When I was a freshman in high school, a group of bullies cornered me in the boys’ locker room and took turns spitting on me while screaming vile, disgusting things. Eventually, they tired, and I was left cowering in the corner of the showers, covered in their spit. I rinsed off and ran home, tears staining my face the entire way. The first thing I did was run to the arbor trellis and fill my lungs with the sweet smell of my mother’s garden. It reminded me of her, and I desperately wanted her to hold me, but I was too ashamed to face her.
Soon, my mother found me and held me in her arms, begging me to tell her what happened. She said that no matter what it was, I could tell her.
But I never did.
I just cried in her arms and told her it was a rough day. When I came out in my freshman year of college, she was wonderful.
My father is another story, but who cares about him?
Since my mother’s death, I revisit that moment in the garden often. I wish I had told her. My mother wanted to help, but I shut her out—too embarrassed to admit my truth. I know she would have said something wise. She would have probably marched over to the school and demanded that those bastards be punished; she was a tiger mom like that.
There are so many ways she could have helped if I had let her, but I didn’t. I couldn’t.
I’d give everything I own to have her here with me right now. She’d say something wise about the heart mending itself and young love being the most painful of all. All the things that good mom’s tell their heartbroken children.
Maybe that’s why my dreams about her are so real. I just want her back so much that my poor, pitiful mind tries to will her into existence when I’m asleep.
I spent this whole time chasing Torren, believing that it was something beyond just the two of us; that it was karmic. Fate. Otherwise, my mother wouldn’t have visited me in that dream. I wouldn’t have seen all the signs and connected them to what she said.
But it’s not any of those things.
I’m just really, really sad, and I miss my mom so much that I’m looking foranythingto latch onto to feel like she’s stillhere. Every day it hurts, but I shut it down with humor and the blind belief that I’ll fall in love and everything will be better.
But you can’t replace the love lost when your mom dies.
The dream wasn’t real. The grease on my hands? I was probably fucking sleepwalking. Her gift? Grief’s hallucination.
I close the canopy curtains of my bed and stare at the fistful of pills I hold. Maybe they’ll help. Maybe I’m just an emotional wreck, and I need to stop thinking I can fix this on my own.
Maybe I do need help.
I quickly shove the pills in my mouth and wash them down with a big gulp of water.
They hurt going down. The next few weeks, or more, will be hell. The last time I took these, it felt like ants were crawling beneath my skin. The feeling was so intense that I wanted to claw at the skin covering my arms just to give myself a moment of relief. My dreams were terrifying, and there were moments when I thought I really was hallucinating.
But I’d stopped taking them before the drugs settled into my system. I was stubborn and didn’t want to change. She wouldn’t have wanted me to change, I told myself.
But she’s dead.
Maybe, if I stick with it, I’ll be better once I’m on the other side?
Or, I’ll just be numb.And maybe that’s better.
I’ll let the pills eclipse my spirit and just exist; a specter—neither here nor there.
All I know is I don’t have it in me to keep fighting. I don’t have it in me to keep hoping.
I’m just too sad and tired. I’ll make it easy on everyone and be what Father wants me to be.
Invisible.
Chapter 19
Torren
My bike weaves around potholes and road debris as I race along the backroads of the Patch. It’s early, and the sun has only just peeked above the eastern horizon.
The dark houses that flank the road look haunted. Each one has something that makes it look twisted: broken windows, a slanted front porch, and one even has an old baby doll nailed to the newel post of the front steps.
