Tom McCallister

Ok. So I’m dead. Now I’m not saying this figuratively, I’m actually literally dead. You know it’s not as bad as you think it is. You can always go anywhere and do anything you want without people seeing you. The first time that I realized that I was dead was when I saw him cremating my body. At first, I really couldn’t make sense of anything; I even remember thinking, “wait, how am I here if I’m supposed to be there?!” That’s when it all clicked in my head. For a couple of days, I followed him around just to see what he would do after committing the crime. I thought he had a conscience but I guess not. Everyday I would sit in his rocking chair and rock back and forth observing him. It’s strange how he never notices that the chair is rocking with no live person in it. Oh, I do recall him thinking about it once, he just assumed that it was the draft coming in from outside. The good thing about being a ghost is that you always know what a person is thinking and that sure comes in handy if you’re trying to record every last detail about them down in your diary. I realize that you may be very confused right now so I’ll start from the very beginning, at the time that I was still alive.

It all started the day I moved to Forks, Washington D.C five years ago. I can recall that I was in a very bad mood that day; I mean who wouldn’t be? I left all my friends behind and I basically had to start my life over again. The first day I arrived in Forks was also the first day that I started school here. I was quite lonely that day until I met him, Tom McCallister. Everything seemed just too perfect about him. His hair was golden, his eyes, ferociously blue, his smile, as bright as can be, and finally his face, spotless. I thought he was a gift from God, literally. So just imagine how happy I was when I found out that he would be my tour guide around the school for the rest of the week. On top of that, we even had four classes together, all of which he sat an arm’s length away from me. By the end of the first week, Tom had asked me out and we were already going steady.

At first, he was very sweet. He would leave little cards or messages in my locker, send flowers to my house, and constantly remind me of how much he loved me. But then, the hitting started. Whenever I wasn’t at his house on time afterschool, he would push me against the wall and hit me bad. Once I tried to fight back but instead I landed a bruise right under my lip. My mom had asked me what happened when I got home. Of course I didn’t tell her what really happened. I took the obvious way out, I lied. Pretty soon after that, he started watching me wherever I went, started tracking my every move, never letting me wear anything but sweats and long sleeve sweaters. “To keep the other boys from wondering” he would say whenever I asked him. Always, after hitting me, he would hug me close and tell me that he was just trying to teach me a lesson. Sometimes, I’d tell him if he really loved me, he would stop hitting me. But that just made him angry again. There was never anything that I could do, I mean what could I have done? It was me against him. I think you’re smart enough to know who the obvious winner is. So I gave up resisting him. Whatever he wanted me to do, I did it. He even wanted me to move out of my parents’ house and move in with him. My parents thought he was a very nice guy, clean, rich, polite, the best of the best, so they let me go. But little did they know that they were sending their little Julie bee into a trap, where there’s only one way in but no way out. After moving in with him, it all became too much. I went from a straight A student to nothing and even lost contact with my parents and friends. Eventually, he made me drop out so I would have dinner on the table by time he got home from fooling around with other people.

Time went by very slowly those days when I was left alone until dinner time. Usually I would sit in the rocking chair in the corner of the house and write in my diary until I was balling my eyes out. Most days, I was too busy with the list of chores he left me. Finally one day, I couldn’t take it anymore. I had been contemplating this idea for weeks, suicide. It all made sense to me and just seemed too easy. Swallowing a few pills to end my life seemed utterly appealing. So I did it. I walked over to the medicine cabinet and pulled out a bottle of a no name brand of pills. I then made sure that I was very comfortable and finally ingested the whole bottle. As I lay on the bed and waited for the pills to take their effect, I thought about my parents and Tom. I wished that I could see my parents one last time… I wished that I could see Tom’s reactions when he found out that I was dead… I wished that…. The next thing I saw when I woke up was him cremating my body. He had put my remains in a jar and set it at the foot of my rocking chair. As I sit in my favourite corner of the house on this rocking chair, retelling you my story, I’m reminded of all the memories I had in this place, most of which were bad. But as I look around, I feel a sense of longing. I don’t believe I’ll ever leave this house or even this corner. So if you enter a strange old house anytime soon and see a rocking chair rocking back and forth by what appears to be by itself, you know it’s me. Maybe you’ll even hear the scribbling of my pen as I write down what I see. But for now, I think I’ll go back to watching him, while humming my favourite tune, recording everyone of his moves. I believe very much now that you would like to lock this chapter of your life away and open a new chapter. I give you permission to do so.

Cheers,

Julie Stuart

(written in 2008/2009)