But really, the tragedy in the poem is not Lady Shalott’s death. It’s all about that one line: “Lancelot mused a little space, he said she has a lovely face. God in his mercy lent her grace, the Lady of Shalott.” It’s that small moment of regret, Michael, that makes her story tragic.
It’s all about what could have been, and what can never be. You will have that regret, Michael. You will make my story tragic. And that will be the curse YOU will live with.
Yours forever & never more,
Melissa
What the hell? What was I thinking? How sappy. I feel so stupid. I read the letter like five times, trying to remember writing it that night before I went out with Ally and got really shit-faced. Was I already high? Maybe it was intentional—maybe I did want to die. It makes me feel sick. Disgusted with myself.
My story isn’t beautiful or tragic. It’s just another story about another cursed girl living a shitty life.
Fifty-Six
I spend the next few days in my room. Not because I’m hiding. I just feel like being alone. I don’t call any of my friends. I don’t know if I ever want to call them. I reread a couple of my favourite books. I write in my journal, filling it up with everything that has happened to me in the past few months. I sort through all my clothes and chuck out about half of them. I even clean under my bed and find a souvenir hairball from Ralph. My mom checks in on me a million times a day, asking me how I feel, but she doesn’t force me to talk. Instead, she rents me movies, gets me pizza and anything I want. I stay in my pyjamas and I don’t answer my phone. And it’s like I’m seven years old again, staying home with the flu. My mom feels like “a mom.” And it all feels kinds of nice.
After a few days, she tells me she wants me to go to our family doctor, right after she takes me to the psychiatrist on Wednesday afternoon. “I want everything checked,” she says. “Everything.”
“They already checked me at the hospital, blood and everything … I’m okay,” I protest. I know she’s talking about the guys I’ve been with and how I didn’t use a condom the past few times. I guess hearing about how many there were kind of
freaked her out.
“No argument about this one, Mel.”
I don’t have the energy to put up a fight, but I do tell her I’ll go only to a clinic where no one knows me. So after I get loaded up with depression medication from the shrink, she takes me to some drop-in clinic downtown and sits with me in the waiting room full of pamphlets on every possible disease you could ever get from having sex, which just makes you terrified about being there, and if my mom wasn’t with me I’d run out the door.
In the examination room, the nurse talks to me, asking the sickest questions. How many partners? How much unprotected sex? Anal sex? Oral sex? Use of sex toys? Blah blah blah. I feel like a total slut. Then she tells me about all the tests—HIV, gonorrhea, everything. By the time she’s done talking, I’m so scared I want to throw up, because even though you learn all that stuff at school, you just don’t think anything bad will happen to you. And when you’re in that little office with nowhere to go, it’s like sitting before the all-knowing God of STDs and you must face up to all your stupid sins.
“Was it okay?” my mom asks on the way home. She’s driving real slow because it’s the first snowfall of the winter.
“Fine,” I answer.“I feel kind of sick.” I roll down the window to feel the cold air on my face. I’m thinking of all those little bits of my body I’ve left behind at the clinic: my blood, my fluids, my cells. I think about how they hold the truth to my past. And how, even if you want to forget your mistakes, the body will hold on to your secrets forever.
Deep, deep in your cells, the truth will always be there, threatening to be revealed.
Fifty-Seven
When Sisyphus almost reaches the top of the hill, I wish that for a second, just a split second, maybe even just one-millithousandth of a second, there could