Not Yet

The last day I remember was October third, and I can't believe I missed my own birthday. My name is Roxas and I turned fifteen years old three and a half months ago. I keep a calendar beside my bed to keep track of as much as I can.

I wake up at an alarming hour of six o'clock on a Friday morning and I'm surprised to find my clock to be set that way; two hours earlier than normal. Who would ever want to wake up that early, especially when school starts at eight and is just around the corner? I guess that would be me… sort of.

After I set the clock and a few other thinks askew about my room right, I look at myself in the mirror and rethink the absurdity of the hour. I needed to do some damage control. I guess that when I'm under, I forget to do a few things too, since my normally short, blond hair is now much longer and a chestnut brown through and through. But after four… or I guess five years now of waking up then blanking out for random periods of time, nothing should surprise me anymore. Now, I really just try to ignore it and live the way I want to live. You never know what day you're going to wake up on next. I dye my hair back.

Going to school is always weird on that first day back. It seems I don't hang out with my friends when I'm gone either. It's probably for the best. They all know of my little condition, and that I can just disappear sometimes. A friend is a friend, and they're all good friends like that.

After school, I go to a payphone and fish out the business card in the back of my wallet. I don't even want to think about half the stuff I found in there. "Hello? Ms. Sayoko? It's Roxas. Umm, do you have time for me today? I know it's short notice." She's one of those private-owned, businesswomen who conduct their practices in their own living room sort of thing. She always makes time for me.

I sit on the vinyl couch of her office space and I tell her everything. I tell her about how unnervingly clean my room was this morning. I tell her about the screensaver of a band I do not like and the poster of a videogame I have not played. I tell her about how I opened my closet to find the left side still being filled with a bunch of t-shirts of colours I do not wear. I'm strictly black, white and grey with accents of blue and red here and there. Bright orange and highlighter yellow? Not my first choice.

It led to when I went into the kitchen that morning and my mother spotted the shirt I was wearing of my favourite band and my freshly dyed blond hair. She looks sad for a fraction of a second until that familiar flicker of annoyance crosses her face. Then when she's done staring at my appearance, looks me in the eye and says levelly, "Good morning, Roxas." And I wonder if my mother is ever going to be genuinely happy to see me.

Over the past few years and a little bit of growing up on my end, my relationship with her has undergone a few changes. Before I decided to just let go of this inevitable confusion, I naturally asked her for help. She's my mother, right? But the best thing she's ever done for me, in my opinion, was refer me to Miss Sayoko. I suppose I can say that this is better than how we used to be.

That flicker of annoyance I mentioned used to last much longer, forming itself into generic phrases like: "I don't know what happened to your skateboard," and "I never touched your CDs; you moved them yourself," and my all-time, personal favourite, "Sora, will you just fucking stop it?" I would throw a fit and we'd be at each other for hours, screaming and yelling at the top of our lungs. I hate it when she calls me that. So I guess I can't really complain about how she is now. At least she talks to me. And you know… feeds me and stuff.

While Sayoko is patiently listening and taking down notes, I remember something else about my day. I tell her: a boy, with aqua green eyes and platinum-blond hair, almost silver, who shares three out of five of my classes, would not stop looking at me. I got his name from one of my closest friends, Hayner, whom Sayoko has heard about before. Hayner says this guy's name is Riku. Sayoko tilts her head and stops writing to look at me, encouraging me to go on. "Hayner says that Riku's my best friend these days," I say. Sayoko smiles and I just shrug my shoulders. So many friends have come and gone over these years and I've learned who are my real friends because of that. If this Riku guy is my best friend right now, I shouldn't have to feel guilty about not remembering him. He should know, right?

The last thing Sayoko and I talk about is my medication. She's given me a new bottle of these pills I'm supposed to take every day. I've been blanking out for longer periods of time and I don't know how I feel about that anymore. All I can really do is make do with what I have. Life's a gift, and I know who I am. My name is Roxas.

I take the pills just before I go to bed and mark another day that I've been awake on my calendar. Slipping into bed, a song on the radio lulls me to sleep. The last thing I think of, as always, is that I hope I wake up tomorrow. I hope I wake up the day after this one.

And before I know it, or commit it to memory, I'm dreaming about a boy with long, spiky, brown hair, sitting in the cafeteria of my school with a bunch of people I've seen from my classes.

A redheaded girl turns to the boy and asks him, "So Sora, have you told Riku about Roxas yet?" The boy is in the process of putting a white coated pill in his mouth and unscrewing the cap of his water bottle. His lips curl into a sort of guilty smile before he swallows.

"No. Not yet."

~ fin ~

This is the original version of a monologue I did for school.
Unbeta-d and stuff. Sorry. Hope you guys liked it :]

YHS
xDelfin