She takes me to my room. I lie down in this bed that smells of nothing. No leather. No tobacco. No campfire.
Sleep, she says.I love you,she adds.
Then you shouldn’t have let me run away, I think in my grief. If she had watched over me more carefully, none of this would have happened. But I don’t say the words. Because I know they’re not true. Because I know it’s my own fault.
Hours turn into days and weeks and months, while there is nothing but emptiness inside me because he’s gone.
I don’t allow myself to say his name in my mind because I tell myself it’s easier that way. If I don’t think his name, I may eventually forget him. If I just pretend he doesn’t exist long enough, I’ll forget the stormy-gray eyes, the raven-black hair, and the sound of his voice. I’ll forget how it felt to be touched, kissed, and desired by him.
All lies. But they help me keep breathing even though the pain in my chest threatens to suffocate me.
I found the phone he bought me in my jeans pocket the night I got home. I turned it off and hid it under the floorboard in my room. Sometimes at night, I take it out and turn it on. I don’t know what I hope to see on its screen, but it’s never there.
When it’s really bad, I text Jules. I tell her how much I miss her, how nice it was to have a friend, and that I can’t stop thinking about him. But she never answers.
My mother watches over me with a hawk’s eye, although I only come out of my room to eat or go to the bathroom.
Talk to me, she demands again and again.You can tell me everything,she assures me.
No, I can’t. Because there is nothing left for me to say.
When she wants to know if anyone touched me and who the driver of the truck was, it hurts the most, but I don’t tell her.
After a while, she stops asking questions, and something like normality finally returns. I help her with the herbs, and she goes to the markets in the surrounding area as usual. When she’s gone, I take care of the house and cook, but I don’t go outside. Sometimes I wonder if she locks the doors. If she’sactuallylocking me in now, afraid I might run away once more. But I never check. I don’t care. I don’t want to go out there at all. I don’t want to goanywhere. There’s nothing out there that I want to see or have anymore.
The key to the old closet lies untouched in its hiding place. I no longer want to think about the world with its adventures and friendships and love. I would like to forget all that. And sometimes I even succeed for a tiny moment. But as soon as I lie in bed at night, he’s haunting me through the endless minutes before sleep takes over. Every single night, he’s in front of me. Behind me. Above me. Inside me. It’s a bittersweet pain that fills me because he gave me so much. He gave meeverything. And then he took it all away.
Before I met him, I called the characters in the books foolish when they spoke of heartbreak.Nothing could be that bad, I always wanted to tell them.A heart can’t actually break, I told myself.No one dies of a broken heart, I used to think.
I was so wrong.
When the heart breaks, you can feel it very clearly. You feel the moment it gives out. And then you die. A little more each day.
My mother’s voice cuts through the silence between us. "We need to talk."
As I lift my head and eye her, it’s as if I don’t know her at all. When did her face become so deeply wrinkled? Has she always looked so tired? Whoisthis woman who calls herself my mother, but who suddenly seems like a stranger to me?
"I hear you talking in your sleep at night," she continues, not noticing my astonishment.
"What am I saying?" I ask mechanically, although I’m not really interested. Sleep is my only refuge because I don’t remember my dreams.
"What did he do to you? Did he touch you? Did he sin against you?"
I lower my fork before answering slowly and thoughtfully. "I don’t know what you’re talking about."
He kissed me. He made me feel as if I were weightless. I died beneath him and came back to life.
I think all that, but I don’t say it.
When my mother loses her composure and slaps the table with her flat hand, I don’t even bat an eye. I’ve experienced real, all-consuming rage in its purest form with him. Her outburst is nothing that could impress me anymore. It is almost ridiculous compared to what I’ve seen.
"You will tell me the name of this manright nowso he’ll be punished for what he’s done!" Her voice is sharp, but to me, it’s merely a pathetic last attempt to get me to talk.
"No one has done anything to me," I reply calmly as I look back down to continue eating.
"Then what happened? Where were you? Who gave you clothes, and what happened to your hair? Somethingmust havehappened. You can’t have beennowhereforseven days."
I lift my head again and look at her as a smile settles on my lips because I realize it doesn’t matter. She won’t be ableto do anything to him because she’ll never find him. Let her know what happened, though. Maybe then she’ll finally leave me alone.
