Somebody That I Used To Know

Chapter 1

Somebody That I Used To Know- Chapter One

One year. One month. Two days. Three hours. Six minutes. Three seconds...make that four...five...six...seven seconds without John. Clara had been counting the time for that long, since the day she witnessed his death. It was a long year, but very uneventful for her. She stayed locked up in her room through her senior year, only occasionally coming out to shower or go to get dinner from downstairs. She didn't eat much though. How could she? It was all her fault. The therapist came to see her every week for five months before she gave up on the whole process. Nothing could help her. Nothing except for John, and, as the whole world knew, he had been dead for a while now.

Clara never went back to school, but she did get back together with Alex. Why she did, she wasn't sure, but Alex was happy to make sure that she didn't leave him again. He was the only guy who she really knew back home, and she wasn't ready to be completely alone. She didn't believe she deserved anything better than Alex, but even if she did, she didn't think anyone else would want her. Sitting alone in her room every day, she had Alex come up to see her. He never hesitated at the opportunity to visit. They never spent time talking about how they felt or what their relationship was like. Clara didn't care about that anymore. She only wanted to drown her sorrow.

Every time Alex kissed her, she felt nothing. No love. No joy. No sense of feeling truly alive. It was completely different than her relationship with John had been. When he tried to go further than a kiss, Clara would push him away and tell him to leave if he wanted the relationship to continue. Sometimes, he would take out his anger on her. Yelling, and at one point, even striking her. He apologized over and over, promising never to do it again, but Clara just ignored him as he left the room.

Nothing in her life was the same. She never went to a university, even though she had the grades and résumé to go anywhere she wanted. When they were younger, she and John promised each other that they would go to the same university after their high school years were over. Since he wasn't around to go to school with, Clara didn't feel the need to go anywhere. She turned down every scholarship opportunity that came her way after 'graduating' in her junior year. She didn't attend the ceremony and received her diploma in the mail. To her, life was ruined.

Alex, on the other hand, had gotten a football scholarship to England's top university and in a few years, he was guaranteed a spot on the Manchester United team for the Premier League of England. He would leave Clara in a few years anyway, so why shouldn't she enjoy his company now, even if she didn't love him. He was the only one she had right now.

Her parents were no help in any of these situations, especially since her mother had died only a few months ago. As much as she loved her father, Clara knew that he had to deal with the grief any way he felt necessary, and if that included staying out late every night at the pub and not coming home for a few days, so be it. It's not like she saw him that much before Ellie's death in any case.

Everything was wrong without John. It was like the entire world that she lived in was one big nightmare. She constantly tried to wake herself up from it, but it took a while for her to realize that this was her reality. Her world was broken. Her relationships were broken. She was broken.