Can't Look Away

[Chapter One] Beat the Blues and Learn Fresh Beauty Tips

"On the Internet, you live forever. Everything you read could have happened today. Or last year. Or never." -Torrey Grey, Beautystarz15

In September, my parents moved me and my dead sister to
Texas.

Today, just one week after the moving trucks left us here,
my parents are going to put her ashes in the ground out in
the middle of nowhere. The thought of it makes my stomach
churn.

"Are you sure you don't want to come with us, Torrey?"

My dad asks as he paces back and forth in front of the couch.
My mom stares off into space, her hands clenched in her lap.

"I'm sure," I say. "I went to the funeral." And we all knew
how that turned out. Pictures of my grieving face ended up
on Instagrams everywhere. There was talk that a camera was
even hidden in the huge spray of pink roses. They never
found out for sure.

Mom seems to want to argue with me, and then just
doesn't have the energy. Like she doesn't have the energy to
eat dinner or brush out the tangles in her curly blond hair.

She did, however, have the strength to keep going down to
that corner at Pearl and 10th Street back in Colorado. My dad
found her there, night after night, staring at that little pile of
wilting flowers and teddy bears and holding handwritten
cards from strangers.

"We all need a new start," My dad says now, looking at
my mom. I know that part is about me, too. I can't really
blame him. He's trying to fix things. That's what Dad does.

That's why we're here in Texas, sitting on a couch the color
of dead leaves and talking about putting what's left of my
sister in the dirt.

Right after the funeral in Colorado, my parents discussed
the move to Texas. Well, the truth is, my dad talked about it
and my mom just stared at things like forks and lamps. I
tried not to get in the way, and didn't say anything at all,
even though the thought of moving away from Boulder was
another thin layer of sadness pushed down on top of all the
grief.

"It's just for a little while," Dad said. Like we'd come back
again after a few months.

When my mother finally agreed to go, there was only one
condition.

My sister, Miranda.

My dad, ever the planner, already thought of this and had
an answer ready. "My family has a cemetery plot down in
Huntsville. We can put her there and be close by."

The next day, Mom carefully rolled up the silver vase
containing my sister's ashes into bubble wrap and placed it
in a specially made travel box the funeral people gave us.

And just like that, even thought it didn't make any sense to
me, we all went to Texas. I didn't speak up because I didn't
deserve to have an opinion.

I never knew you could bury ashes when people died. I
thought you were supposed to keep them on the mantel or
sprinkle them across the ocean. That's what they always did
in the movies.

"There won't be anyone else there today. Right, Scott?"

My mom asks my dad now in a quiet monotone. She talks
like that a lot now. No one would guess she lectured to
hundreds of biology students at the university in Colorado.

She quit when Miranda was born and went back to teaching
part-time when my sister went to kindergarten. Even so, she
still had a wait list every semester of students wanting to get
into her section. She was that good.