Isabela

**Before**


You know when something really bad happens and your brain takes a while to process it? It was like I left my body. When I saw the love of my life treating me like trash, yelling that I’m a filthy snitch and so many other horrible things, I almost felt my soul whip out of my body.
I didn’t do that shit!
I’ve been lying here for hours on the blue blanket, clutching the only object of his that stayed with me, a solid wooden bat with “Toca” written in black decorating the base. I ignore the persistent calls from my grandma, my mom, and my jerk of a stepdad. Let them think I’m dead. In the end, that’s what I am.
I just died a little.
Fuck the damn world!
How could he blame me?
All my eyes focus on is the ceiling of this place. My mind drifts back to incredible memories of us together, and my eyes ache, heavy from crying so much. I’ve been ruined so many times in the last five years, but I dare say that this breakup with Nate only ranks behind the day I lost my father.
He chose to believe his sister, opted to tear me in half, to drive a sword into my chest, to make it bleed. It’s so clear to me that Bianca has my diary, that she did all this to separate us. She didn’t even need to put my name on the blog; she just wrote everything so Nate would see and believe that I was the whore behind that filth. And the worst part is that she succeeded. Bianca even sent a voice message in the group, saying she knew it was me, that she was going to kill me when she caught me. And now I’m being threatened by various students. I have dozens of messages from schoolmates condemning me, judging me, pointing their torches and screaming, “Burn the witch.” Who needs proof, right?
When I saw that blog, while going down the elevator at Grandma’s house to be with Nate, I still thought he would listen to me. Even screaming and desperate, ordering the Hellen driver to speed up to get me to Toca faster, I had a certainty that Nate would know I didn’t do it. “He loves me,” I thought. My kitty knows me well enough to be sure that I would never do that.
How dumb are you, Isabela?
Maybe he’s with his sister in all this. Probably had enough fun, touched me just enough, peeled away all the layers he could. When he saw I didn’t want to go any further and said I’d keep the long-distance commitment, he thought of a better solution. What would a handsome guy like Nate want with me? Maybe he got bored. Probably wanted to end the theater with a bang. And disguised it all with the accusations on the blog.
Okay, I admit that makes no sense at all. Accusing himself of having set fire to Goldene Kinder pointed the fingers back at him. But why not believe me? What kind of love is it where you don’t know the person who spent months by your side, who worships you like a god?
That boy was my North. Now I’m lost. Or was I always lost, and just let myself be deceived?
I think I’ll never be the Isabela that Nate created again. The girl who smiled even after all the tragedies that happened in the past. He could make me happy. That boy extracted some kind of treasure from the fool’s gold that I am. Now he put stones in my pocket and threw me into deep waters. There’s no choice but to sink.
It’s like something has unglued inside me, like all the good things are turning into nothing right before my eyes. I surrender, I throw myself into a dirty, corrupted well, and let whatever emerges be something fucked up.
I know it’s nighttime because my alarm won’t stop beeping, signaling that it’s time to call Nate. It’s 10 PM. Maybe in a parallel universe, there’s no blog. I’m going to lie down and about to spend hours talking to him on the phone. Then I’ll have a night’s sleep and a morning at school where I’ll see my boyfriend, and everything will be okay.
It’s still hard to accept that everything changed in the blink of an eye. And that there’s no going back. It’s impossible to remedy the fissure he left inside me. Maybe one day, Nate will wake up and realize the obvious—that I love him and would never hurt him like that. But by then, it will be too late. The wounds he opened are already infected, almost on the verge of becoming rotten. I will already be another person.

As I sit up, I feel my mouth throbbing from the bite he left. At least this wound is still something of his, something physical like this bat. Because all that will remain of Nate are the most painful memories, which, like those of my father, will fade over time. My brain will replace the traces of the love of my life with new experiences. This is uncontrollable. Our minds are like skin. They shed dead cells and renew themselves, casting out what is useless. It’s the same with memories.
My breath hurts, my body weighs down as if there were a cross on my shoulders. So I get up and carry it away from the setting where I lived my happiest days. Dragging the wooden bat, I hear the noise it makes as its top scrapes against the ground, wandering through the space. I stare at the traces left by the fury of the boy I love.
He broke everything... even me.
I run my fingers along the walls as I walk, then I stop in front of the red sun I painted the first time I was here. I take a photo and save the image on my phone so that when the memories fade from me, I will still have this, an image that holds an entire world of meaning. I’m too foolish to still want a memory of all this. But I do.
In front of the rusty gate, I glance over my shoulder for one last mental snapshot of what used to be my paradise. Now it’s just ashes.
With another large piece missing, I guide the fragments of myself to a pharmacy. I want to give in to the whispers of my wrists, which I’ve been trying to silence for a while. There are no more barriers, no foundations left to support me or keep me from crumbling. I don’t care about the curious stares around me. I know they must be staring at my dress, which, once a beautiful white lace, now looks like the wreckage of a war. I’m filthy because I fell and dragged myself on the dusty floor of Toca. I also shrug off the raised eyebrows and shocked expressions of the pharmacists as they stare at the bat I keep carrying with me.