You looked different, Sam. There, under the sheet, lying unmoving on the hospital bed with your eyes closed as though you were just asleep. Odd how there was no trace of year-long violence on your body, only stitches around your jaws and your head where the bullet had come through.
I reached out to you, tracing the edges of your cold face that I'd known so well I would recognize it even if I was blind. My fingers trembled when I touched the strands of your hair, damp from being cleaned up a few hours before. You were asleep. Peaceful after being drowned too long in your own personal agony. Perhaps, if I believed it hard enough, it would come true.
My eyes were so dry. I hadn't slept for two days, not even after interrogation with the cops and an emergency session with my therapist. I couldn't shed a tear. I couldn't remember when was the last time I ate. I thought perhaps I'd been in the hospital with Luce the whole time, but I couldn't be sure. I remembered her face, sitting outside the emergency room, waiting for nothing. A mess of blotched red and tears. She had been hysterical, my father had to hold her back.
“We're coming home,” I whispered to you, stroking your hair over and over. “Open your eyes, Sam. Open—”
My voice was gone, replaced by uneven breaths, and yet, still, you didn't come back to me, Sam. You didn't come back to me at all.
YOU ARE READING
Wearing My Smile | ✔
Teen Fiction"I wondered if you'd ever thought that the name your parents had given you felt like sharp knife twisting through your heart in its prayer. I'd never asked you that before, now I'd never get to." Having been together since forever, Roo struggles in...
