Almost Enough

Angela was scared, and she was tired. Her limbs getting numb from her damp sweatshirt, her leggings now becoming a part of her body. One arm curled around her torso, trying to preserve all the warmth she could, and she was uncontrollably shivering. Her head and ankle pulsed in time with her heart, sharp. Inconsistent.

She reached for the stars and more, and had finally fallen.

She thought about her first “play”. She was five, and it was a little Kindergarten production her school had put on at the end of the year. The class sang four songs, and there were three students who were selected for a speaking role. She was one of them. The teachers agreed that she was one of three kids who wouldn’t become locked on stage, frozen in fear, and they chose her. She had the “main” role, if you would count it as such for a bunch of kindergartners.

Every night she made her parents listen to her sing. She memorized all four songs, and her lines came to her easily. It was only ten sentences, but this felt huge. When she arrived at school and they did rehearsal, she felt unstoppable. Even as a little kid her brain became intoxicated with the stage lights, the pretend audience sat in front of her.

On the night of the performance she gave it all she could. Going way more than what the other two kids did, especially the one who unfortunately did become frozen, and cried for his mom. She performed with gusto, her arms flailing, and she stole everyone’s attention as she sang, her dance moves dramatic next to her friends.

The audience would laugh sometimes when she spoke her lines, and that laughter did not deter her. It made her hungry for more.

After it was over, her parents met her with a small bouquet, and she walked around as if she just won a Tony for her performance. The whole ride home she expressed passion for singing and acting, and her parent’s immediately went home and signed her up for a local theater company, going to their workshops all summer.

As she got older the validation of an audience only grew, she spent summers at workshops and theater camps, went to many studios to update her headshots as often as possible, and learned to play guitar and piano to broaden her skills. She loved musical theater, and eventually picked up acting and comedy.

She was so lucky that her parents and friends supported her, and that she had the opportunity to go to a performing arts school. She flourished in that community, the environment intense and competitive.

Stuck in her head reminiscing, a bitter laugh escaped her throat. She spent so much of her life obsessing over her craft, and people let her. Everyone was quick to reassure her that rejection was just redirection, but she could never let herself believe it.

Angela knew she was burning out, but she always had support along the way. Especially Amanda’s. They met through some mutual friends, but feelings grew as they started working together at Smosh. After a Holiday Party they had too many drinks and went home together, and the rest is history.

However, her love for Amanda sometimes did not outweigh her chase of perfection. She needed to be flawless, to execute everything perfectly, every version of herself in her own head was precise, which made her real self hard to grasp. Every bruise to herself and ego was a reminder that she would never be good enough. And now, here she was, cold, broken, and helpless on a roof.

And it was all her fault. If she had just taken the time to sit with Amanda and talk through her feelings, this would have never happened. She always destroyed herself when she could not achieve something she wanted, and this was her final lesson. Usually it was overbooking herself, or drinking a little too late into the night. Sometimes it was staring at a pill bottle a little too long, but she never considered it.

She could right now though.

It would crush Amanda, and her friends. The audience she had grown to love, and who loved her. She felt like a discarded doll, shattered and tossed aside. She spent so much time wanting to be the best, that she forgot to be human. To feel and understand her thoughts.

No one knew she was up here, and if they did, why should they care to find her? Amanda had walked out, and she was right to do so. She could probably care less right now where Angela was. No one was coming to find her.

Maybe she deserved that.

She exhaled slowly, her hands now tracing the concrete beneath her. She needed to get up, she would crawl if she had to. Throw herself down the stairs. She would live, broken pieces and all, and hope to God the glue that held her together would accept her back.

Chasing perfection left her feeling shattered, and it was time she felt whole. She crawled over to the side of the roof, looking down one more time at her one remaining shoe. She unlaced it, took a last look, and prayed that someone would see. She threw the shoe down the street as far as she could while feeling as weak as she ever has in her life. The force of her throw made her collapse back down to the roof. She waited, and she hoped.

Hoping someone was on the way.
~
All the alarms in Courtney’s body rang as they saw the flying white shoe plummet to the ground from nowhere in particular out of the sky. She couldn’t believe it. She wiped the raindrops from her eyes, hoping that it wasn’t a trick of the light. It wasn’t.

“Guys! Over here!”

“Where are you?” Shayne called out to her, his body still heaving from the altercation.

“Take a right! I think we are close to her!” Courtney backed up a few feet, flailing their arms in the air so her friends could find her.

“Court? Are you sure?” Amanda’s voice finally retreated to a whisper, her body too exhausted to raise her voice. You could see the hope draining out of her body.

“Look, down the street. Is that not Angela’s other shoe?” Courtney started to walk as fast as they could towards the shoe, her steps picking up in a skip, trying not to full body sprint towards it.

“It is!” Chanse caught up to Courtney, the two of them matching each other’s pace, and finally reached the white converse that was soaking wet from the puddle it landed in.

Behind, Shayne and Amanda held each other up, blood streaked down his hands, staining Amanda’s sweater.

Chanse picked up the shoe, running back to Shayne. They compared, and agreed it was hers.

“Court, was it just lying here?”

“No! It came out of the freaking sky!”

“Of course! The guy said she was on a rooftop right??” Chanse almost screamed next to her, the words coming out in a high pitch squeal. Amanda tried very hard to push down the hope rising in her chest, her breathing matching the anxiety she felt in this moment. Rapid and consuming.

“Do you think she’s on top of one of these buildings..?” Amanda could barely handle the thought of a man leaving her girlfriend for dead on a random roof. She had no idea what he could have done to her, or why he felt the need to leave her where no one could find her.

“I guess there is only one thing to do.” Shayne said, his tone serious.

“What do we do?”

Shayne cupped his broken hands around his mouth, and screamed.

“Angela!!!”

The friends joined in.

“Angela!!!”
~
Angela opened her eyes. She strained her ears, hearing something in the distance. She prayed it wasn’t the man coming to finish her off, and she gathered her courage to look over the tall building. Staring down at the fall below her.

Without her glasses, possibly concussed, and still very drunk, she thought about how the people from far down the street looked like her friends. She considered the possibility of hallucination, but with barely any strength, she lifted her hands up, and screamed back.