Shallow Imitations

chapter ten

I slip in and out of consciousness, aware of the world for a second and then drowning in my thoughts for a year.

My heart stops then starts again, beating rapidly as an attempt to escape its cage. Grabbing my bag, I storm out of the cafe. I only take a few steps before leaning against the wall, my legs unable to carry me anymore. I don't even know where I left the letter, nor do I care. I just want all of this to go away. First it's everything with Atlas. I can't forget the look on his mother's face when she told me she decided to cremate him, that she's gonna burn him into ashes and put him on a shelf like a bag of flour. It took so long for me to convince her to give him a proper burial. She was an alcoholic, so this isn't too unexpected from her. She was thrilled when he told her he was gonna move out of the house.

I kept wanting to tell her to wait. They all need to wait. Maybe they made a mistake. "I need to look at his face," I begged Eleonora. "I know it's not him."

She ended up letting me see him. The two of us stood side-by-side. I didn't understand then why she held my hand so tightly. The second I saw his face, battered and beaten, I started crying. That's my last memory of him. Not his smiling face telling me he found a new recipe for French toast online that he's trying out, waking me up with a kiss, a smile stretching his face. All that remains are cold hands and eyes that won't open, won't look at me.

They never had a good relationship. Atlas's parents never married. They had him too young, so his mom never finished high school. His dad, however, graduated and then ran as far away from them as he can. "He had a good reason," Atlas said whenever I brought it up, later changing the subject.

It kills me how he always thinks the best of people. "It's too much to handle," he would say. "Having a kid at sixteen."

He would've been great.

Before things get too serious, Atlas's mom asked me if I could handle the funeral for her. She said I could have him buried as long as I was the one to pay for the expenses. So I did. Eleonora took care of most of the details. We invited everyone we knew and we prayed even if Atlas refused to pray when he was alive. I was picture perfect, making small talk and offering drinks as if nothing's happened. I wanted to make sure everything went along peacefully. His mother didn't cry, but I didn't either. She left early and I told everyone she couldn't handle the pain of losing him. It might've been true. I can't imagine her feeling nothing after all this time.

When it was all over, we buried him and I went back to the apartment and sobbed. That night the only thing I prayed for was sleep because I had no energy to pray for something else.

Compared to then, I'm doing perfectly fine.

A hand on my back. I return to reality, looking up at Kal. It takes me a minute to fully comprehend what happened. I'm sitting on the ground, hands on my head. A nosy lady asks if I'm okay. "You should get her some water," she says, and I already know that's the second person who thinks Kal is my boyfriend.

Don't you see? I want to tell them. I'm too broken to drag somebody down with me.

I look up at his hand, warm and steady helping me up, and then mine, trembling with fear. Because I am afraid. I've been scared for a long time. Everyone around me is walking on eggshells, careful not to break the fragile girl who's lost all the important people in her life.

Hasn't it been a year? She should be over it by now? They haven't even been together for too long.

It's been ten months and three weeks and two days.

I read online that in order to get completely over a breakup, you must wait half the time you've been with that person. We were together for five years, which means it would take me two-and-a-half years to stop thinking about him. With that in mind, Atlas is dead. I guess this must add a few months.

I don't know if I can take two years of this.

"Are you okay?" Kal whispers in my ear. "We'll find out who did this."

"No," I mutter, as I begin to stand up. I've never had anything close to a panic attack, but for a moment my brain was about to explode. My breathing too short. It's almost hard to realize what's happening to my body when I'm too busy calculating years.

I haven't talked about him out loud for too long. The second I mention his name, Eleonora gives me a look that makes me feel guilty, as if she's the one who lost him and not me. The pain is beginning to dwindle, or so I make myself believe. It's a message I've been forcing on myself for months. Every time I look in the mirror and every time someone asks me what it's like, I say that it hurts less now than it did before.

I'm such a liar.

The pain comes and goes, sometimes engulfing me, turning me into nothing but sorrow. I hate that I'm not allowed to remember him anymore. It hurts to know how good he was to me. I miss him and I miss his laugh, tentative in public. He hates being the center of attention, but I always made him laugh and it was the one thing that always made me happy. I miss the way he used words no one else would understand but me. He knew everything about everything. No one is as smart as Atlas. It comes naturally to him. He's curious and wants to know how everything works.

Unlike me, he can do anything in life and still succeed.

"Hey," he mutters, and I have to remind myself that this isn't Atlas.

My palms are touching the warm sidewalk. Kal is sitting next to me, so it's slightly less embarrassing.

"I just wanna go home and not think about letters anymore." He doesn't give any indication of whether he's read the letter or not, but I assume he did.

"I'll walk you to your apartment," he said, which is only a little creepy considering everything else he's done.

My expression makes him laugh.

Kal places a hesitant hand on my back as if afraid I'd slip away if he let me out of his sight. Steadily, we walk back to my haven.

As I struggle to regain control over my body, Kal sits on my desk staring at the envelope for what feels like an hour. His eyes narrow and then go wide and then he asks to use my laptop. There's no password, so he opens it right away and I see that he's searching on a map. It quickly sinks in. If I wasn't so disoriented, I would've remembered to check for an address. Unlike Kal's letter, this was sent by someone directly to me. Someone who knows where I live.

"What did you find?" I ask him, squeezing the desk chair as I read the address.

"Do you know this house?"

He doesn't need an answer to realize I know where this letter came from. Kal waits for me anxiously, biting the tip of his finger.

"That's impossible."

"Who is it?"

"Atlas used to live there with his mom. She moved to New York not long after his death and Atlas hasn't been there for years."

We share a worried glance. Suddenly we're in this together. Like it's our problem to solve and not mine. "So who lives there now?"

"I don't know and frankly, I don't care," I tell him, slamming the laptop shut. "This isn't your problem anymore, Kal. Just go home and manipulate other people's lives instead."

"I'm not manip—I'm trying to help," he says, his tone sounding more impatient.

"You shouldn't get involved in my mess."

I'm about to say something else, but he quickly cuts me off. "At least tell me your name first."

I hold his gaze, willing him to quit it already. If Olive gave up on me this soon while knowing about all the shit in my life, then he should be running for the hills. There's no place for him in my world. I can barely fit in El and Olive and my boss who won't stop calling.

"Luna," I finally say.

And for some reason he smiles. "Well, Luna, I'm already involved in this mess, so let me fix it."