Losing It
[cell phone buzzing]
“Hey! Umm… Listen, we need to talk.”
“I said I’m fine, Chelsea.”
“Yeah, yeah, totally. This—this is something else.”
“Where are you?”
“Come by my place in an hour.”
“Hey. What’s wrong?”
Chelsea stays quiet.
“This is not about you, is it? You only said that so you could drag me here.”
“I… I’m fine, really, I didn’t know what else to do. I’m afraid, okay? You’re worrying too much about things and that makes me worry too much about them too. I feel anxious all the time. I know you want our plans to work out, but you just can’t control every step along the way. The world around you is not yours to play on a bunch of strings. You can’t foresee or predict the futu—”
Alex zones out staring at the little helicopter on Chelsea’s blouse. He flies away into the distance, but the flight is cut short by the whirring blades that suddenly malfunction.
“Mayday, mayday, this is H4 to control tower. We’re going down. I repeat, we’re going down.“
A sharp, whooshing sound slices through the skies. The helicopter echoes through the buildings, catching speed toward a busy intersection where Chelsea turns around moments before imminent disaster.
[echoing voices] “Are you there? Hello?”
The whirring blades get louder and louder and closer and closer to the ground, but the voice gets louder too.
“Hello?”
Alex flinches when she claps her hands right before his nose. He’s not sure if it was Chelsea or the crash that snapped him out of it.
“I—I’m sorry. I just don’t know what’s been happening with me lately. Truth is, I haven’t really been myself.”
“No shit,” she crosses her arms.
“I don’t even know what’s wrong, I just know… it’s not right.”
“You know exactly what’s wrong. But you choose to lie to yourself like you did just now, and then lie back to me.”
“I’m not lying to you, I would never.”
“I know you don’t mean to, but you do.”
A moment of silence follows.
“Do you ever think about how you’re going to die?” Chelsea asks.
“What? What kind of question is that?”
“Just answer me.”
“Well… I mean… Not really?”
“Try again.”
“Okay… Um… Sometimes I feel like my head is a ticking bomb. I see myself walking, in my thoughts, detached from my surroundings when I hear a truck and find myself in the middle of the street.”
The screeching tires of a heavy, red truck that’s lost control are heard by both of them.
Chelsea’s voice slows down, as if she’s carefully picking every next word before it comes out. She sounds sorrowful.
“And do you think that’s normal?”
He reaches for her hand, but she keeps her arms crossed and tilts back further away from him.
“Look, I’m sorry. I never meant to put you—to put us through any of this. There’s just so many things to do.”
“But you can put a stop to it at any time, Alex. It hurts me that you’re so busy to even realize that it’s not okay. You don’t answer my calls, you don’t pause to care, you don’t come to me, least of all consider it. It’s like—It’s like you’re not even here. If I asked you what day it is today… well?”
“It’s Saturday.”
“And where are we going tomorrow?”
His face drops when he finally remembers, but Chelsea doesn’t let him answer.
“We were supposed to go see my parents. For my birthday. Which is today.”
“I’m sorr—”
“I don’t wanna hear it,” she gets up from the chair and walks towards the door.
“I’m going alone. But I’ll see you when I get ba—” her voice breaks and she gulps, dropping the last few letters down to the bottom of her throat. Such an argument had never taken place between the two.
“I’m sorry,” he speaks softly from outside the apartment, ashamed.
With her hand shaking on the door handle, Chelsea’s struggling to hold the tears on the slim margin of her eyelids.
She finally breaks down but quickly hides away behind the closing door. Her head falls into her palms.
“It’s her birthday. And I forgot…”
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