The Days After

Stage 5: Working Through

    I have found it rather hard to enjoy a party when you're dead. You can get in without an invitation and no one will see you standing awkwardly in the corner waiting for one of your friends to come find you but it's not the same as a ghost. I knew parties would be different I just didn't realize it would be like this.

    I stood away from the crowd, a wallflower between two couples with their tongues down each other's throats. I felt no heat from them even though their bodies were so close to mine. The music was loud and the makeshift dance floor was crowded but I felt none of the vibrations from the large speakers and no one would see me dance if I dared to try. The stench of cheap vodka filled the house but I would never again feel it burn my throat or warm my stomach or feel the buzz cloud my mind. I saw the room with its gray walls and the fancy dresses that girls wore, the party hats atop curled hair, the gold balloons, and the t.v showing Times Square off to the side. I could see, hear and smell everything and everyone at the party but I could not feel its energy. It was just a room of excited teenagers, and I was the mantelpiece decoration that no one paid attention to.

I was at a New Years Eve party. It was an hour until the exact time when I had died. I had been dead for a year.

   It hadn't gotten easier, being a ghost despite the fact that I had accepted being dead. I could be surrounded by everyone I still loved but I would still feel lonely. No one noticed me, no one talked to me, no one loved me. They loved the dead girl, the one in the grave who hadn't seen the sudden rush of headlights. They loved the memories of Autumn Pearce, they didn't love me. But oh, how I loved them.

   I think my parents were okay now. They had recently gone into my room and cleaned it out. They had picked through my childhood drawings and dusted off the perfume bottles that sat on my dresser exactly where I had left them. They put books and old toys in boxes but left my collection of CDs and all the posters that hung on my light blue walls. It had been hard for them but it was a big step and now they didn't have to avoid my room. Vanessa had come in a week before at their request to see if there was anything she wanted. She walked slowly around the room before sitting down on the bed, the place of many sleepovers and gossip sessions. She had just clutched a throw pillow to her chest for awhile; her eyes pinned to photos of us  that I had taped to my walls. All she took was that pillow and a sweater that I had stolen from her. Alex had come later that day. He had been doing well in the months following his incident. He was still a bit broken in places but stayed strong and he was healing. He was healing slowly but he was alive. My room was where he fell apart again.

    It was like the months after a bad breakup. Your heart still hurts and you get dizzy sometimes when you remember their smile but you're okay. You have been working on yourself and putting yourself back together and everything is getting better. But then you find an old shirt of theirs at the back of your closet and you crumble again. I think it was like that for Alex, it's just this situation was worse than a breakup.

One minute he was making patterns in the dust on my crooked music stand with the tips of his fingertips and the next he was clutching at my sheets in tears. I don't know exactly what happened but maybe he saw the book I had been reading last still open on my nightstand or perhaps he had caught a faint whiff of my perfume on the multitude of throw pillows I had kept. Or maybe he saw the stuffed bear that he had given me as an anniversary present. It had kind of been a joke when he had given it to me and we had laughed because Autumn Pearce would never be caught dead with a teddy bear. But it lay where I last left it beside my pillow because I had slept with the damn thing every night. He held it tightly to his chest then. My parents let him sleep in my room that night even though he was awake for most of it. It was as if he wouldn't let a moment of his time there be wasted on sleep. He had taken the bear and the book but folded over the page that I had last read. Alex may have fallen apart that night but he had put back the puzzle pieces that were his tattered heart when he left in the morning.