The Will To

T H I R T E E N (icebergs)

I always thought that the five steps of grief were bullshit. Grief didn't have steps. It was an iceberg that stranded people in the middle of the ocean. The only way off of it was to swim and inevitably freeze to death or, by some miracle, to get rescued by a passing vessel.

There was, however, one part of the supposed steps of grief that I bought: acceptance. Eventually, you would accept your fate of a lifetime on that iceberg. It was cold and wet and really quite lonely, but that was life now. Every once in a while you'd see another passing iceberg holding someone else and wave, realizing that the ocean was on a mission to collect as many people as it could. And there was nothing anyone could do about it.

So, no. There were no steps to overcoming grief. There was just an ocean.

This was what I wanted to tell Lyla Evans as I passed by her while she sat staring out the window in the library that afternoon. A book was parted in her lap, but I knew it lay unread. Her eyes had that look. She was here but gone, stripped of herself and wondering how she could survive when nothing felt comforting anymore. Not even the quiet, peaceful air in the library. Nothing ever could after you'd been violated.

I wanted to tell her that no amount of hoping, crying, or screaming would get her off that iceberg. But I didn't have the heart. It was only a matter of time before she found that out for herself, and one of these days, maybe we'd wave to each other from our blocks of ice in passing.

With a final glance at Lyla who still sat motionless in a desk chair beside the large window, I exited the library and headed towards my destination.

Nola popped a grape into her mouth before I took a seat across from her in the cafeteria.

"Do you see these things?" she asked, grasping a purple grape between her thumb and index finger. "They're massive. I think this school's biology department is running experiments. It's the size of a kiwi!"

While huge, the grape was nowhere close to the size of a kiwi. Placing my tray down, I nibbled on a hot fry and said, "Here's to hoping we don't grow a third arm!" I whacked my fry against her grape.

"I'd get so much more done with a third arm," Nola said. "I'd be the quickest hacker the world's ever seen."

I picked up another fry and declared, "Here's to hoping you do grow a third arm!"

"Here, here!" Nola cheered, consuming another behemoth grape.

The cafeteria was filling up. Both Nola and I had early afternoon classes and liked to eat beforehand. Fall had settled and, along with the changing leaves and darker evenings, it had brought a chill even in the direct sunlight. Most people chose to eat inside.

Scanning the room and keeping my voice low, I asked, "I just saw Lyla."

"Where?"

"The library."

Nola nodded, rolling a grape in her fingers. "I'm surprised she's still here."

"She went home for a week."

"Yeah, but..." Nola cocked her head to the side, meeting my gaze. "I don't know why she doesn't take the semester off—with everything going on? I mean, there's a full blown investigation. It's a lot."

I'd grabbed a burger for lunch instead of my usual cobb salad because I'd been starving, but the grumbling in my stomach was no longer there. It seemed to have moved to my chest. After the attack, Lyla gave a report and probably underwent an agonizing amount of questions and exams, making her relive the experience over again. The campus police department brought in the county department, and the two were supposedly collaborating to uncover the rapist's identity.