She's Gone and I'm Lost

10 | discussion

dedicated to all of you people reading this because you mean the world to me :)

10 | the discussion

January 1st | 6:32 am

I used to spend every New Year's Eve at Alex's house. My parents threw a party each year, but the guests were always their age, and I didn't exactly enjoy a room full of tipsy adults pinching my cheeks and telling me how much I had grown since the last time they had seen me. It became a tradition. Marleen and I would walk over to Alex's house and spend the night gathered on the couch, watching movies and eventually watching the countdown to midnight. And Alex, being Alex, would convince us to go outside and lie in the grass to look at the stars. Sometimes we would pull out the old telescope from the attic. It used to be her fathers, so she rarely used it.

I've been thinking a lot about those nights lately. They seem so unreal, too perfect, compared to now. And this is the first day of a new year that I'm not going to spend with Alex.

But enough with my petty thoughts, on with the story.

That night, the night that I started to think I was going crazy, Marleen and I got home late. And that's when I remembered that I had told my parents that I wouldn't be out late. Oops. I told Marleen about this revelation of mine as she pulled the truck into the driveway of my house. She let out a sigh in disdain, but didn't say anything. We got out of the vehicle and I kept my gaze on my shoes as I walked towards the house. I didn't want to look up, I didn't want to see the night sky. When we entered the house, I noticed that the light was on in the kitchen. It was almost midnight.

At the sound of the door opening, my mom popped her head out of the kitchen doorway to look at us. I couldn't see her expression due to the shadows that the dark hallway cast on her face, but imagined a look of anger mixed with relief. She then turned back towards the room, probably to inform my dad that we were back. And I felt nothing but guilt. Well, I was also worried that they wouldn't let me go out again.

I shared a look with Marleen, and then we walked into the kitchen with tentative steps, apprehensive about what would happen once we were there. I walked out of the dark hallway and into the well-lit kitchen. And to my surprise, my parents didn't look angry. They didn't shout at me for staying out late the second I walked through the door. They just looked disappointed. And, in a way, that was worse. Knowing that my parents were let down by my behavior was worse than them scorning me about it. "That was quite a long ride around the neighborhood," my dad said, quoting my words from earlier that day.

"Yeah..." I trailed off. I had no idea what to say. Luckily, Marleen came to the rescue. She had a plan.

"It's too much," she said. "After the funeral today, everything I see makes me think of her." I didn't know where she was going with this, but I knew that she had a strategy to win my parents over. She always did. "Danika said it was the same thing for her." I hadn't said that, but it was true. I was seeing Alex everywhere, quite literally. "It's just too painful to be here, you know? All the memories start to come back." I heard the promise of tears in her voice, and I knew that what she had said had some truth behind it. My mom must have heard this too, because the next thing I knew, she had pulled both Marleen and I into a tight hug.

I decided to aid my friend in her plan. "We drove a little further than planned. It was nice, to just be away from this town for a little while," I said into my mom's shoulder.

She pulled back slightly to look at us before saying, "Maybe we should plan a little trip. Get out of here for a few days." She then pulled us back into the hug. I looked over at Marleen and she gave me a small smile. Her eyes were still shining from tears, but she held them back. She had always been stronger than me.