Two of A Kind(Milly K) She walked down the staircase with a slight hesitation, understandable, given her track record with gravity. Her dark hair fell in front of her face as she tripped over the last step, landing with a stumble, before quickly recovering. A soft laugh came from her large mouth, her dark eyes crinkling with the action. Her hand reached for the tag on her laptop case, putting it back to where it had nestled before her stumble. Perfect, everything back to normal, as if nothing had ever happened. And that same thing applied to her. No matter what she did, it seemed to be only a matter of seconds before she was back to being the girl she was before. Nothing ever fazed her, nothing affected her, and nothing ever changed her. She was weird, but in a beautiful way. The music that filled her hard drive was the kind of thing nobody else had ever heard. Clothes from the men’s section hung on her unmistakably female figure, ironic, yet meant to be. Her bookshelf was filled with second hand books, highlighted and annotated. She was invincible, and unstoppable. She was unique, and she was independent. But all of this power had come from somewhere, and this was visible if you looked hard enough. Maybe it wasn’t in the punk band clothing, maybe it wasn’t in the black eyeliner, but it was in her skin. In the scars across her body, the attempt of her pain to escape, as it scratched at her skin, desperate for a release. But they were simply scars now, faded, the same as the pain, simply a memory. Once, she had given people the power to hurt her, but not anymore, now, she was bullet proof.

She looked up when she reached the bottom of the staircase, and saw the boy. He lugged his colourful, graffiti printed schoolbag over his left shoulder, and you could see that he was feeling the opposite of the bright pattern on his back. A dark cloud seemed to follow him everywhere, ruining him each and every day. Another boy that she thought was his friend came up to him, telling him to snap out of his fake depression, claiming to see through his attention seeking ways, accusing him of being a goth, a faker, an emo. Hearing the words come from the braces filled mouth of his friend made his heart break all over again, she could see that. His weary brown eyes were speckled with the pain he had seen, his eye lids holding in the tears he tried to never let fall. His teeth, with the gap in the middle, bit down on his bottom lip, trying not to let the trauma he was experiencing show. His arms were folded across his body, both protecting and comforting himself, hiding from their words. He uttered the words “I’m fine”, even though he knew he wasn’t. As he turned away, his smile fell, and his heart broke again, knowing that nobody knew how much he was suffering. As he walked off, by himself, the mask came off, and the tears began to roll down his face, making lines down his cheeks, not dissimilar to the scars across his forearms. He was broken inside, and falling apart on the outside, no matter how much he tried to hide it.

But she could see, because she had been there before. And in that moment, as his tears ran hot down his face, she decided that she would help him out of that dark place in the same way that she helped herself out all those years ago.

She strode over to him, trying not to intimidate him, but at the same time, making sure that she was in control of the situation. She knew how dangerous it could be if she wasn’t, and she was determined to not let that happen. After all, in her new life, she called the shots.

“Hey, look, you don’t know me, but all I can ask is that you trust me when I say that I know what you’re going through, I know how much it hurts, and if you’ll let me, I really hope that I can help you to at least get through it.” She rubbed her thumb against her forefinger as she spoke, all the while praying that he would let her in. But she need not have worried, as the boy broke down into sobs and fell into her arms, choking out thankyous to her. They stayed there for what seemed like hours, but was probably more like minutes. When he finally pulled himself together, she smiled at him, and led him over to the bench. She sat sideways, with her legs crossed like a primary school student, and her hands wrapped around her Doc Martens. He sat next to her, slightly embarrassed, very nervous, but secure, and grateful at the same time. She looked over at him biting his lip, with his shoulders hunched over and arms crossed, and had to hold in her tears herself.
“It’s okay, it’s okay that you can break down, we all need that sometimes, and believe me, I’ve had some of the most major breakdowns in the last few years.” She reassured him, but he still seemed cagey. “Maybe it will help you if I tell you my story. Three years ago, my uncle died, right after my ‘friend’ told my boyfriend that I wasn’t into him anymore. My uncle was the closest family member that I had, we were so close. Every year, we went to a music festival together, and he died the week before that festival. My boyfriend and I had broken up a week before that, and I was a mess as a result of that. So the musical festival was probably the hardest weekend of my life. But then I met a guy who, just for a minute, made me forget all of my pain, and made me feel almost happy. But he was older than me, lived up the coast. We knew it was never going to work, but I’ll be damned if we didn’t try. It worked for a few months, but then he cheated on me, and yet again, I was thrown back into the dark place that he had saved me from. I started to cut myself, across my stomach and feet, because I couldn’t have anyone know. I was the unbreakable girl, and I thought that if I hid it from everyone, that the pain would somehow go away.” By this point both of them were crying, and she had to hold her story for a minute before she could continue. It was weird how comfortable she felt sharing all her darkest stories with this boy, a stranger, and how familiar he felt to her. It was as if they were the same person in two different bodies. Taking in a deep breath, she began to speak again.

“But it didn’t. For more than eighteen months, I spent every night sitting on my bedside table, tears flowing from my eyes, and blood flowing from my cuts. And that was the only way that I could deal, the only way that I was going to survive. And I guess it took me so long because I was so blind to what was going on. In my attempt to hide the pain, I was making it worse. In trying to appear strong, I was quickly becoming weaker. I was losing it in an attempt to hold myself together, and eventually, that’s what really broke me. I don’t put labels on things. You can’t make anything into anything else just by giving it a name, and I don’t want to try and do that. And I guess that’s why labels like ‘emo’ or ‘goth’ or even ‘depressed’ hurt so much. You know that you’re not specifically one thing; I know that I’m not just one thing either. But at the same time, we have something in common. We’ve both been through things that no one should, and it’s up to us to get through them.” Tears fell down her face freely now, with the release of her story seeming to pull out the plug on her past. And slowly, he began to piece his story together in his mind, feeling almost ready to share it.

He reached across to her face, now bent down to the floor, hiding behind her curtain of hair, and wiped the salty tears off her cheeks. She looked up at him, and gave him a watery smile, touched by the small gesture.

“I guess you’re right, labels don’t help, they just isolate the people who need to be held closer than anyone else. And I know how you feel with the loss of that one family that you feel closer to than anyone else. My dad was like that to me. He woke me up every morning with a cup of apple juice, and he’d sit there on my bed as I drank it. He was the coach of my cricket team from my very first day playing. He helped me with my homework; we’d sit there for hours trying to understand the mind of my seventh grade science teacher. Not that we ever got that far, if it wasn’t on the first page of Google after a few searches he’d just write me a note saying that I had ‘family commitments’, then we’d go and play cricket. That was it for us; we’d talk about anything while pelting balls at each other. He was the only one that knew about my first girlfriend, the only one I told when I had my first kiss. I mean, I’m sure he told mum at some point, but she never said anything to me about it. We always had this bond, I can’t really describe it, but he just made me feel so safe when he was around me. All my life, my biggest dream was to grow up and be just like my dad. To be the man who would do anything for his kid, the man who was always there, and the man you could always talk to.” Tears were forming in his eyes as he bared his soul to the stranger, the pain clear in his dark eyes.

“But one day, he didn’t wake me up. I went into my parent’s room, and found mum sitting on the bed by herself, wrapped in the sheets, sobbing. I knew in that moment that something had happened to him. That morning, I got my own apple juice. I walked myself to school, as I always did, and when I came home, I was sure that he’d be waiting to help me with my homework. But he wasn’t. I’d cried as we talked, practicing bowling before, but that night, I was a total mess. That night, I sobbed and I bowled spinners, bawled as I bowled bouncers, and yowled as I bowled yorkers. He was my rock, and I didn’t know what to do without him. Anyway, eventually I found out that nothing had happened to him, it was what he had done that reduced my mother to a crying mess. He had cheated on her, and had left to be with his mistress. I never got any calls from him again, I’ve never seen him since, and to be honest, I just don’t know if I would even want to.” With this last admission, his façade broke down entirely, and he crumpled into himself and cried with such sheer sadness. As he released his pain through his eyes, his gnarled fingers stroked the red cuts on his wrists, pressing down on them in a way that she knew was causing him pain, but she also knew the relief that would be coming to him through that pain. But seeing him do the same thing that she had once done to herself hurt her, and not in a relieving way. Cautiously, she reached over to his hand, and pulled it way from the scars.
“You don’t need them anymore, you’re okay, and you can find other ways to deal with the pain,” she reassured him. He looked at her questioningly, but she smiled and intertwined her fingers with his. “Come on,” she said, standing, pulling on his arm. He seemed to doubt her for a moment, but when he saw the look him her eyes, stood next to her. She began to run away from the bench, pulling him with her. Still hand in hand, they half ran – half skipped down the street. He held her hand tighter as she ran faster, her hair flying out behind her, a flag of her independence.

At the end of the street, she pulled him into a park, and sat down on one of the swings. He joined her on the other, as she began to swing herself. “I always came down here when I needed to get away from everyone,” she told him, “it was the only place that I had to myself. I mean, no one would think to look for someone like me on a children’s playground would they?” He chuckled to himself, as he realised how obscure it was for a girl like her to be swinging like a young child. Actually it was really hard for him to picture her as a young child, what with her heavy makeup and band shirts, he told her this and she laughed as well. “Come on, you can’t just sit on a swing without swinging, that’s almost sacrilege!” she cried. He continued to sit, stationary on his swing. Seeing his blatant lack of respect for children’s toys, she leapt off her swing, stumbling as she landed harder than what she had expected. Quickly, she stepped out of the way of the swing, and stood behind him. They both laughed as she shoved her hands against his back and pushed him like a child. He copied her leap off the swing, landing much more gracefully. He laughed with a proud smile on his face, well, until the swing did what swings do best, and hit him in the back. Then it was her turn to laugh.

“Let’s go get a drink and talk some more,” she suggested, right at the same time as he asked “do you want to go get some food?” Again, the pair laughed and headed off in the direction of the café strip in town. He went to turn into the Starbucks, but she quickly grabbed his hand again and pulled him back. “You really expect someone like me to be as main stream as a Starbucks kind of girl?” He shook his head, a smile on his face, embarrassed at his own main stream habits. She led him into a tiny café that he had never even noticed before. She acknowledged the barista and plonked onto one of the beanbags in the back corner. He followed with just as little class, but to be fair, no one looks classy sitting down on a beanbag. The barista, covered in tattoos, came over to take their order. “Two caramel lattes please Danni,” she asked, not even giving him a glance. “Trust me, they’re to die for,” she said to him. Danni laughed and went back to the counter to make their coffees.

“So when did you start cutting?” she asked, no introductory small talk, just straight to the nitty gritty. But he had expected nothing else. If there was one thing he had picked up about this weird, wonder of a girl, it was that she was in charge of what happened, and it was no use to try and change the course of events.

“A couple of weeks after Dad left us I guess. I don’t really know, time kind of lost all meaning; it was just another thing to deal with really. It was kind of the only way that made it bearable. I know that it isn’t the healthiest thing to do, but it’s really the only thing I have left. Before he left, I used to go and practice my bowling until I forgot about whatever was making me upset, but now anything to do with cricket just makes me want to cry,” he spoke with such honesty, laced with so much pain that you felt every word. It wasn’t as if he was saying much, but it was the way that he said it; you were just there in that moment with him, feeling his pain.
“Believe me, I know how you’re feeling. It really does feel like the only way out, as if the hurting should be equal on the outside and inside, I know. But believe me, there are other ways. It doesn’t seem like it, but I won’t stop until you realise that you’re going to be okay eventually. I can’t fix what happened, and neither can you, but we can fix how it affects you,” she said.

“How do you know exactly what I need to hear?” he asked, stunned at her understanding of his situation. “Because it’s all the things that I wanted and needed to hear when I was in your shoes. Well, not actually in your shoes, I wouldn’t be caught dead in Volleys,” she laughed, trying to cover how much her admission had hurt her. Danni brought over their lattes, but didn’t say anything, seeming to know how intimate and painful their conversation was. He took a sip, despite the fact that he hated coffee, and tried to avoid it as much as possible. But when he tasted the sweet brown liquid, his thinking was reversed. It was amazing, a contradiction between bitter and sweet, just like the girl sitting next to him. She smiled as she watched him experience the coffee, knowing that it was just that, an experience.

“What happened with your friend this morning? You two seemed pretty tense,” she pondered.

“Well, he saw the cuts on my wrists and I guess he freaked. I know that I’ve been pulling away from my friends since dad left, but I didn’t realise how much it was affecting them. Having him lose it at me kind of made me think about how all this has been for them. I don’t mean to cut myself off; it’s just that no one seems to understand me anymore. They all think that I’m over reacting. Well, everyone except you that is.”

Once they had finished their coffees, and Danni had won the argument about who would pay for their coffees, they left the café. “Where to now?” he asked. She said nothing in reply, simply taking his hand and leading him back towards the park. They began to cross the bridge, her hand running across the blue painted railing as she looked out over the river. When they reached the middle, she stopped and leant out over the railing, looking straight down. “For a while there, I used to think about climbing to the other side of this fence and throwing myself off it,” she admitted. He took in a sharp breath at the thought of this beautifully crazy girl not being alive anymore. Seeing this, she quickly reassured him that she didn’t plan on doing that anymore, but that being up here still made her feel slightly anxious. “I guess that’s why I come up here, I love the feeling of knowing that if I were to jump off, I would die, but knowing that I have the power to not do that, and that, in my mind is one of the most beautiful things in my life.” She smiled at him, and reached into her denim satchel and pulled out two dollar coins. She handed him one, and told him to imagine all of his pain flowing into the coin. “Imagine it taking all of your hurting from you. Think about the release you feel not having these thoughts within you anymore. Now when you’re ready, throw the coin into the river, taking with it all your sadness.” She dropped her coin into the river, as one solitary tear dropped from her chin. He too dropped his coin into the river, staying in the same position, his arm extended over the railing, until all the ripples from the disturbance disappeared.

Eventually, he pulled himself away from the railing, and continued to cross the bridge. He smiled to himself, thinking of how long he had craved to have someone who understood how he was feeling, and how randomly she had appeared. Meanwhile, she was thinking the same kind of thought, wondering why he had appeared now, when she needed someone who she could openly talk to years ago. She hadn’t had anyone then, and now that she was okay, he appeared. But she pushed the thought to the back of her mind, and went back to helping her new friend.

Together, they walked to a newsagent. She led him, still holding his hand, to the back of the store, where the pens were sold. She let go of his hand, and reached up, on tip toes to the boxes of pens. She grabbed a few, then came back down to look at them. She shuffled the boxes around until she found the one she wanted. It was full of red biros. Without saying a word, she walked back to the counter, paid for the whole box and walked out of the shop. He trailed behind her like a lost puppy, slightly confused and very intrigued.

They sat down on the step outside the newsagent, and she told him, “I bought a box the same as this about 17 months after I started cutting. Each time I wanted to cut, I would allow myself one actual cut, and then would draw the rest on. The pain was still there from the one cut, but I still got the relief from the other fake ones. I have no idea where I had heard about that, but the idea came back to me at that point, and it made all the difference for me. I guess it was like weaning a baby off his mother’s milk. Slowly, you can remove the habit from someone’s life, and after another month or so, I wasn’t craving the blade anymore. I mean, it was another year or so until I stopped drawing the cuts on, but that wasn’t doing any harm to me anymore, so it was okay, I wasn’t putting myself in danger anymore. I don’t know if this’ll help you, but it’d mean the world to me if you could try.” With that, she tucked the box into his bag, and smiled at him. He nodded, and promised that he’d try.

“Okay, one last stop for us today,” she said, standing again, and pulling him up. She looped their hand together one last time and began walking. Like the first time, they started run-skipping, laughing and smiling without a care in the world about anyone other than themselves and the person holding their hand. They continued to skip down the street, passing the businessmen in suits on their lunch breaks, women pushing their prams on the way to mothers group, and elderly couples heading back home for a nap. Eventually, they reached the old train station.

It hadn’t been used in years, since the days when her father travelled to the small town from his home in the city. But the tracks were still clear and looked after, a beautiful reminder of the days that had come to pass. She reached into her satchel again and pulled out a pad of paper. She asked him for a pen, and while she pulled out two sheets, he reached into the bag and pulled out a couple of his new biros. “I guess the last thing for us to do, is to write a letter about everything that hurts, and everything you’d say to the people that hurt you. Just let everything you feel out onto the page, don’t worry about grammar or anything, just release everything and vent. It always helps me to feel better.”

They sat in silence in the abandoned train station, both lost in their thoughts and words. She looked over at him, and saw that he had addressed his letter to his father. It made her smile to think that he was finally coming to terms with the pain that that man had brought into his life. That was when she realised why he had come into her life now. The last step she needed to rescue herself was to rescue someone else. Finally, after too many long years of pain and struggle, her life had come full circle.

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