Becoming Hers

59

If I believed in heaven, then I also would've believed that Gracie would have been up there, with my dad. He truly believed that'd be where he would go after he died. He'd constantly remind me that he'd be okay because he would've soon been in a better place. After he told me that I went home and cried, a lot. It made me believe that anywhere without me would have been a 'better place' and that really hurt. That night was the first time I ever hurt myself intentionally, I can't remember what exactly it was that was going through my mind as I picked up the blade, but whatever it was had clearly been dwelling on my mind for a while. When I unleashed it, it was powerful.

Gracie believed in heaven too, or at least some sort of afterlife. Maybe she would've got to meet my dad after all. They would have got on well and he would've liked her. I wished he could have seen me happy. I never really believed in the idea of heaven and hell but Gracie believed my Dad was watching down on me and the thought of that made me happy. My beliefs weren't clear but what I did know was that I wanted to carry on, continue with my life. Even though it was going to be hard without Gracie, I had to do it.

I fell asleep that night thinking about Gracie and my Dad and how they were together, that they weren't alone. I think that was why I was able to get to sleep so easily, that wasn't something I did much of anymore so I felt so relieved that it wasn't another sleepless night. Most nights were spent staring up at the sky or at the walls, it was just so difficult to sleep when my chest was heavy with so much sadness. But on the nights that I would manage to get sleep, the nightmares would always come. They'd always be about Gracie, normally it was about the night she died, none of them were the same but it always ended the same way. No matter what I did or how hard I fought, I'd never been able to save her.

***

"I lied to you, I didn't follow after Gracie because I was scared she was going to harm herself, she did look frightened, but that wasn't why I followed her," Kayla was back in the Heron residence, I hadn't been in Gracie's room since before the accident but that was where we both were. I was in her bed and Kayla was standing next to it, holding a gun to my head.

"She was going to you,"

"I know...she called me, I was...I was waiting for her," I was being held at gunpoint yet I wasn't scared, well, maybe a little but that was mostly the adrenaline rising inside of me, getting my body ready to fight.

"But you don't deserve her, you put her through so much crap and treated her like shit over and over again," She muttered through her gritted teeth. Her grip on the gun got tighter as her fingers curled around it, "I could have treated her so much better than you ever did,"

"So why did you follow her?"

"I was going after her to stop her,"

"Stop her coming to me?"

"You didn't deserve her, she was so special and so talented, Grace was worth so much more than anything you could ever do for her,"

"Don't call her that?" Grace was my nickname for her, nobody else ever called her it and I definitely didn't want that bitch to call her it.

"Why not? I always called her that," Kayla shrugged, keeping a steady hand on the gun but reached over and picked up a pad of paper and a pen from my desk. She held them out for me and said, "write dear Gracie a note, a letter even, telling her how sorry you are for treating her the way you did,"

"But I didn't-"

"Do it, and maybe I won't shoot, I just want my girl Gracie to know that you're sorry, but that she could've had a better life with me,"