Just like my mother. Just like so many others in my life.
He didn’t care. Nobody cared.
My thoughts spiraled faster, a tempest of confusion and sorrow.
My screams poured forth, harder and louder, my heart crashing into oblivion, lost in the depths of my grief.
I beat at the earth until my fists stung, until the skin split and mud coated my palms. I wanted to punch a hole straight through the world, let all the pain spill out and flood the park, drown all of us. Dante, Caiden, every bystander whose pitying eyes threatened to peel me open even further.
But even then, I knew the ache would not subside; it would only grow, rooting itself deeper, until it became the only thing keeping me upright.
Dante hovered nearby, a feeble north star in my constellation of loss, his hand flitting between my shoulder and the air, unsure if comfort would help or salt the wound. “Amelia,” he whispered, voice trembling, “you’re not alone. You’re not. Please, let me help.”
I tasted blood in my mouth. My voice came out warped, inhuman: “No one can help.” I curled tighter, forehead pressed to the freezing ground, knuckles throbbing in the dirt. “She’s dead. Lillian is dead and she hated me and it’s my fault. Don’t you get it?” The words spat out in ragged clumps. “I should have answered. I could have?—”
My throat closed. The next sound was a howl, bottomless, animal.
A little girl and her mother stopped on the sidewalk, the child’s face a perfect circle of terror before the mom hustled her along, shooting me a look of disgust.
I wanted to chase after them, demand they look me in the eye and see what real sorrow looked like.
Caiden just watched, expression unreadable. For a moment, one sick, electric heartbeat, I thought he looked sad.
Or maybe I only wanted him to be. More likely, he was disappointed I hadn’t held up longer. That his poisons had worked fasterthan he hoped.
Dante knelt again, voice low, pleading: "Let me help you, please. You can't do this to yourself.”
But he was wrong. I was alone because everyone I loved had been hollowed out and discarded, and all that was left were these two: the boy who had destroyed my sister, and the boy who saw saving me as a mission, the way you might try to save a bird with a snapped neck.
My wounded howls cascaded like a tragic ode to all the grief and rage that I’ve carried for so long.
Somewhere deep in my head, a voice, my own or maybe Lillian’s, told me to get up, to stop humiliating myself, but I shut it out.
The pain was heavier here, truer. It filled my lungs, my veins, pressed hard against the inside of my skull until I thought I might split apart.
My screams were a tribute, a declaration:Look at what you did. Look at what you left me with.
When I finally stopped, when my throat could bear no more, I curled into myself and sobbed.
My jaw ached from clenching. Tears slicked my eyelashes and made the world shimmer, a glaze of unreality over everything.
Some small, rational part of me counted my heartbeats, wondering if I might actually die from the force of it.
I heard footsteps, Dante’s again, soft and hesitant. He knelt beside me, not touching, just breathing. “I’m here,” he whispered, and the words dug under my skin, almost worse than silence.
I tried to push him away, but my arms were rubber, my body a sack of wet flour. He finally caved and hugged me to his chest, crushing and awkward, but I clung to him with the violence of a drowning girl.
My nails left crescents in his skin. He didn’t flinch, not even as I shuddered and sobbed, spattering his shirt with snot and spit and hot, stinging tears.
Caiden still watched from a distance, arms folded, weight shifting from foot to foot. His jaw was clenched so tight I thought his teeth might splinter.
The sun was setting behind him, a red wound low on thehorizon, outlining his silhouette in blood. The sight made me want to run at him again, scratch at his eyes, take him with me into the abyss. I wanted us all to suffer equally, to drown together in the same foul river.
Instead, I let Dante hold me. My sobs slowly ebbed, leaving only the numbness, the heavy, suffocating taste of coming undone.
THE PAST
AMELIA’S BREAKING POINT
