Before You Say Goodbye

35

My father thought I was being dramatic – with all the 'not eating, not able to sleep, and not even able to shed a single drop of tear' thing I had going on. He thought my grieving wasn't authentic, that I was faking my grief. I don't know how grief could be faked – but if there was a way to fake being happy at a time like this, I would gladly do it. If there were ways to forget the last week of my life, I'd gladly choose it.

He has been trying to force-feed food into my mouth since the funeral two days ago – not wanting to pick a fight with him this time, I even forced myself to swallow a couple of bites of chicken last night for dinner. Too bad, I puked immediately after. Nothing I tried to eat would stay down my stomach. He thought I was somehow forcing the food to come out. I knew he was stupid, but I didn't even have the energy this time to call him out on his stupidity. I had silently left in the middle of the dinner and curled up in my bed, listening to mom and him fighting it out after.

Appetite wasn't the only thing Sophia stole from me, she also stole my sleep too. When Monday morning arrived, I hadn't slept a wink. Every time I tried to close my eyes, an image of Sophia, on her bed, the bedspread drenched with her blood popped into my mind – the way we'd found her – and I would immediately open my eyes, not wanting to see that sight ever again in my life.

"Addie?" mom knocked on my bedroom door as I was pulling my pants up my leg. "I thought I told you to not close this door?"

Sighing, I hopped towards the door, one leg inside my pants, the other outside. She was getting a little overbearing. "I was changing," I said, pulling open the door to let her inside.

"Are you getting ready for school?" she frowned, "Why don't you stay home for a few more days?"

I brushed the idea off, not even considering it. Stay home and endure being home alone with her husband again, I'd rather not. "I haven't been in school for a week already, mom. I'm missing a lot of classes," I told her, almost shuddering at the thought of staying home even one more day, "Besides, being here isn't helping. I need to see Terry."

Mom nodded. She understood what I was saying without words. Terry and I were in this together – we were mourning the loss of our friend – we needed each other.

Since Lucy was against Terry driving to school for some reason, Roman agreed to drive her to school and Ezra volunteered to pick me from home. As soon as I got into his car and closed the door, Noah, who was riding shotgun, turned to grin at me. "What happened to your hair?" He joked. His eyes flying to my hair and his smile dimming a little. I didn't even know the condition my hair was in, but from the look on his face, I knew it wasn't pretty. The not so weird thing was, I still didn't care.

I forced a chuckle out of my mouth. "Couldn't find my hairbrush."

"You want to use my comb? It's clean." Without waiting for a reply from me, he quickly pulled out a comb from his bag. Did he carry a comb with him all the time? He brought it for me?

I shrugged, taking it from him and gently running it through my hair, trying to remove the knots as much as I can. I hadn't run a brush through my hair for a few days. The last I'd done something with my hair was the day of the funeral two days ago.

"What all have I missed in the past week I wasn't in school?"

"Nothing much," Noah shrugged, "There's a new counselor at school – he's nice. Mrs. Rooney has retired. And we'll probably have a special assembly today – I think you should know."

Great! I knew what the 'special assembly' was for. A week later, I decided to go back to school confident that all the suicide talk would be over, but no, they chose this day to have the dreaded talk. I know the school was bound to address Sophia and what she had done, but I thought they would've done it sometime in the last week.