The Fade

24

           

Last day at work!

*** ***

I spent a good deal of my childhood dreaming about the day I'd dare to go into a supermarket and build a fort in the toilet paper aisle.

Well, that day has arrived, albeit not the way I expected.

Twenty minutes of careful construction leaves me with a passable fortress in the middle of aisle 14.

I sink into my nest of wadded up toilet paper and cover my face with my hands, feeling hot tears leak from beneath my fingers.

This isn't how it was supposed to go.

Mom and Griffin weren't supposed to disappear without warning on a Saturday morning meant for kayaking and a picnic.

I wasn't supposed to find myself sobbing on Ori's front porch.

We weren't supposed to be thrown into a scary world of sudden vanishings, no parents to help us or ease our fears, with little more than the clothes on our backs.

I wasn't supposed to be left behind in that forest, I wasn't supposed to find Jamison under that stupid bush. I wasn't supposed to become friends with him.

Cass wasn't supposed to die.

Jamison wasn't supposed to walk out on me. On us.

I angrily kick a foot out at the wall, and the entire fort collapses. Just as well. Heaven forbid anything go the way it's supposed to.

***

I sit alone in aisle 14 for what feels like days but is more likely only a matter of hours.

No one comes looking for me, not that I thought they would. They don't know how to talk to me anymore. Sure, Cass and Sander were close, but not the way Cass and I were close. And Ori's never been good with the grief thing. She shut the rest of us out for months after her sister died.

So I sit alone.

I try not to think about Jamison, or about Cass, but the harder I try to think about something else, the harder it is to keep those thoughts out of my head.

I miss him.

Well, both of them.

I hate myself for feeling like I can't do anything but mope and pine for them.

I want to do something, I need to do something, but I don't know what.

His body.

Cass's body.

Jamison pulled me away from the edge of the roof before Cass hit the ground, but I still heard it. I still saw him fall. I still saw the wild look in his eyes.

I can't leave him there.

Despite everything he put me through, the confusion, the hurt, the anger, he deserves better than to be left in the middle of the street.

I miss him. The old him.

The sound of crinkling plastic wrap draws me from my thoughts.

"Halle?"

"Yeah." I push a package of toilet paper away from my face.

Sander stands a few feet away, as close as he can get given the expansive ring of debris from my fallen fortress. "What are you doing?" he asks.

"Going down with my castle, clearly." I gesture to the mess around me.

The smallest smirk crosses his face. "I see. It must've been quite the castle."