Blake and Aimee

Chapter 55: Aimee

It's been three days since Blake passed, I decided to go back to school. Everything feels different. It's weird. For weeks now, Blake hasn't really been to school. It started with him having a couple of days off, to him coming in for half days, then him not coming in at all and me seeing him after school. Yet now as I walk through the grounds, it feels like there is something big missing. Like something has been ripped from me and I can't see where it is or know how to find it. And now I'm just left with this big empty nothingness that I have no idea how to comprehend.

I try to stick to the far side of the footpath and keep my head down. But I look out onto the grass, the buildings. And I see all at once, every single moment I shared with him here. Every conversation, every touch, every breath. Like a thousand moments are replaying themselves before me at once, I can't take it. I fall to my knees, as the sobs escape from me. I rest myself up against the old building and cry harder than ever. At once everything is released, everything I have felt since Blake died I have tried so hard to contain, convinced myself I had to move on. Because that's what you do when you lose someone. You get up in the morning and live without them, because your life is all you have left. But right now, in this moment, I don't want my life. I want his. I want him to live, to graduate school and go off into the world. Fall in love and get his heart broken again and again until it drives him mad. For him to get married and have kids and grandkids. To live a life fully, to live a life properly. But he had that taken away from him, I feel so angry. At everything and nothing all at once. Everyone is staring but I don't care. I have no energy to care. So, I cry. I cry and cry until I have nothing left. Because there is nothing left without him.

...

I went home after second period, Mr Reeds called my Dad during English and got him to come pick me up. Once the lesson finished he pulled me aside.

"I heard the news." I nod slowly.

"Yeah." He puts his arm over my shoulder and sits down in his chair.

"I'm not going to ask you if you are okay, because I know you're not." He pauses and sighs, "When my wife died, I swear it was the hardest thing I have ever had to live with. I had been through the war, fought beside my friends as they fell on the battlefield. But when my Darling left me, that was a different kind of pain. The kind of pain that opens a wound that will never fully heal. I wish I could tell you things will be ok, that everything will soon go back to normal. But I'd be lying." I smile weakly as I feel my eyes fill with tears.

"I don't want it to go back to normal. It hurts. But it hurts because I loved him. And I don't regret that." Mr Reeds squeezes my shoulder and sighs.

"You are a strong one, not many your age are. But I can promise you it will get easier. Not easy, but easier."

Dad picked me up and took me home. Sofia hugged me when I got in the door, Dad took my school bag as she took me up to my room. She didn't say much, she just held me.

"I'm sorry sis."

"It's not your fault." She looks at me. "You didn't kill him."

"Yeah," she says, "but I'm sorry you are hurt. After everything you've done for him, you don't deserve to carry this burden. Then again, if you didn't do everything you have done for him you would need to, because you wouldn't have known him. He'd just be a name in over the announcer saying a boy in your grade has passed away. You'd be sad for a moment, then continue as if nothing else happened."

I look over to find a box on my bed, I reach for it.

"That got dropped off today Dad said, from Blakes parents." I open the box, there are a number of Blake's possessions in there. But for now, all I notice is his beanie. Sofia looks at me. "That was his wasn't it?" I nod and start to cry. But this time it's just because I'm sad, it because I feel like I have another piece of him to keep with me. He may not be here with me, but enough of him is to make me feel like I'm not alone.