An Innocent, Broken.

I am Sorry I am posting this late. I was called into work today from 12-12, and forgot to post this before I went in. Here it is though. Enjoy.

The last time I saw Jamie Meyers was almost 10 years ago, just after I graduated from high school. She was 14 years old, a high school freshman still in pigtails and braces. Never before was there a girl as sweet, innocent and pretty as Jamie. Every Sunday morning she went to church and every Tuesday and Thursday afternoons she volunteered at the local retirement home, reading to old folks whose families had abandoned them. She was an honor roll student and varsity cheerleader, the only freshman on the team. Simply put, she was the all-American girl. Now Jamie Meyers, sweet little Jamie Meyers, is dead, and I can’t help feeling it is my fault.
I am writing this in hopes that, well, I am not really sure what I hope it will do. I just know that if I keep this all inside, it will eat away at me until I follow Jamie’s lead and drown my sorrow in a vodka and sleeping pill cocktail. That’s right. Jamie wasn’t killed. She didn’t die of natural causes. It wasn’t some rare disease or cancer that took the most pure girl I had ever known from this earth. The doctors and police called it suicide but I know better. I know what really killed her. It was life that claimed the girl, but I loaded the gun.
My part in this story started almost ten years ago, at my high school graduation party. Jamie was just getting ready to start her summer vacation and I was getting ready to move out to Los Angeles. I had received a full scholarship to UCLA’s business school and was accepted into their very selective, Leaders of Tomorrow, summer program. I felt like such hot shit. It would be the last time I saw most of my friends, Jamie included, for a very long time and I was alright with that. To be honest, I was happy to get away from it all.
I’ll make this part of the story short, as I am not too proud of any of it. As will happen when high school kids get together at a party, my friends and I were all drinking, heavily. I even managed to convince Jamie that it would be ok if she drank, too, something she had never done before. I used all the clichés in the book; everyone is doing it, it will help you have a better time, it will loosen you up, etc. It didn’t take too much to convince her and in only a few short minutes, she was growing increasingly buzzed. Finally, as the night was dying down, I found myself alone in my room with her.
I don’t remember how we got there or who made the first move, though I suspect it was me, but it didn’t take long before we were both lying naked in my bed. She was young, foolish and drunk and despite those facts, or maybe because of them, I fucked her. She was saving herself, I knew that. Hell, everyone knew that. I didn’t care. I am not proud of myself for it, but there it is. I took the innocence from her. That was the last time I spoke to, or even saw Jamie Meyers for ten years.
After graduating from UCLA four years later, I was offered a promising job in Los Angeles, in a high profile marketing firm, which I gratefully took. I rarely made the trip home, aside from on Christmas and Thanksgiving. In fact, I almost never took a day off in my six years there. My entire life revolved around that job. Then about two months ago, without warning, I was laid off. No explanation, no compensation, just a pink slip and an hour to clear out my desk. I found myself without a job and with no real friends worth sticking around for, so at the end of the month, I packed everything I owned into a U-Haul and moved back home.
I could have started searching for a new job but I decided that more than anything else, I needed to take some time off. As I said, I had been working for six years without anything remotely resembling a vacation and was in desperate need of a break. After playing catch up with my family for a few days, I decided to look up some of my old high school friends to see who was still in town. I managed to track down one of the guys I used to hang around with, his name isn’t important, and he asked me if I would be up for going to a titty bar he frequented a few towns over. Not knowing what else there was for a pair of single guys in their late 20’s to do in my home town, I told him that would be fine and asked him to pick me up around nine. This was last night.
By the time we got to the place, we had already done all the catching up I cared to do. All I really wanted was to have a few drinks and head home. When we reached the bar, I ordered two shots of whiskey (which we toasted to “the good ole’ days”) and a beer for each of us and we took a table towards the back of the room with a good view of the stage.
Each of the women who came onto the stage was more pathetic looking than the previous. Either we had come on a night where all of the A girls were off, or this was the saddest looking bunch of dancers ever employed at a strip joint. My friend didn’t seem to mind and after a few drinks he left me alone. He was headed into the back room for a private dance and god only knows what else. This didn’t really bother me.
For some reason I felt less ashamed of the situation when I wasn’t sitting with someone who thought we had stumbled into the playboy mansion. I ordered another beer, lit up a cigarette and turned my attention back towards the stage. I hadn’t noticed, but all the dancers save for one had were gone. There was something about the girl that caught my eye.
She looked like the kind of girl who had been a perfect ten when she was younger, but due to a series of unfortunate events, maybe a few unplanned kids or a string of boyfriends who were a little two rough with her, had been worn down to a shadow of her former self. More than anything else, though, I noticed her eyes. They were the most hollow eyes I had ever seen. They were ghost eyes.
For one brief moment that seemed to last an eternity, our eyes met and I felt there was a sense of recognition that passed between us. I can’t be sure if it was a trick of the dim light but it looked like a single tear rose in each of her eyes. As those tears dripped down her weathered face, I was sure that what little life was left in those eyes dripped out along with them. And then it was over. The music stopped and she left the stage.
I turned around and saw my friend coming back to the table and before he sat down, stood up and told him I was ready to head out. I made up some bullshit excuse about having to get up early the next morning and wanting to get some sleep. Whether he believed me or not, I didn’t care. From the stupid look on his face it was clear that he had gotten what he came for and was also ready to go, too. I paid our bill and we headed out the car.
While we were driving home, I told my old friend about the girl on stage and how I couldn’t shake the feeling that I knew her. He didn’t seem surprised by this and told me that he knew exactly who she was. I joked that I got the feeling he knew all of the girls that worked there. He laughed and said that may be true, but we had actually gone to high school with the girl and I should have known her too. Her name was Jamie something or other. All I could say to that was, “Oh.” The immediate realization that it was little Jamie Meyers hit me harder than anything had in longer than I could remember. What could have possibly happened to an angel like Jamie that would cause her to wind up in that sort of place? What cruel trick had life played on her?
Almost as though he could read my thoughts, my friend told me that he always thought it was a shame the way she had wound up. I asked him if he knew what had happened to her, and as if he couldn’t wait to retell the story, he jumped right into it.
Apparently, she never returned to high school after her freshman year. No one knew for sure, but the rumor was that somehow Jamie got knocked up that summer. Her good Christian parents were so ashamed of having a pregnant, 14 year-old daughter, that they forced her to abort the child and then sent her off to live with distant cousins. After a few years, she tried to return home but her parents had moved away without telling her where they went. Having no place to stay and no means to support herself, she started dancing at the bar they went to just to make ends meat. She had been working there ever since.
I can honestly say that in my entire life, nothing has ever hit me so hard. The pain that I felt was like a taking a bullet to the stomach. There was no doubt in my mind what had happened. Jamie had become pregnant the night of my graduation party and the reason we never spoke again was that she had been sent away. It was all my fault. It was all my fault. An angel had fallen and it was all my fault.
I can’t really remember any more of the night, but when I finally came out of a state of shock after of hearing what had happened, I was lying in my bed at home. I found myself covered in a cold sweat with a half full bottle of whiskey on the pillow next to me. All I can recall before passing out was resolving to return to the bar the next night to take Jamie Meyer away from that place. I didn’t know how I intended to do that, or what I would say when I confronted her, or if she would even speak to me, but I had to do something. If I had to jump on stage, throw her over one shoulder and shoot my way way out, I would do it. Then the booze took over and I passed out.
That was last night. When I woke up this morning, I had a fierce headache. No amount of water or asprin could have alleviated the pain. This was pain that came from deep within me and was not susceptible to hangovers or dehydration. Nonetheless, I went down to the kitchen hoping that some orange juice, coffee, eggs and toast might help. My parents had both gone to work, thank god, so I had the house to myself. There was still some lukewarm coffee in the pot, which I decided would suffice, and just enough orange juice left for one last glass. I quickly scrambled some eggs and threw some bread in the toaster. Once everything was ready, I brought it over to the kitchen table and sat down to eat.
It wasn’t until I was half way through my breakfast that I saw the note my mother had left for me. It read “Good morning, honey. I hope you slept well. I will be home around 5 o’clock. Maybe we could go out for dinner together. Take a look at today’s newspaper, there is a story in there about a girl I think you knew in high school. Love you, Mom”. I lifted the mug of coffee to take a sip as I moved the note aside to look at the article my mom had directed me to. When I looked at the headline and the corresponding picture, my mug dropped from my hand and fell with a resounding crash on the floor, scattering coffee and shards of porcelain around my feet.
The pain I felt the previous night, upon hearing about what had happened to Jamie was nothing compared to what I felt at that moment. It was as if the world stopped spinning and everything had spun into a chaos that blotted out the room around me. At that moment, I knew the world I had known now ceased to exist. The headline read, “Local Girl Found Dead”. I forced myself to read on, “Local girl, Jamie Meyers, was found dead last night in her home. Police found an empty bottle of sleeping pills and several bottles of alcohol around her person.”
I didn’t need to continue to read the article. I knew it would go on to say something about how the cause of death was an intentional overdose and the reason for her suicide was unknown. I was sure that I was the only one who could possibly know her reasoning. I was her reason. I was the reason an angel had fallen. It was life that claimed the girl, but I loaded the gun.