The Boy Who Broke My Leg

Chapter 15

 I don't think I've ever gotten up before 9am on a weekend or holiday. Even on school days I wake up at the last second possible, carefully calculated so that  I can manage to look moderately decent  and eat a bowl of cereal,yet maximize my sleep time. I'm somewhat of a pro of waking up late.

I stumble out of bed at six the next morning. I've slept maybe two hours the whole night, in shifts between random nightmares. My feet almost give out when I stand and I sigh at the soreness. I knew today was going to be a rough day but I at least wish I'd woken up late to minimize the hours I have to be awake.

I randomly end up on the couch, unsure what to do with myself. Mufasa stalks around the room once, gives me a confused meow and goes back to my bed to sleep. I wrap my arms around my knees and rest my head around them as I watch the sun rise, pulling me into my least favorite day of the year, trying not to think or my mother and thinking or nothing else. Against my better judgement, I open the cabinet and pull out the album on top of the huge stack and wipe the layer of dust on it with the edge of my shirt.

 My mother loved scrapbooking. While we were cleaning out her stuff, I'd just shoved them into a box and pushed them off to the side, telling Kayla to do something with them, to just get them out of my sight. She told me a while later, that this was where they were. I'd shrugged, wondering if I'd ever be able to look at them again without bawling me eyes out. I open the first page. Pictures of me as a toddler greet me. I'm dressed in bright colors, contrary to my current wardrobe of darkness, and I'm grinning the same lopsided grin in every picture, since toddler me thought smile meant show every tooth in your mouth at once. The majority of the pictures are just of me, but there's one chunk that has plenty of pictures of my mother. Every August, there's a sunflower festival at Penborough, a town a few hours west of where we live, and we'd gone almost every year. Even the last year, my mom had cheerfully donned a bright yellow bandana over her thinning hair and a flowy white sundress and insisted we go. My dad would always playfully roll his eyes, knowing a photoshoot would ensure when we got there, but he'd be the first one to prebook the tickets. My parent's wedding anniversary was in the same week as the flower festival, and their wedding decorations had all been rustic wood and sunflower themed, so it was like a perfectly coordinated anniversary getaway.

I don't know when I started crying but suddenly my tears are coming out so fast the sleeve of my sweatshirt is soaked. 

The next thing I know, Mufasa is at my feet, meowing loudly. I glance at the clock and it's almost 10. I'm lying on the floor, the album at my side. I must've dozed off. I sit up and my head pounds slightly, the way it does after a hard cry. 

I head into the kitchen to feed Mufasa, an hour late which is probably the justified reason of his temper tantrum. I'm not really hungry, but I eat a few apple slices, for the sole purpose of telling Kayla I ate something when she asked. Alistair had left a huge container of spaghetti in the fridge from last night, demanding I eat it. I unlock my phone to find messages from both of them and a missed call from Kayla.

I assure Kayla I've not drunk myself unconscious and Alistair that I'm feeling better from whatever mysterious illness I had last night and no thank you he does not need to bring me more food. Alistair views my text immediately and calls me.

"Hello?"

"Hey how are you feeling?"

"Okay." 

There's a moment of silence.

"Do you have a cold?" he asks. "You sound stuffy."

"No, no cold. I have to go feed Mufasa", I say quickly, even though Mufasa is already happily fed and has headed to the couch to take a nap. "I'll talk to you later."

I feel horrible when I hang up.

I sit down next to a sleeping Mufasa and pet the top of his head. "Am I a terrible person, Mufasa?"

He doesn't move.

"He's so patient and nice to me and I just hung up. I'm technically lying to him, right? I should just tell him?"

Mufasa flicks his ear.

"You're the most useless friend ever. I should've got a dog", I tell him.

My cat opens his eyes, jumps off the couch and heads to my room to resume his nap, leaving me in my dilemma. 

..//..//..//..//

At around 3pm, two cat conversations and pathetic wallowing sessions later, I decide I'm going to face another one situation I've been avoiding. I'd gone to my mother's grave twice, both times with Kayla, and the first time I wasn't able to go inside and the second time I went inside but ran back out in like 30 seconds. 

I throw on the jacket Alistair gave me and change into a pair of jeans. I grab my keys and consider driving but decide against it. I wasn't really in the best mind set to pay attention to the road and three miles wasn't too bad to walk, despite my sore legs. 

Turns out three miles is bad to walk with sore legs. It's freezing, the kind that feels manageable at first, but about 15 minutes in you can't feel your ears. I stop at a flower shop on the way, only to feel like an idiot when I'm told no, obviously you can't find sunflowers halfway into November. I end up buying a cliche bouquet of white roses instead. 

I'm out of breath when I finally make it to the cemetery. I stand by the entrance and rock back and forth on my legs for over a minute, trying to convince myself to walk inside. I take a few deep breaths and finally force myself to head inside. It takes me a few minutes to locate the headstone. When I finally see it, a wave of dizziness runs through me and I realize I've been holding my breath. I shakily let it out and inhale slowly. 

I stand in front of my mother's grave, clutching the roses, unsure what to do with myself. I close my eyes. Life is so unfair. My mom was so healthy so happy. I try to think of her smiling, before the cancer sucked the life out of her. Before she banned me from coming to visit her at the hospital so my last memories of her wasn't of her weak and in pain. Remember me smiling, remember me loving you, she had said. God, it's so unfair.

I'm so tired. I'm deprived of sleep and food and I'm so weak and sore. I sink into the grass and clumsily drop the roses in front of me. I stare at the dirt and absent mindedly tug out individual strands of grass. A tear rolls down my cheek and I succumb to my second crying session of the day. 

I sit there for a while, motionless. It's getting dark. I'm so cold, my body seems frozen and I know I should stand up and walk around and get some blood flowing. But I just stay staring at the grass, at the headstone, at the white roses. I wonder if I'll get hypothermia if I just sit here all night. I wrap my arms around my knees and rest my chin.

I squint when I think I notice movement in the distance. Could it be a coyote or something? Nope, it's definitely human shaped. When the human gets closer, it looks...Alistair shaped? What is he doing here? I watch him as he approaches me. For a second he just wordlessly looks at me and I try to imagine what I look like through his eyes. A girl with swollen, red eyes who lied to him and just sat in the cold for a couple of hours in front of her mother's grave. I try to gauge if he's mad but his expression is neutral.

"Kayla said you'd be here if you weren't home. You didn't pick up our calls and we got worried."

Oh yeah, my phone is in my jacket pocket. I pull it out and sure enough the screen lights up with missed calls and texts. "Sorry", I mumble.

Alistair offers me a hand to pull me up and I take it, my frozen and sore muscles complaining from the effort. "Woah your hand is like ice. How long have you been here?"

"A while, I guess." My voice is hoarse.

"I'll give you a ride home." 

He doesn't let go of my hand as he leads me around several tombstones and out of the cemetery.