Still Here

40

I've decided that I simply can't take it anymore. Life, I mean. I can't live with my thoughts. Not in a world where everyone I love disappears.

I grab my mother's car keys in the middle of the night and dart to the car.

I speed to the hospital, unable to shut up for any longer. I pass by AJ's old hospital room and choke back a sob. I run into Jasmine's room in a way similar to how I once ran into the street and Michael's car.

She laying in bed, her hands on her stomach and eyes wide open. She sits up when she hears my crying and gestures for me to come closer. I collapse into her, and she cradles me. I haven't been cradled since Cara.

"What's wrong?" Jasmine whispers, tucking my hair behind my ear.

"Everything," I say. "I can't . . . keep doing this."

Jasmine's face, full of puzzlement, causes me to realize that I've made a terrible mistake. Before she can make me explain myself, I'm gone.

I hop back into the car, headed to the cliff my sister jumped off a million years ago. 

I'm there all too soon, once again noteless.

I get out of the car slowly. I can see the edge; it isn't nearly as inviting as my gun.

I heave thousands of sobs, again reliving the night of Cara's death, my eyes glazed over and mind spinning. I walk to the cliff, staring out into the ocean with dead eyes.

There's a bench near the end. I carved Cara's name into it once with my father's pocket knife, because it wouldn't get out of my head. I thought that would help. I laugh. It so obviously didn't.

I stare at the shaky letters, which are slowly becoming distorted by my tears, which well up so much that they overflow and spill off my cheeks, into the endless ocean below.