Still

Chapter 3

                   

After laying on my bed staring at the ceiling for a few moments I decide a coffee and donut will make my night a whole lot better. So, I toss on my hoodie and grab my keys but just as I'm heading for the door, I decide to see if Willow wants to join me. Willow and I used to be the type of sisters who did anything and everything together and never got tired of each other's company but after our mother passed, that changed entirely. Willow made it her end all goal to make our mother proud but I fell into a hole and I still haven't found my way out of it. The two of us haven't had a parental figure in our lives since she's been gone which hasn't helped. Our father used alcohol to cope with her death and I haven't had a real conversation with him since she died. He's either passed out with vomit covering his clothing on the kitchen floor or nowhere to be found.

            I can hear Willow's TV blaring as I approach her room but just as I am about to nudge the door with my foot I hear something else. The sounds of her sobbing and whispering, "I miss you." Which makes sadness well up inside of me and I race down the stairs as quietly as I can to get out of the house.

            As soon as I sit down in my car I drop my head on the steering wheel and burst out into tears. I ask myself every single day why this had to happen to me. My mom was what kept my family together in every aspect and now I can't even talk to my own twin comfortably. And these overwhelming feelings of emptiness and despair never leave me alone and I'm starting to wonder why I have to continue to try every damn day.

            I begin to recover and light a dart I find in the glove compartment, courtesy of Val of course because as much as I like them, I refuse to buy them for myself. I don't like the thought of having to rely on something. Then I start my car and drive mindlessly towards my favourite coffee shop.

            I sit down, where I always do, the little chair in the corner by the window. A table for one far away from anyone else. My mother used to bring Willow and I here whenever she could find a reason. It was her happy place, she always told me it was where all her inspiration came from. This was where she would come to write, it was what she loved. You could see it in her eyes, they would look so full of life and almost entranced as she would put pen to paper. She must be where I got it from. The urge to write about anything and everything. What I see, how I feel, or what I think. And I want to, but I can't. Not since she left me.

            I hear the woman call my order from the counter so I head over but I stop dead in my tracks the second I see the door open. I think to myself that this must be some type of sick joke or I'm having a nightmare that I'm struggling to wake up from. It was Zane. Holding Ray's hand. I never thought he would stoop this low. He knew how much this place meant to me, how much it still means to me. I confided in him about my mother and how she loved being here and that when I'm here, I forget that she's gone.

            He looks at me dumbfounded as I stare him in the eyes. "Ember—" he starts but I stop him.

            "No." I mumble and shove him over as I rush out the door. I quickly start my vehicle and just drive, I have no idea where I'm going but I don't stop, I can't. Something took over my body and I couldn't stop driving. Escaping from Zane, from my alcoholic father, from school, from this city. I always knew I didn't belong here. My mother knew it too. She always told me I was meant for something greater, that I would have the future she always dreamed of.

            Now I know where I'm going, a place I told myself I would never go. I am suddenly reminded that I'm in the midst of a panic attack and can feel my heart racing so abnormally fast. I pull over, onto the side of the road. So near to where my mother's car was parked on the night my life became the shit show I always thought I deserved, but of course I never expected it to happen this way. My mom was the best person I have ever known and I wish I could have done something, anything to make her stay. Willow and I always knew when she was going through one of her "spells", as my father used to describe it. We didn't understand it until we were older, maybe around thirteen years old, because our father sat us down one evening and told us about Mom's illness. He told us that our mom had depression, and that she struggled with it since before we were even born. He finally helped us to understand why Mom would lock herself in her room some nights and not come out for a day or two, why Mom refused to eat, and why she wasn't herself sometimes. However, Willow and I were not aware of the severity of her illness until the night she took her life.

            I let my feet lead the way to where her lifeless body hung the night we found her. I could almost hear the commotion surrounding me as it was that night. My father screaming in terror and sobbing uncontrollably, my sister kneeling on the ground bawling so intensely that she sounded as though she was in immense pain and of course, the sirens in the distance. My reaction was not like my family's. I walked over to her swaying body, hovering over the river and looked down at her. I felt the warmth of tears streaming down my face but I made no sounds of agony like my father and sister had. I just stared at her and thought to myself "How could you?". That phrase repeated in my mind like a broken record player the whole night, while we watched the paramedics retrieve her body from the bridge, while we watched her being put into a body bag and while we drove to our house that would never be my home again. Her absence should have felt painful to me but it never has. Her absence has always felt like nothing. Not because I didn't care but because now I can no longer feel.