to meet his gaze.

“I know where I went. So that’s why I need you to go somewhere better. Let them know what he did. Don’t go down like this.” His hold tightens on her as he repeats what she had said when she first saw his dead body. “Stay.”

She looks between the sky and ocean again before making her choice.

Being liked is security. It gives her comfort knowing no one finds any faults with her when she finds a million in herself. But it brings on less enjoyment in life. Helaena is tired of wasting her youth on people whose thoughts couldn’t even be wasted on her. So after confessing to the Sheriff what her parents had done to her brother, her parents are sentenced to federal jail, leaving Helaena with her alien fearing aunt who lived only five minutes from her old school district.

As she makes her way to school in a colorful purple sweatshirt with silver clips in her hair, nerves swirl around her stomach like a whirling glass but she remains walking. She wouldn’t let them win. She wouldn’t let their opinions weigh her down. She wouldn’t cry anymore tears. She’d just…live.