If Not for You (Completed)

Chapter 22: Kale

22Kale

I still couldn't believe my sister was gone. If I thought I'd been in a broken state before, it was nothing compared to the hollow vessel that I felt like I'd become. Everything in my life that had started to heal itself had been completely re-shattered, and I was left standing helpless amongst the pieces, unable to even glue them back together.

Having to sit through Kate's funeral had taken another chunk out of me that I hadn't been ready to give. It left me feeling cold, chipped at more than a block of ice being carved into a swan. Kazzi seemed certain that I would be that swan one day. That I'd wake up one morning and shed my ugly duckling feathers and rise up as this beautiful creature with a testimony that would help heal others.

I was less convinced.

At the rate I was going, I was no good to anyone. Not myself, certainly not Kazzi... all I could do was drag her down with me, and she didn't deserve that. After all she'd done for me, all my problems that she'd taken to rest on her own shoulders, she deserved peace. She deserved for me to back the hell away from her, hit the road, and give her life back.

But I was a selfish prick.

The further I felt like I needed to get from her, the tighter I seemed to cling to her. I'd begged her not to see me to the streets again, but more than a fear of being homeless, I feared losing her. I feared the person I would become having lost her. There wasn't enough ice in the world that would adequately pack around my heart to make up for losing Kazzi a second time. It would kill me... faster than any illness or injury ever could.

I was thinking about my life as I'd read Kate's poem. Her carefully penned words had destroyed me before, but coupled with every other turmoil in my mind, and the knowledge that my sister was honest-to-God dead and gone, it wrecked me on a level I'd been unprepared for. With all the faces staring up at me as I'd crumbled... I couldn't get out of that church fast enough.

I sat outside the rear of the building with my back rested against the brick wall. Even in the shadows, the air was hot, the sun blazing across the asphalt of the parking lot to leave shimmering mirages between the cars. The bricks were warm against my back, the heat pulsing through my shirt to make me sweat, but I barely paid any attention to it.

I didn't know how long I'd been gone, and though I knew that Kazzi would soon be looking for me, I was in no hurry to go back inside.

Drawing up my knees as best I could against the wound in my gut, I scraped my hands over my face, rubbing away sweat and tears that left my palms wet. I wiped them on my jeans. At the sound of approaching footsteps, I looked up, expecting to see Kazzi, and frowned when I saw the pastor instead. Wearing black jeans and a gray polo, black and white Chuck Taylor's with a bible tucked under his arm, he looked down on me with a small smile.

"There you are. Mind if I join you?"

"I'm afraid I wouldn't make for very pleasant company right now."

He huffed. "I can assure you I've been in the presence of far worse."

Without waiting for an invitation, he lowered to sit next to me and drew his knees up as well. For several minutes, he didn't say anything, as though he were waiting for me to break the ice, which I wasn't in the mood to do. Pressing my head against the bricks, I stared out over the parking lot, feeling somewhat comforted by his presence, though I didn't know why.

"What's your name?" I asked after several minutes, unable to sit in silence with him for some reason. "I must have missed it if you announced it at the funeral."

Without looking at me, he chuckled softly. "I didn't announce it. My name tends to earn me a lot of strange looks."

I huffed. "Can't be any worse than Kale. I've been called 'salad' enough times in my life to fill a novel."