STANDING AT MY WINDOW, I watch the mingling of people down below in the backyard.
We buried my father today.
After everyone got into their cars, I stayed behind with my mother. We watched them lower the casket into the ground, and when they started to shovel the earth over the varnished mahogany, I fought the urge to jump down into the hole to be buried with him.
Everyone was there. Friends from school, teachers, family; all of them walking to the front of the church to look at his body and bid their final goodbyes.
When I die, I want a closed-casket funeral.
I couldn’t stand to watch everyone looking at him as if he were a morbid piece of artwork hanging in a museum.
And now, they’re all at our house, reminiscing and mourning. His scent is almost nonexistent at this point, and with everyone roaming around, touching everything, they’re stealing the last of the lingering remnants.
Familiar eyes from down below glance up to my window and lock to mine. He shoves his hands into the pockets of his suit pants and dips his head somberly as we look at one another. The man who feels responsible for my loss wears painful burden beautifully. Coach Andrews stands in a sea of black, and somehow, in the loneliest existence I’ve ever known, I don’t feel so alone. In his eyes, the eyes that watched me cry as his words shattered my world, there’s a link that will forever tie him to my dad and me.
“I’ve been looking for you.” I turn away from the connection and look to Kroy as he shuts the door to my room before coming to my side. “Are you doing okay?”
I shake my head at his stupid question.
Kroy has been calling and texting nonstop, oblivious that I’m ignoring him and don’t want to talk, but here he is . . . wanting to talk.
He turns me toward him and cradles my face—even my reaction to his touch has changed. Last week, we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. If we weren’t holding hands, we were hugging or kissing or making out. Now, his touch feels like an invasion.
“Why won’t you talk to me?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“Anything,” he tells me with worry etched all over his face. “I can’t help you if you won’t let me in.”
“You think I need help?”
“You don’t even cry,” he whispers, but I hear the accusation in his words. “I’m worried about you.”
I turn my head out of his hold and take a step back. “Why do you need me to cry? To prove to you that I’m hurting? Will my tears prove it to them?” I say, motioning my hand to the people outside. “You all say the same things. You think I don’t hear it, but I do. ‘She needs to talk.’ ‘She needs to eat.’ ‘She needs to get out of bed.’ It’s all about what everyone else wants to make them feel more comfortable around me.” My words come out hard. “What about what I want—what I need?”
“Tell me what it is, and I’ll give it to you.”
“I want to be left alone!” I lash out. “I want everyone to stop touching my dad’s things and get out of my house so my mom and I can have a chance to find some sort of peace in this goddamn nightmare.”
“I feel like you’re pushing me away.”
“It’s not about you, Kroy!” I walk over and sit on the bed, and a second later, he’s kneeling in front of me with his hands on my knees. Dropping my head, I release on a bleak whisper, “It’s not fair.”
“I know, babe.”
“I just don’t understand why God would do this to me. Why did He choose to leave me fatherless and not someone else?”
Kroy leans in and rests his forehead against mine. “I wish I had the answers to give you.”
Wrapping his hand behind my neck, he brings me closer, pressing his lips against mine in a soft kiss. I want to get lost in it, the way I always have, but . . .
“I can’t,” I murmur when I pull away. “I just want to be alone right now.”
“You know I love you, right?”
“I know. I just . . .”
“I know. You don’t have to say it again.”
With a kiss to my forehead, he walks to the door.
“Can I call you later?”
“Yeah.” I say the word but already know I’ll ignore the phone when it rings.
(June)
I got my stitches out this morning. The doctor said that, with time, most of the scarring will be minimal, if nothing at all. But there is one laceration that cut deeper than the rest. That one will stay with me, a jagged pink line, skating its way across my right cheek.
An everlasting reminder.
Holding the tube of vitamin E in my hand, I stand in front of the mirror in my bathroom and look at the fresh scars that web across my face.
I look like a monster.
I’ve never been self-conscious about my appearance before. I’ve been lucky to avoid breakouts and blemishes. My skin has always been a smooth canvas painted in a natural sun-kissed hue of light bronze with green eyes rimmed with long dark lashes. And now that canvas has been clawed apart by the hands of a drunk driver that I can’t even yell at because he died too. I’m left with no one to spew my hate and anger toward, so I bury it deep down in a lame attempt to suffocate it into extinction.
My body starts when my phone buzzes against the granite countertop. Kroy’s name reads across the screen, and I hesitate before reaching to answer it. I know he’s worried about me.
“Hello.”
“Hey, babe. How did the doctor’s appointment go?”
“Okay, I guess.”
“The stitches out?”
“Yeah.” I hit the lights and walk over to my bed.
“Perfect timing.” He says this with such enthusiasm it makes me wonder if he thinks my getting the stiches removed will take away all the other damage. “Linze and a few others are heading down to the lake for the weekend. What do you say? Boating? Jet-skiing?”
“I don’t know . . . my arm . . .”
“Okay, no jet-skiing then.” He jokes with slight laughter and then carries on, “It might do you some good to get out of the house. It’s been almost a month, Cam.”
I wasn’t aware there was a timestamp for mourning.
For others, the world merely slowed for a few days before they moved on and got back to their lives. But for me, the world didn’t just slow down. It came to a complete halt and has yet to regain any momentum.
“Come on,” he urges. “If it becomes too much, we’ll leave. No questions asked, okay?”
“I feel weird about leaving my mom here all by herself.”
“Maybe if she sees you getting out of the house, it will encourage her to do the same. This could be a good thing.”
I can tell he’s not going to let up. “Maybe just for the day and not the whole weekend.”
“We’ll play it by ear.”
With a reluctant sigh, I give in. “Okay. I’ll go.”
We talk for a few minutes longer, and after we hang up, I hear a shattering from downstairs. Opening my bedroom door, I holler, “Mom?”
“Everything’s okay. I just dropped a glass.”
I make my way down to check on her, and when I walk into the kitchen, my mother is on her knees picking up shards of a broken wine glass.
“Mom, stop.” She’s not even trying to be careful, and lines of red are blooming from fresh cuts. I help her up before grabbing the dust buster from the hallway utility closet.
I suck up the glass while she tends to her cuts at the kitchen sink. She sways in her stance.
“Have you been drinking?” I ask after I turn off the sweeper.
She peers over her shoulder at me; her face is splotchy and she’s wearing a lopsided grin. It’s a look I’m not familiar with. After drying her hands on a towel, she walks around the center island, opens the door to the small wine fridge, and pulls out a bottle, saying, “Your father and I used to enjoy a glass of wine after dinner.”
This I know. But I never saw either of them the way she is now.
“Are you drunk?”
She laughs lazily. “You always were so smart, darling.” She then steps to me and scans over my face, making me shift uncomfortably on my feet. “Is that one going to scar?” she questions, pointing her finger at my cheek.
“Yes.”
She steps away as tears puddle in her eyes, and before she breaks down in front of me, she grabs the bottle of wine and heads upstairs to her room. I’m left in the kitchen feeling as if my marred beauty is a disappointment to her.
Her bedroom door shuts, closing her off from the house that’s nothing more than a tomb.
No noise.
No laughter.
No life.
The fridge has been empty for days. Nothing more remains from the casseroles and food platters that friends brought over. The guest visits have tapered off, and the doorbell hasn’t rung in nearly a week. It’s nothing but gloom and sadness inside these walls.
My mother hardly comes out of her room, and when she does, she barely talks to me. I wish I knew what to say or what to do. Most nights, her loud and pain-filled cries wake me. She misses her husband badly, there’s no question about it.
Coping is hard enough, but when you’re left to do it alone, it’s unbearable at times. I do it anyway, because what other choice do I have? Even though Kroy and Linze offer to come over, I’d rather not inflict this misery, which has painted my soul black, on them. They’re too busy being happy, having fun, and enjoying their summer. I’d be lying if I said a big part of me doesn’t resent them.
Because I should be them.
I should be enjoying my last summer before senior year. I should have my family intact. I should be able to be carefree and young. I should want to go to Linze’s lake house to bask in the sun and spend a romantic evening with my boyfriend.
But the should bes are never bes, because life decided to spit its cruelty in my face. It took away the glue that once held our family together, and without my dad, my mother and I are nothing more than dust in the wind, desperate to hang on to what’s left. Unfortunately, we’re too weak to make the gallant effort that’s needed, and I can feel us drifting.
(July)
The flickering light from the television strobes against the walls, casting its silvery hue across the darkened room. There’s a burn on my skin, which will tan by tomorrow, and Kroy smells of chlorine as he drags kisses along my neck.
We spent the day together in his backyard. He tried to get me in the pool, but I was able to avoid his efforts, using my arm as an excuse since it’s still tethered against my torso in a sling brace. Truth is, I haven’t been able to get into the pool since my last swim at school. The water was my main connection to my dad. I can’t even stomach the thought of dipping my toes in. This probably makes no sense, but it’s how I feel regardless.
So, I lied to Kroy, and instead, I put on a floppy hat to keep my scar from darkening and reclined on a lounge chair to bake under the burning sun as music blasted from the outdoor speakers. A few of our friends came over for a while, and we attempted to make small talk, but they were awkward around me, and I didn’t feel like socializing. Eventually, they grew bored with sitting around in silence and moved to the pool. I watched as the guys jumped in, roughhousing and trying to dunk each other, as the girls sat on the edge with their legs dangling in the water.
I overheard them gossiping about who’s been hooking up this summer, all the while, I felt a million miles away. Their ease and laughter contrasted my vacancy, and I started to wonder what still connected me to them.
They’re my friends, and yet, I feel like we have nothing in common anymore. If I tried to talk to them about what I’m dealing with, they wouldn’t understand. The depths of their life’s devastations wade in the shallows while mine have broken through the hypersaline water of the dead sea and settled into the black mud at the bottom.
“Kiss me,” Kroy whispers. “You feel so far away.”
“I’m right here.”
“You know what I mean.”
I turn to him and kiss him on the lips, but the flame has long ago snuffed, and my feelings feel stale at best.
He pulls back and drops his head.
He feels it too.
“Cam . . .”
“I’m sorry . . . I—”
“I don’t want you to be sorry,” he says. “I just want you to talk to me. We used to always talk, but ever since . . .”
His words drift, not wanting to mention what he fears might break me. I fear it too. And he’s right. We use to stay up to all hours of the night talking on our cell phones or texting, only to be half-lidded zombies the next day at school. But that was then.
“Your kisses feel so empty.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say.”
“You never know what to say anymore.” His frustration bleeds between his words, but I know it comes from a place of love, because that’s who Kroy is. He’s love and tenderness and everything a girl wants in a boyfriend. No one would know it just by looking at him. To them, he’s the school’s star cornerback for the football team. His broad build is deceiving to the gentleness that lies beneath his tough exterior. A gentleness only I get the privilege to see because he loves me. “Do you even want to be here, because you’ve hardly said two words to me today.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“It is. Either you want to be here, or you don’t.”
I sulk back into the couch and stare mindlessly at the television, unsure of how to answer him without hurting his feelings.
“Babe.”
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Hurt me?” When I look into his eyes, I see his desperation to understand. How can I explain it to him when I don’t really understand it myself?
“Everything’s different,” I finally tell him. “The world is different, and I don’t know where I belong. I don’t know my place anymore, because the whole puzzle has fallen to pieces.”
He takes my hand in his, and affirms, “This is your place. Right here next to me.”
I shake my head. “I feel empty to you because I am empty.”
“You’re not. You may think you are, but I see everything inside you.”
“You don’t,” I refute. “It’s just easier for you to believe that rather than seeing the truth.” We deadlock on each other for a moment before I confess, “I can’t even cry. What kind of heartless person can’t even cry over her dead father?”
“A girl who’s afraid. But there’s nothing to be afraid of when you’re with me,” he says. “Come on, Cam, I’ve known you since you were six.”
“I can’t give you something that I don’t have.”
I’m hollow.
And numb.
“Tell me what to do here. I used to be able to give you what you wanted. I used to make you happy. But I need you to tell me what you need. Nothing I do is working.”
“I just need time.”
“Away from me?”
“Away from everyone,” I whisper.
Dropping his forehead against mine, he breathes heavily as the air around us thickens.
“I don’t want to lose you, Cam.”
I wish I could say that I don’t want to lose him either, but I’ve already lost my whole world.
I love Kroy. I just need space to find my way out of this constant hovering cloud.