Year 18

By Melissa Elmali

"Year 18" follows 18-year-old Rebecca Whitmore through her senior year of high school, where she struggles with her past and fights to find hope for her future. To combat her depression and loneliness, she forms an imaginary friendship with fictional characters she created for a school project, beginning a punishing battle between her idealized inner world and the real world outside.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
• Release date: Jul 27, 2021
• ISBN: 9781662913563

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

A TYPICAL WEEKEND

Before I continue, I guess I should clarify something here. I never actually believed that the characters I wrote were real. I’m not fucking schizophrenic or anything. I just imagined it in my head. I guess it was a way for me to escape reality for a little while when I needed it the most. That’s all.

It’s hard to pin down exactly when I got the idea for the whole thing. I think it started, at least as far as I can remember, with a car ride home. It was a Friday afternoon and my mom had just picked me up from film club. My little sister Cassie was, in her usual fashion, kicking my seat until I raised it to her liking. I think my mom was complaining about some guy at work.

I couldn’t tune them out. My mom gets pissed off at me when I listen to my own music. She hates it when I wear my earbuds; apparently, it’s disrespectful. Instead, I’m usually stuck listening to her shitty country music. I’d have to find salvation through other means. In the midst of my mom’s rant, I started scrolling through my Facebook feed to occupy myself with something. Most of the posts were selfies or in-jokes that I don’t get because I’ve only spoken to the person who posted it maybe once or twice. I started to go through my usual cycle of wondering why I even use Facebook in the first place, then finding a meme that’s sorta funny and scrolling through my feed in a search for more.

Eventually I came across a picture that Katherine, a girl in my videography class that would soon become my friend, had shared. In it, three guys in their mid-20’s posed in front of a green screen dressed in bumblebee costumes with the caption reading Adulting is for losers! I had to suppress a smirk; I was afraid if I didn’t, my mom would think I was laughing at her for complaining or something. Apparently, the guys in the picture called themselves PsycheShock. From what I could gather on their page, they seemed to do commentaries and reviews of movies and stuff on YouTube. That seemed right up my alley, since I’m kind of a movie nerd.

Making a mental note to myself to check them out sometime, I imagined myself among people like them, just goofing around and doing dumb shit. All of a sudden, I vaguely remembered the carefree feeling that always seemed to accompany being around friends – the feeling of complete openness, never worrying about what other people were thinking. It hit me like a pang in the chest. The last time I could remember feeling like that was this one time in second grade during indoor recess. I’m not 100% sure, but I think I was making popsicle stick butterflies with Kelly and Veronica, two girls who were practically my sisters. Now I hardly ever talk to them.

When we got home, I tossed my bag on the ground and prepared to escape to the freedom of my confined room. Mentally processing how I would spend the weekend, I crouched next to my cluttered shelf of DVDs to see what was next on my viewing schedule. I felt especially pleased to see The Fifth Element in the far left corner. See, I have a certain process for picking my next movies. I order all of my DVDs on the shelf from favorite to not-quite-my-favorite-but-still-good. Once I’ve watched a movie, I move it to the far right corner, so the next movie in line will be for next time. It’s a dumb idea, I guess, but I’ve been doing it since 6th grade and I’ll probably keep doing it ‘till the day I die. Unfortunately, before I could figure out how I’d fit watching PsycheShock, filming and editing my latest short, practicing piano, and doing my math homework into my schedule, my mom’s voice broke me out of my concentration.

Rebecca! she snapped. How many goddamn times do I have to tell you?! Hang your jacket downstairs on the coatrack!

I groaned. She’s usually on my case about that, although I disagree. I personally don’t see why I should spend the extra energy walking downstairs to the coatrack when there’s a perfectly good chair in the kitchen that no one ever uses to hang it on.

After that pointless little detour, I grabbed my math notebook and textbook for the homework I would do at some point and closed my door. I considered locking it too, but my mom probably wouldn’t like that either. She doesn’t come into my room very often, but Cassie does sometimes. She hates it when the door is locked, and I’ll give you three guesses as to who she complains to.

Anyway, I popped the DVD in and lost myself in the movie, with my sketchpad in hand. Sometimes when I watch movies, I like to draw pictures of scenes if I think they look cool. I’ve been making something of an effort to improve my drawing skills since 7th grade. I still can’t get noses right, though. I always get the tip wrong. I used to draw scenes from movies when I was little, too. Obviously, they weren’t as good quality; the characters looked more like potatoes than actual people. Plus, they were more like self-insert fanfics, since I would draw myself as a character in every picture. My collection included everything from me fighting the Huns alongside Mulan to me exploring ancient temples with Indiana Jones. Also, did you know I personally helped Luke Skywalker learn to use the force?

By the time the movie was over, and I’d finished a somewhat satisfactory drawing of Korben and Leeloo, I moved onto PsycheShock. Or, at least, I planned to until my mom called me and my sister down to dinner. I felt a pinch of irritation at being interrupted, but it was quickly overshadowed when I realized how hungry I was. I’d spent yet another lunch period hiding out in the bathroom instead of actually eating something. Not that I’m exactly jumping at the chance to eat the stale sandwich bread and discolored vegetables the cafeteria has to offer.

I ate my dinner quickly that night, not just because I was hungry or so I could get back to my YouTube binge session, but because my mom was busy telling us about all her troubles at work, which I found beyond irritating. I don’t mean to sound insensitive or anything, but I really didn’t sign up for a half-hour lecture on how bad my mom’s day was when I sat down at the dinner table. Like, we’re all dealing with our own shitty problems; just let me eat my damn food in peace!

A QUICK REALIZATION

Lately, it’s been coming to my attention that I swear a lot. I don’t really know if that’s new or anything; it’s just sort of become second nature to me. Just to warn you, there’s probably going to be a lot more profanity in this. Sorry if it offends you.

Anyway, PsycheShock were hilarious when I finally got the chance to watch them. They did a video on the movie Alone in the Dark, which one of the guys named James called the cancer of cinema. Two other guys, Kyle and Brent, got into a rather entertaining debate over whether or not Ghostbusters 2 was garbage. I grew addicted to their stuff overnight. Once I watched a video, I had to see five more. Unfortunately, they’d only been around for a year or so, so I finished all their content pretty quickly. That didn’t stop me from watching it again five more times, though.

The more I watched them, the more I realized that it wasn’t just their thoughts on movies that I was attached to. It was the friendship between all of them, the way they joked and laughed with each other, talked about their personal lives with each other… And remember that feeling I was talking about earlier? The one where I remembered being comfortable among friends? Well, I really felt it this time. I felt it throbbing in my head and chest until it grew into an aching.

I stayed up until around midnight watching and re-watching episodes. I listened to them talk about the most random things. About their favorite Studio Ghibli movie. About a new dog James got. About the fact that Kyle still didn’t have the courage to ask out a girl he liked. About which Skrillex song to use in their end credits. And when I was finished, I curled up in bed and drifted into a dreamless sleep.

***

I don’t remember much else from that weekend other than working on my short film. Well, it wasn’t really a short film; it was more of a music video, really. I went into the woods behind my house to get some nice shots of me standing underneath a thick canopy of trees. I was going to edit it with the song Shelter by the xx. I figured the small trickles of light the leaves filtered through would match the tone of the song perfectly. Only thing is, I didn’t get nearly as many shots as I wanted, since I really only had a half hour. I had to film all of it while my mom was at the grocery store. She hates it when my sister and I go into the woods. She’s always complaining about how we’re going to get bitten by ticks and stuff like that.

I actually just finished editing the video last week. It came out alright, I guess. I filmed enough to finish the project, but a lot of the shots are pretty repetitive. It’s not really something I’d show to another person I guess is what I’m saying.

There is one other thing that I remember: the Sunday night right before school. I’d just finished my math homework and found myself lying on my bed trying to figure out what to do next, mentally scolding myself for being so lazy and putting off my homework for so long.

It’s actually really not like me to procrastinate like that. My parents were always pretty strict about homework rules, especially my dad. When I was really little, I told my dad I wanted to be an engineer, like him, and ever since then, he’s basically trained me to dedicate my life to doing well in school. He’s succeeded somewhat, I guess. Virtually all of my classes were honors classes, except for the ones that weren’t offered in honors. I usually did my homework first thing and studied a lot. I still felt overwhelmed, though. More than a couple times, I found myself wondering whether I really belonged in the honors math program. Not that dropping down to a lower lever was ever an option, though. My dad would have been so pissed off at me if I did that.

I really didn’t feel like doing anything that night. I just sort of found myself browsing through YouTube videos I really didn’t have any interest in watching to distract myself from the hollow dread that accompanied virtually every Sunday night. I tried to ignore it as best as I could, but each week, I found myself more miserable than the last. I just really didn’t want to go back to school. You might think it’s because of some typical reason, like not wanting to wake up early. That actually wasn’t it at all. To be honest, waking up early never really bothered me much. I actually kinda like it. Not all the time, of course, but sometimes. In fact, on my first day of high school, when I had to get up at 5:30, I was up bright and early with lots of energy to spare. I’m just weird like that.

The real reason was that I’d just given up. Part of me used to be optimistic about going back to school. I used to hope that some miracle would come along, like maybe someone would invite me to sit with them at lunch or in class and I’d make a new group of friends and I’d no longer feel alone. Maybe I’d do something really cool and make people like me. Change their minds about me. But by that weekend, I was already a senior in high school. It was only September, sure, but everything stayed the same up until that point, so why would anything change going forward? Instead of hope, I felt a void and nothing to fill it with. Just knowing that I’d be returning to the same old shit made me feel miserable enough to put aside everything I wanted to do, even the really unproductive stuff, like playing Town of Salem.

A RETRACTION

Actually, I take back what I said earlier. I’m not sorry for swearing. This is my story and I’ll swear as much as I goddamn fucking please. And if it offends you, well, nobody said you had to be reading this anyway. Fuckshitfuckshitfuckshitfuck.

I surprised even my mom that night by going to bed at 8:00. It was early, but all I really wanted to do was sleep, and plus, it couldn’t hurt to get some extra shut-eye on a school night. After shutting the lights off and huddling under the covers, I vaguely remembered a time when I was afraid of the dark and tried to piece together why exactly that changed. Now I can’t even stand having a small night light on in the room.

I fell asleep somehow, silently pleading for anything to stop tomorrow from coming.

CHAPTER 2

HIGH SCHOOL IS HELL (BUT WHAT ELSE IS NEW?)

Well, as you probably guessed, the next day did, in fact, come. I can’t exactly stop the passage of time no matter how much I wish I could. I threw on the first few things I spotted in my closet, washed my face, brushed my teeth, put on as much makeup as I had the energy to bother with and headed down to the basement where I waited for the clock to reach 6:30, when I would have to leave. I stopped eating breakfast in the morning about a year or two earlier, partially because I felt I didn’t have time, and partially because I wanted to start eating less.

Now, trust me, I know what you’re thinking. But Rebecca, breakfast is the most important meal of the day! It’s not healthy! Rebecca, you shouldn’t skip meals like that! Rebecca, you must have anorexia or something! Well, first of all, I honestly couldn’t care less whether or not I’m healthy. I lost interest in taking care of myself a long time ago. If I don’t feel like eating breakfast, I’m not eating it. Simple as that. And, quite frankly, I don’t believe all that crap about skipping breakfast causing you to gain weight. Even when I do get hungry later in the day, I don’t feel like eating much. I also don’t have anorexia, if you’re wondering that. At least, I’m pretty sure I don’t. Sure, I don’t like the way I look, but I still eat lunch and dinner and stuff. Plus, I do find myself binging on sweets occasionally. I’ll feel gross and guilty about it later, but I’ll still do it. I will admit, though, that I do feel pleased with myself when I feel hungry, and I have been paying more attention to how much I eat lately. I know the less I eat, the better chance I have of losing weight, even if I have to suffer through godawful stomach pains. I guess that must sound kind of shallow to someone like you, though. I don’t even really know why I care about all that; I just do.

Anyways, I had to wake up early to wait for the bus. Yes, I still took the bus, even as a senior. Not only did I not have a car, I also didn’t have a driver’s license. To be honest, I hadn’t even started driver’s ed. It was embarrassing as hell, considering that I was one of maybe ten people in the entire senior class that didn’t have a car. Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to start driving. Desperately, in fact, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. I’d been asking my mom from the moment I was eligible to go for my permit and start driving lessons, but she wouldn’t sign me up. She kept putting it off for well over a year. Every time I asked her, she’d come up with a different excuse. Oh, I have laundry to do this weekend. I have to take your sister to a physical tomorrow. You’re not ready to start driving yet. That last one really got on my nerves since my age clearly said otherwise.

I watched music videos on my phone until the time came. I was about to leave when I noticed the gray clouds outside the window and the loud pitter-patter of a heavy rain fall. I figured I could wait a few more minutes so I wouldn’t be spending too much time soaking outside. The bus technically didn’t come until 6:50, so I really didn’t have to go out that early anyways. My mom got angry when I waited any longer than 6:30, though. She insisted that I was going to miss the bus and she was going to have to drive me to school and make her late for work and all that. She had a long commute to the biotech company where she worked as a business development manager, and made me more than aware of how unable she was to drive both to my school and to work in one morning. Even still, I really hated standing out in the rain. It was cold and dreary and my backpack wasn’t waterproof, so all of my papers and things would get ruined. I remember once, in middle school, I lost homework credit because my math worksheet got drenched. That was humiliating. It also didn’t help that my teacher that year was particularly strict.

The good thing about the bus, though, is that it gets to school early, so nobody ever really saw me riding it, except for the other kids on it, of course. But most of them were either underclassmen or Chinese foreign exchange students, none of which really knew me.

When I got through the door, I felt a blast of warmth from the heater above the entrance, blowing away stray raindrops on my jacket. I took off my hood and ran a few fingers through my hair to test how wet it was. The front was soaked, the back not so much. I figured I’d still need to comb it out a little, since it felt kind of stringy.

To be honest, I never really liked going to the bathroom in school, and I avoided it as much as I could. That wasn’t difficult, since I usually didn’t need to go during the day. Every once in a while, though, I found myself needing to fix my hair or lipstick when I wore it, and I’d have no choice. I’d felt uneasy about the idea ever since a particular chorus class my freshman year. We’d broken off into small groups in individual practice rooms to, well, practice, but the group of girls I was with weren’t doing that. They were instead talking about people they knew who’d hooked up in school bathrooms while I avoided the conversation by playing Temple Run on my phone. Ever since then, I’d been afraid that I’d walk in to take a pee and there’d be a girl giving a guy a blowjob in one of the stalls or something. Unlikely, sure. But look, it could happen, okay?

When I reached the bathroom, I got a whiff of pungent lemon-scented soap as I opened the door. I briefly checked the stalls to see if anyone else was there. Luckily, I was completely alone. Not a blowjob in sight. Good.

Pulling out my comb from the front pocket of my backpack, I got a good look at myself in the mirror. I did not like what I saw. My hair was clumpy and tangled, and short tufts of it were sticking up at the top. I got a tinge of frustration as I tried combing it out. The rainwater made it a little easier, but not much.

Dealing with my hair has never been a pleasant experience. I can never get it to look good, no matter hard I try. I don’t know if I’m not rinsing it out thoroughly when I shower or if I just don’t have enough time to get it right or what. Every other girl’s hair always looked nice and straight and styled pretty, and mine always looked like I’d just gotten out of bed. I was sure people judged me for it behind my back. I didn’t know it for certain, but I was just sure of it. Back in middle school, these two girls named Jessica and Natalie would make remarks about it at lunch. They’d say things like "Hey Rebecca, I love your hair today! Which stylist do you go to?" Then they’d laugh, just in case the sarcasm in their voice wasn’t enough to give me the hint that they were making fun of me.

I mean, okay, I guess I’ve gotten a little better at it, at least compared to middle school. I’ve gone back and looked at pictures of myself from 6th and 7th grade and my hair looks like a freaking rat’s nest. It’s absolutely terrible. Jesus, no wonder I got made fun of for it…

When I’d combed my hair out as best as I could, I headed downstairs to the basement. There was a small hallway leading to the emergency exit down there where I hung out with Sylvia, my only real friend at the time. She was already waiting for me, as usual.

Hey, she said, barely looking up from her phone.

Hi. I plopped my backpack down on the ground and instantly regretted it. I packed almost all of my filming equipment for my videography class, and I should’ve known better than to be so rough with it.

Sylvia tugged at my backpack and laughed. What do you have in there, a bunch of rocks or something?

I grinned and pulled my bag back towards me. No, just… stuff, is all I could think to say.

Well, it’s a lot of stuff. Hey, you got any quarters?

Probably, I replied. I started digging around for the coins in my wallet. For the vending machine, right? How many do you need?

Just three. I’m gonna get some of those chocolate covered raisins.

Oh, those are gross. Sylvia stuck her tongue out at me as I dropped the coins in her hand. Here. Treat yo self.

I can pay you back.

You don’t need to pay me back. It’s a couple of quarters.

Come on, let me pay you back.

No, really, it’s okay.

Rebeccaaaa….

After I’d finally convinced her that she really, honest to god, didn’t need to pay me back, she took the quarters and poked me. As a joke, I gave her an exaggerated glare, bulging my eyes and frowning as hard as I could as she left.

Sylvia is… different. That’s the best way I can think to put it. She does her own thing and she doesn’t care what anyone else thinks. You can tell by the way she walks far ahead of everyone else, always managing to steer clear of a crowd and ignoring what everyone says. I suspect she just hates human beings in general. Or at the very least, mistrusts them. I’m one of the very, very few people she ever talks to. In fact, I think the only other exception to her list of people she would rather slit her throat with a plastic fork than talk to is her family.

To be honest, I really don’t know why she chooses to be like that. It certainly doesn’t win her any popularity points; all the students avoid her and the teachers seem baffled by her. If I had to guess, though, I would say it probably has something to do with her old school. She tells me all the time about how the kids would make fun of her for pretending to be a bird on the playground and how she’d sit by herself every day. I wasn’t there to see it, obviously, but it must’ve been pretty bad for her to get where she is now.

She transferred to my school district at the beginning of seventh grade. That year was something of a miracle for me, and she was one of the reasons why. We met on the first day of school, when the entire grade was being held in the gym, waiting to be released to our first classes. She was sitting up high on the tallest bleacher, alone, of course, when I saw her for the first time. She almost had this aura of superiority to her; to my twelve-year-old mind, she looked like a queen sitting on her wooden throne, looking down on all of the shallow, unworthy people. Seeing as I really had nowhere else to go, I figured I would try to strike up a conversation with her. I was pretty hesitant about it, though. The last couple times I’d tried to make friends had been disastrous. The year before, in science class, I’d tried cracking a joke about something a girl had written down in her worksheet, and all I got in return was a bunch of angry looks. I wasn’t trying to be mean or anything, but they must’ve thought I was making fun of her. I still mentally kick myself over that sometimes.

On the other hand, Sylvia and I bonded right away. I was alone too, and I guess she was drawn to me for that. When she asked me if I was new too, I told her, No, I’m just a loser, and she burst out in a high-pitched laugh that seemed to echo throughout the whole gym. I knew we’d be long-lasting friends after that. Suddenly, I wasn’t stuck sitting at the far end of a table filled with people who clearly didn’t want me there at lunch. Well, okay, technically I still was, but I at least had someone else on my side sitting with me, so I didn’t feel as insecure. That still counts for something.

Sylvia would still act like a bird sometimes. She’d run through the halls with her arms spread outward and flap them like wings. Whenever I asked her why she did it, she’d just shrug and say it was fun and made her feel free. It was kinda weird, sure, but after a while, I started doing it too. I didn’t want her to feel alone in anything, and to be honest, it actually was kind of fun. It got my blood pumping early in the morning, when I needed it the most. You can bet that people judged us for it, though. The girls would give us these weird looks all the time and some of the boys would laugh and make bird noises at us when we walked past them. I’d feel humiliated when I was by myself, but when Sylvia and I were together, I didn’t care. Sure, we were outcasts, but we were outcasts together, dammit!

That all changed when we got to high school. We were still really good friends, but since I was an honors student and she wasn’t, we weren’t in any of the same classes. We didn’t even have lunch together. The only times we ever really saw each other was before school and during the morning break, when we’d hide out in our usual spot. We still went over to each other’s houses every now and then, but it just wasn’t the same. Plus, we sort of outgrew the whole bird thing, so there was that too.

A short while after Sylvia left, the first bell of the day rang, and almost on impulse, I bolted up and grabbed my bag. I’d need to head upstairs to get to my first class, and also my locker beforehand to drop off some notebooks I wouldn’t need until later. You might be wondering why I didn’t just go to my locker before the bell. The short answer is that I didn’t need to go beforehand, because there was plenty of time between the first bell and the second, final bell, when we absolutely had to be in our first classes. Also, my locker was right next to my first class, so I figured I might as well wait to take