sneak peak at Ch 1..Broken Within

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Broken Within
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Chapter 1
So there I was, completely, and utterly, alone.
The church was filled with sad and sobbing people. I was in the front pew. The pastor’s voice hummed in with what I knew were the ceremonial words spoken at many funerals I had been to in my short fifteen years of life. But this one was wrong. It was more than wrong; this had to be a nightmare.
I stayed in the silence of my mind. I died in the darkness of my heart. I wept in the loneliness of my soul.
They all saw me, a short, dark haired girl who had died in everything she was. They saw the girl who cried with a pale face and shell shocked eyes, they saw the pain and brokenness that carried through my tears, but what they didn’t see was the girl who died inside of me. To anyone else, this may sound like the same thing, but I knew the difference of the true darkness and destruction that gripped a hold of me. A devastation so real, so raw deep inside me that was greater than I could break free from. It consumed everything I was, and it ached down to my core.
My brother, my heart and soul, my protector and my best friend, was no more. Why not me, I snarled at God. Why did I have to be left here to feel this pain? It was unfair, and it was cruel. I hated that moment in my life, I hated that the one man I trusted was gone, and now I hated that God left me here broken, lost and tainted.
I had replayed Levi’s life a thousand times as we approached this horrid day. He was a teenage boy who had gotten caught up in the world of drugs and false acceptance from a group of kids. Each one was eccentric and unique in a way that blended together to form a popular version of misfits. In their world drugs were glorified as popular? This always baffled me more than anything. What was attractive about being a druggy? Levi had always baffled me with his choices though; he had a very unique style only he could pull off.
Levi wore expensive jeans that fit loose with either a band t-shirt or a fancy button up collar shirt. If it was colder out he would wear an expensive sweater or fancy jacket. At times you might have even seen him wear a suit to school for fun. He worked hard at the sea food restaurant to afford his style and his addiction. His hair was tight lock curls down to his chin and he had the same dark hair, dark eyes and olive complexion I had. He was a perfect boy version of me.
I felt that his being older only foreshadowed some of the stupidity that I would take part in. But never did I imagine his stupidity would bring him to his death. We were only two years apart, he was a junior in high school and I was still in eighth grade. How could I be fifteen years old and in eighth grade? Well, simple, I failed kindergarten. I know, right, who failed kindergarten? Me, Selene Liebe Seele. I couldn’t hold onto my emotions and was not “fit” for the next level. Talk about being made fun of!
Several months back Levi realized there was more to life than the stupidity of drugs, so he decided to walk away from it. He wanted to do it on his own. After months of trying, he realized he truly did have
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an addiction and would need professional help. This is when he presented to mom his plan. He already had tickets to one of his weirdo concerts, but after that, he was going to enter rehab. He aspired to open his own landscaping company and even presented to her his business proposal. This was the old Levi, very money minded and business oriented. He could achieve this goal and with a winning smile to seal the deal mom agreed to his conditions; let him leave for a two day concert with all his friends, and then he would be done with drugs forever.
The day Levi left we all kissed him goodbye, but I didn’t want to let him go. I lingered behind the rest of my family as they said their goodbyes and I pleaded for him to stay. I hugged him and told him how much I loved him, “I’ll miss you Levi” I said as tears burned in my eyes, I felt like a fool, but my stomach ached and my nervous were on overdrive. He nodded as if to say he would miss me too. “You don’t understand, I am really gonna miss you.” Levi looked into my eyes and lifted his face into a soft smile and he hugged me tightly, “it’s only three days, I won’t be gone long.” I nodded and swiped at the tears rolling down my cheek. He kissed my forehead and walked out to his car and drove off.
Levi and his friends arrived at the campsite where they would be staying during the two day concert. They built their fire after the site was pitched. It was one in the morning, and they were in Arkansas, which was around nine hours away from our cozy little Fort Wayne, Indiana. Levi got up after taking several different drugs; he told his friends “Gods calling me, man” and walked away. This was when he should have realized that drug buddies were not the same as true friends. No one followed him, and no one was concerned when he didn’t return that night. They assumed that he found other people to hang out with. But what really happened, that night? Levi disappeared.
My mom and stepdad flew to Arkansas and searched the town with the local police as soon as they got word of Levi’s disappearance. The search efforts were extensive and they even dredged the Mississippi River. We put up missing persons posters in Arkansas, Tennessee and Indiana. I felt my soul breaking the moment he left town. I understood why when I found out he was missing. My connection with Levi was like the kind of connection twins sometimes have. I knew in my heart he had died. But as much as I knew that, I was allowed to hope and dream for what my gut told me was wrong.
I had to carry on through school stuck in this horrible life of the unknown that made it impossible to find a sense of ease. My friends didn’t understand me. I was treated like an alien no one wanted to talk to. I mean, what could they say? “So, hey, Selene, I heard your brother is missing. He was a druggy, right? Oh, I’m sure he will be okay.” They would share their uneasy looks, I would know, just as they would that he was dead. I didn’t blame anyone, it’s not like there was a common protocol for situations like this. I just wished I had some power to disappear myself, at least from sight.
As days turned into weeks, it got easier to be a zombie at school, and as I went through the motions, I found a way to get through each day. This was about the time when my nemesis Bailey approached me in the lunch line. “Hey, Selene, I’m sorry about everything that’s going on. My brother Ben is friends with Levi, and I just wanted to let you know our family is praying for yours.”
My jaw dropped, but then tears filled my eyes. I did not want to start crying in front of everybody. I nodded my head and took a deep breath. “Thank you, Bailey. That means a lot to me.” This was not how
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Bailey normally treats me. I have dealt with her dirty looks and her bullying against me since sixth grade. Last year she even poured orange pop on my shirt during field day.
Bailey and I formed a strange bond and she was no longer my nemesis. Although it was strange, in the darkest hours of life, people just became people. All the drama just didn’t matter to me anymore. I started eating lunch at Bailey’s table after that. She was a girl no one messed with. She could be really nasty, but by the way she shielded me, I knew she had a heart. Bailey allowed me to be a zombie without question. She didn’t give me uneasy looks or make me feel like I had to talk. Bailey also would still talk to me as if I were there. The best I could describe it was that she was good about not talking about the obvious without disrespecting what was deep inside me.
It had been almost four weeks (twenty-six days, to be exact) when my mom received a call from the detective working on Levi’s disappearance. They found a body washed up on the side of the Mississippi River. The description of my brother could fit, but the body was beginning to disintegrate from being in the water so long. They were taking the body to the morgue, and they were going to do an autopsy and would need Levi’s dental records.
As if I hadn’t already known the truth in my heart, I knew even more then that it was his body. My mom tried to stay positive and told me it might not be him, so we shouldn’t jump to conclusions. My stepdad was silent. My other two siblings were so young that they weren’t included in the details. Mom just told them that they might have found him. It was going to take time to find out the truth, and I prayed even heavier that, if he really was gone, it would be his body so our family could have peace. Twenty-six days of not knowing was like sticking a knife halfway into your heart, never fully killing you, but always causing pain. It was a nagging feeling of wanting someone just to drive it the rest of the way in or yank it out.
I wanted to stay locked inside until we had a definite answer, but my mom told me I couldn’t live that way. What if it wasn’t him? I couldn’t shut down every time a “what if” came in. She was wise. I would have gone crazy, and school was something to do. The next couple of days were filled with anticipation of the truth. Three days after we heard of the body, I felt the truth deep within my soul. It was stronger than I could explain. It grew heavier and heavier, and by lunchtime I couldn’t hold it in. I stopped short of the lunchroom, went straight to the payphone, and dialed home. My mom answered with a weak hello.
In a shaky voice, I said, “It was him, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, Selene. I’m on my way.”
It wasn’t until I was in my bed that night that I had my first clear thought: “How?” I tried to focus on the things my mom had said about the autopsy. She had read the report that they faxed to her: “no foul play,” “no rail on the river’s edge.” There was not much left of his clothing. In the one pocket remaining of his pants, they found drug paraphernalia. Of course they would find that, and it would be forever documented as part of his end.
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I was very disturbed that his last words were “God’s calling me, man.” The friends that were with him had told us very little. He had been on three different drugs that night, and he said that phrase as he walked away. I had to wonder if he went into the river willingly or if he had stumbled upon it and lost his footing. Being raised in church, I had one thing that rang clear to me, and it was the very thing that took my breath form me: a pastor’s voice saying, “People who commit suicide go to hell.”
I could not believe that Levi had committed suicide. My brother loved God, he even carried his King James Bible everywhere he went and preached to his friends, he just wasn’t the suicide type. But it was not only a possibility, but also what the autopsy had claimed for the cause of death. Since he was on all those drugs and this had been his last hurrah, I could see it going one of two ways. In the wrong state, I could see him going to the river to wash his sin away; preparing for his return home to a sober life, underestimating the current and undertow. Or he had decided he couldn’t change. What exactly did he mean by “God’s calling me”?
Levi had almost drowned two other times in his life, was he destined to drown? I prayed and I questioned and I got mad at God. I just wanted Levi back. I knew this was not an option, so I settled on needing an answer, the only one that truly mattered: Where was Levi now? I dozed off to sleep as I prayed, while my brother’s body was flying home in a body bag.
I was sleeping in my brother’s bed and woke up to my cell phone ringing. It was daylight, and my best friend Alex (short for Alexandria) was there. She was my complete opposite, tall and skinny with mousy blonde hair. She was curled up on Levi’s couch still asleep. I answered the phone.
“Hello, Selene?” It was Levi’s voice.
“Levi, Levi, where are you?” I sat straight up in the bed and tightened my grip on the phone.
“Selene, relax. I’m fine.” He was calm, and his voice was so sweet. He usually had a way of soothing my fears but nothing would soothe me until he was safe at home.
“NO, LEVI! Where are you?” I urged, and I started to ramble. “Are you lost? What do you see? There must be something so we can find you.”
“Selene, you can’t come find me.” He insisted.
“Are you hurt? Come on, just help me. I can find you.”
Levi was just as calm as he was at the beginning of our conversation. “Selene, I am fine. You can’t find me where I am, but you will see me again.”
“What does that mean, Levi? I don’t understand!” I was yelling, ready to crack into a cry. Levi replied, “The mirrors surround a cloud of dust, which separates me from you. When the stars shoot forward to the existence of life, it is then when the dust meets the stars. And it is then when I will see you again.” And then he hung up.
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Alex woke up to my yelling. She cocked her head and looked at me as she blinked a few times. She scrunched her eyebrows in and her mouth started to open. Tears filled my eyes, I held out my hand to stop her from talking. I shook my head no, I sucked in a deep breath and then let it out slowly, finally I repeated what Levi had said, not understanding what he meant?
Alex looked at me nonchalantly, shrugged her shoulders and said, “It means he is in heaven.”
That was when I woke for real. It was still dark out, and I was alone and in my bed, not Levi’s. It was a dream, but to me it was also an answer. God had just granted me peace of knowing where Levi was for the rest of my life with that dream. I would never once doubt it again.
The next week was the worst week of my life. I was not much for conversation. Letters, cards, and flowers poured in. Neighbors brought food and even necessities like toilet paper to support us through this time. It was bittersweet. The viewing came, and there were hundreds of people—family, friends, and people who I had never seen in my life, but they all knew Levi. We had two boxes in the back of the funeral parlor; one was a collection of money that would be given to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation in Levi’s honor and one had blank cards for people to write down a memory of Levi. The memory box was touching and heart-wrenching to read, but I learned things about my brother I had never known. People’s memories made me see even more what an amazing person Levi had been.
My grandparents from my father’s side were there, and Grandpa was crying. I had never really seen any men cry before this, and now they all were. Grandpa got to me the most though. He was coughing uncontrollably, and I worried that day that Grandpa would be leaving us soon as well. My relationship with him was strained because of my father’s abandonment. But I knew my grandparents loved me. Grandpa even handed me a prayer coin with a butterfly on the front and the serenity prayer on the back: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. I shoved it in my purse and thanked him with a hug.
The rest of the viewing was a blur, as if a fog had hit my body. That brought me to here, in this retched pew, attending a ceremony that I would forever hate. I lost my sadness, I lost myself, and I lost my sense about me. In that very pew, I felt a powerful earthquake. It vibrated as the cracks made their way through my heart and my soul. It was in this exact moment when Selene was no more. The girl I knew as me was dead and gone.
It shot one last shockwave deeper inside me than I knew could exist as the preacher said, “Levi was a son and a brother.”
I heard the deepest, saddest sound I had ever heard in my entire life; the agonizing sob of death and the painful weeping of hatred. It was eerie and hard to listen to, and then I realized it was coming from me. I tried to stop it but it was out of my control.
Flashes of my life with Levi came storming in, like the time he held me as I cried when I wished I could remember our dad, and the times he kept me safe while walking home from school in the ghetto. Glimpses of the laughter, the jokes and the life we shared that no one else knew flew through my mind
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like a whirlwind. We had so much fun together before the drugs consumed him. Then the darkness swept away those great memories as the hope I had had for his sober life, was now murdered by his death.
My family wrapped me in their arms, and they held me. I felt so far away from them even in their closeness. I was alone no matter how hard I searched for their nearness. It was not to be found. It was like my soul had left me and was trapped in this dark tunnel deep in the farthest, darkest hole in my mind, it tried to pound on the unbreakable glass wall. It tried to break free, but the darkness held her there, and I knew she would be lost there forever.