My Fault
Chapter One
A Hole in the World

A note from the author: Hi, thank you for clicking on my story! My name is Elliott, and this is the first multi-chapter story I have ever written. I started this story around the time I turned fourteen, and now I am twenty and in my third year of the creative writing program at university. I don't think it's too narcissistic of me to say that my writing style has probably improved since I first started this story, so I thought I would rewrite the first chapter to give a better impression of what my writing is like now, as I am finishing up the last couple chapters.

I would like to rewrite more chapters too, but right now my priority is finishing the story. Inconsistencies between this chapter and the next are due to me not rewriting that one yet, but I do eventually plan to. Also, in the interest of fair warning, I didn't have much sense of pacing when I first started this story, and the plot picks up at the end of chapter ten – so if you want to skim some of the chapters between now and then, at least until I get around to rewriting them, I wouldn't blame you...

Thank you so much for reading, and sorry for my obscenely long author's note. I would be extremely grateful to hear your thoughts on this chapter and/or the story in general. Also, if you would like to read the original version of this chapter, please say so in a review, email, or private message, and I will be sure to send it to you!

Rewrite: A Hole in the World
(Written March 17, 2012)

Arisa

I never used to think much about my first memory.

I could pull it up, when I wanted to think about things, about how I got to where I am. I could feel myself sink back into the sense of new brightness around my small body. My three-year-old arms splash at a sea of coloured spheres, send them darting and spinning. My three-year-old legs kick, churning the liquid-smooth globes. My mouth holds the taste of sweet bean mochi, our lunch. My nose holds the smell of plastic. In the ball pit, I move with a type of wild freedom I'm not used to, suspended in too many dimensions.

Then the colours start closing in, darkening around my face. I sink down down down. Light above me fractures and fades, and the sounds of other kids sharpen to a swarm of mosquitoes in my ears.

And then two hands come down, pull me out and up and hold me close. "It's okay," he says. "I've got you." His chest is warm against my small body, and his arms are strong. He smells like soap and home.

I rarely think of this memory. A few years ago it made me angry, trying to reconcile this figure with the man in my house, the beery poltergeist shouting from the next room. The smell of his breath and skin ingrained in the walls of the house, but him never there when I wanted someone to talk to. I began to forget the sound of his voice, as the tv blared through the walls, laugh track running over the same stale jokes.

I could think of my earliest memory any time I wanted to. This wasn't often.

-/-/-

I was called out of class a few weeks ago. It's strange, hearing your name over the intercom in the middle of a speech, the teacher pausing for the staticky sound of your name as everyone's eyes seek you out. I slid from my chair and walked towards the office, conscious of my heart slamming against my chest – a few years in a gang will do that to you. That irrational suspicion of getting caught. But I held my expression still, kept my pace even. A few years in a gang will do that, too.

The principal handed me the phone without a word. I held the plastic to my face, and I can remember the sweet-breath-smell of the receiver, the feel of the smudged plastic on my fingers, but I don't remember what the voice said, whether the speaker was male or female. All I know was that that memory rose up to the surface of my thoughts and burst into pieces and something in my mind shattered.

I must have hung up, I must have walked from the room, but all I know is that suddenly I was in a different place, listening to my own ragged breathing with tears falling relentlessly down my face. I couldn't stand up. The ground rose up and bent my knees in, and as blackness closed around the edges of my vision I shut my eyes and tried to wake up. Because this wasn't life, not in the realm of what I thought could happen, couldn't be real because if it was there was nothing I could do and it was just too much.

I felt dirty floor under my hands. I felt my insides, the mechanisms of breath and beat and bloodflow, and was amazed by their refusal to stop. My mind spun images out of order, bloodshot eyes brightening, their yellow edges fading to white. Soap washed away the sticky scent of old beer, and the man in a squashed armchair rose to his feet, spine straightening, hairline moving forward. And I missed the feeling of his arms, missed it more than I knew I could ever miss anything.

I thought of the hole in the world where he used to be, where the part of him that meant life has fallen though, and my mind closed in on itself.

-/-/-

I don't know how long he was there before I noticed him. And I don't know how much longer he was there before I acknowledged him.

"Hey," he said when I looked up.

This was enough to make me start crying again. He didn't leave. He bent down beside me, and for some reason my first thought was to warn him he'd get his cargo pants dirty. I didn't say this. The effort of pushing words out of my mouth was too overwhelming to even consider at that point.

"Why are you here?" I said, eventually.

"You walked past the classroom. I... I wanted to make sure you were okay." He stared hard at the floor, traced a vague shape on the linoleum. "I guess I knew you weren't," he mumbled, "but I didn't think you should have to be alone."

I meant to say thanks, but it came out, "Why?"

"No one should have to be alone when things get... like this. It's not fair."

"Since when is anything fair," I said, and my voice rose to a single laugh which quickly dissolved into more crying. Not tears, not just tears. A loud, soggy mess that broke out of my body through a process that shook my shoulders and battered my lungs.

He touched my arm, then moved his hand away. "Sorry," he said.

"It's okay," I say. I put my hand back on his, held on tight. I worried I was hurting him, but when I looked up at his face he nodded, his fiery eyes soft.

"How long are you going to stay here?" I asked.

"Until you ask me to go away."

"What if I don't ask that?"

"I'll stay."

"Promise?"

"I promise."

I closed my eyes and listened to us breathing. Memories fell over me, cold as snow, and I realized it wasn't only my hand that was shaking. I wondered what Kyo was remembering.