And I was pretty sure that the look in his eyes wasn’t just from losing someone he lived with. It cut into my heart, cracking the already cracked pieces even more.
Chapter 41
Age 20
One day, the house next door was put up for sale. It went from being empty, everything taken out, either trashed, sold, or moved to storage, to having a huge sign in the front yard, proclaiming it for sale.
The last time I saw Jasper was that day in his kitchen, where all the emotions he carried were shown to me. After that, there hadn’t been a peep. No sign or sighting of him even once.
I saw other people there, cleaning and moving things around in and out of the house for a few days as spring finally rolled around. But after that, the house sat there empty for weeks. Lonely and lost, just like I was.
During one of the many therapy appointments, Dr. Shaw put me on antidepressants. A super low dose, but something she felt I needed. Me, on the other hand, did not.
Who cared if I was barely surviving? Who cared that I had to force myself to eat half a meal a day? Who cared that I stopped talking, even to Dawn, as the days passed?
My phone was always silent. No alerts, unless it was Dawn, letting me know when she was leaving for work. A few times, Noah orAsher reached out, but even then, I ignored them both.
I just wanted to be left alone. No one hung around long enough. No one fought to keep me.
All but Dawn, but she didn’t count.
Friends came and went, as did life. But I never had a true friend, so that saying couldn’t be true.
Just like days passed, so did years. I turned nineteen, then twenty.
One day bled into the next.
I spent most of my days journaling for a blog I started for survivors just like myself, and cooking treats of all kinds in between.
I wasn’t happy, I wasn’t sad either. But I was empty. A part of me was gone, and I’d never find the missing pieces.
A few people out in the world understood that feeling. But they were simply that. People.
Ones who were also abused, taken advantage of, and lost in a world of choices. They liked my journal entries, finding comfort in not being alone.
But I was still alone.
Just like I was determined to stay.
I knew I wasn’t meant to be happy. I wasn’t meant to become anyone other than who I was.
I was, and always would be, Koda. The boy who loved and lost. The boy who wasdrowned in sorrow, but still stood on two feet. The boy who wished, but never got one granted.
I had a voice, but I didn’t use it. I had words to write, so that’s what I did. I wrote my heart out, knowing that no single person would know who I really was. Not when I used a fake name, hiding behind a screen.
Posting the latest journal entry to the website, I stood and stretched, my body cracking from sitting too long.
Summer was here with a vengeance. Heat wafted through the windows, and no matter how hard the AC worked, certain parts of the house would never cool off.
I happened to look out of the window, seeing the sign on the front of the house next door finally had a SOLD lettering over it.
For being a nice house, it had been on the market for almost two years. Two years of torture every time I looked out that way. Two years of hoping that my heart would be healed. Two years of…well years.
How I missed someone driving by, and stopping there, would be a mystery. It didn’t matter though. Whoever moved in, wouldn’t be a friend. They wouldn’t care about me, just like the last person that lived in that house.
Tearing my gaze away, I slowly made my way down the stairs and towards the kitchen.
I had no appetite, and it was worse than normal with the new meds. My stomach was always crampy, and it didn’t help that Dawn watched to make sure I drank a protein shake every night before she’d go to bed.
