please, pretty please, with a cherry on top and icing and candy corn, would you please stop asking?”
“You sound just like your father… everything had to be referenced to sugar,” she remarks with a frown as she sets the bowl down on the counter. In a lot of ways she looks like me: long brown hair, a thin frame, and a sprinkle of freckles on her nose. But her blue eyes are a lot brighter than mine, to the point where they almost sparkle. “Honey, I know you keep saying that you’re fine, but you look so sad… and I know you were doing okay at school, but you’re back here now, and everything that happened is right across the street.” She opens a drawer and selects a large wooden spoon, before bumping the drawer shut with her hip. “I just don’t want the memories to get to you now that you’re home and so close to… everything.”
I stare at my reflection in the stainless-steel microwave. It’s not the clearest. In fact, my face looks a little distorted and warped, like I’m looking into a funhouse mirror, my own face nearly a stranger. But if I tilt sideways just a little, I almost look normal, like my old self. “I’m fine,” I repeat, observing how blank my expression looks when I say it. “Memories are just memories.” Really, it doesn’t matter what they are, because I can’t see the parts that I know will rip my heart back open: the last few steps leading up to Landon’s finality and the soundless moments afterward, before I cracked apart. I worked hard to stitch my heart back up after it was torn open, even if I hadn’t done it neatly.
“Nova.” She sighs as she starts mixing the cookie batter. “You can’t just try to forget without dealing with it first. It’s unhealthy.”
“Forgetting
is
dealing with it.” I grab an apple from a basket on the table, no longer wanting to talk about it because it’s in the past, where it belongs.
“Nova, honey,” she says sadly. She’s always tried to get me to talk about that day. But what she doesn’t get is that I can’t remember, even if I really tried, which I never will. It’s like my brain’s developed it’s own brain and it won’t allow those thoughts out, because once they’re out, they’re real. And I don’t want them to be real—I don’t want to remember
him
like that. Or me.
I push up from the chair, cutting her off. “I think I’m going to hang out next to the pool today, and Delilah will probably be over in a bit.”
“If that’s what you want.” My mom smiles halfheartedly at me, wanting to say more, but fearing what it’ll do to me. I don’t blame her, either. She’s the one who found me on the bathroom floor, but she thinks it’s more than it was. I was just trying to find out what he felt like—what was going on inside of him when he decided to go through with it.
I nod, grab a can of soda out of the fridge, and give her a hug before I head for the sliding glass door. “That’s what I want.”
She swallows hard, looking like she might cry because she thinks she’s lost her daughter. “Well, if you need me, I’m here.” She turns back to her bowl.
She’s been saying that to me since I was thirteen, ever since I watched my dad die. I’ve never taken her up on the offer, even though we’ve always had a good relationship. Talking about death with her—at all—doesn’t work for me. At this point in my life, I couldn’t talk to her about it even if I wanted to. I have my silence now, which is my healing, my escape, my sanctuary. Without it, I’d hear the noises of that morning, see the bleeding images, and feel the crushing pain connected to them. If I saw them, then I’d finally have to accept that Landon’s gone.
* * *
I don’t like unknown places. They make me anxious and I have trouble thinking—breathing. One of the therapists I first saw diagnosed me with obsessive-compulsive disorder. I’m not sure if he was right, though, because he moved out of town not too
“You sound just like your father… everything had to be referenced to sugar,” she remarks with a frown as she sets the bowl down on the counter. In a lot of ways she looks like me: long brown hair, a thin frame, and a sprinkle of freckles on her nose. But her blue eyes are a lot brighter than mine, to the point where they almost sparkle. “Honey, I know you keep saying that you’re fine, but you look so sad… and I know you were doing okay at school, but you’re back here now, and everything that happened is right across the street.” She opens a drawer and selects a large wooden spoon, before bumping the drawer shut with her hip. “I just don’t want the memories to get to you now that you’re home and so close to… everything.”
I stare at my reflection in the stainless-steel microwave. It’s not the clearest. In fact, my face looks a little distorted and warped, like I’m looking into a funhouse mirror, my own face nearly a stranger. But if I tilt sideways just a little, I almost look normal, like my old self. “I’m fine,” I repeat, observing how blank my expression looks when I say it. “Memories are just memories.” Really, it doesn’t matter what they are, because I can’t see the parts that I know will rip my heart back open: the last few steps leading up to Landon’s finality and the soundless moments afterward, before I cracked apart. I worked hard to stitch my heart back up after it was torn open, even if I hadn’t done it neatly.
“Nova.” She sighs as she starts mixing the cookie batter. “You can’t just try to forget without dealing with it first. It’s unhealthy.”
“Forgetting
is
dealing with it.” I grab an apple from a basket on the table, no longer wanting to talk about it because it’s in the past, where it belongs.
“Nova, honey,” she says sadly. She’s always tried to get me to talk about that day. But what she doesn’t get is that I can’t remember, even if I really tried, which I never will. It’s like my brain’s developed it’s own brain and it won’t allow those thoughts out, because once they’re out, they’re real. And I don’t want them to be real—I don’t want to remember
him
like that. Or me.
I push up from the chair, cutting her off. “I think I’m going to hang out next to the pool today, and Delilah will probably be over in a bit.”
“If that’s what you want.” My mom smiles halfheartedly at me, wanting to say more, but fearing what it’ll do to me. I don’t blame her, either. She’s the one who found me on the bathroom floor, but she thinks it’s more than it was. I was just trying to find out what he felt like—what was going on inside of him when he decided to go through with it.
I nod, grab a can of soda out of the fridge, and give her a hug before I head for the sliding glass door. “That’s what I want.”
She swallows hard, looking like she might cry because she thinks she’s lost her daughter. “Well, if you need me, I’m here.” She turns back to her bowl.
She’s been saying that to me since I was thirteen, ever since I watched my dad die. I’ve never taken her up on the offer, even though we’ve always had a good relationship. Talking about death with her—at all—doesn’t work for me. At this point in my life, I couldn’t talk to her about it even if I wanted to. I have my silence now, which is my healing, my escape, my sanctuary. Without it, I’d hear the noises of that morning, see the bleeding images, and feel the crushing pain connected to them. If I saw them, then I’d finally have to accept that Landon’s gone.
* * *
I don’t like unknown places. They make me anxious and I have trouble thinking—breathing. One of the therapists I first saw diagnosed me with obsessive-compulsive disorder. I’m not sure if he was right, though, because he moved out of town not too
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