Don't Leave Me Here Alone

Chapter Four

Two years and six months earlier

Not having a mother anymore was doing funny things to Adam's heart. It wasn't as though he wasn't used to being estranged from his parents. Used to ignoring the ache when students around him talked about holidays or home-made meals or vacations. It didn't help that Harvard college was awash with rich, privileged kids. They were free for the first time, and most still had a weekly allowance from home. Sure, there were other scholarship kids. But they were few and far between, and even they had parents that were proud of them.

Adam walked under leafy trees rustling in a light breeze. He focused on the way his backpack straps dug into his shoulders and refused to acknowledge the ache in his chest. He had watched the leaves turn red and orange, fall like rain, and end up as mulch underfoot. Through all this, he had pointedly ignored talks of Thanksgiving with family and Halloween parties and midterms. Thanksgiving was a stupid, racist holiday, and he was spending it with Zachariah, anyway. It didn't that matter he didn't have a biological family when he had a better one he'd made himself.

It was just that, this year, there was a ringing emptiness echoing through him. He hadn't realised how tightly he'd still been clinging to hope of reconciliation with his mother until it had been yanked away like the loss of a safety blanket.

Christmas, snow, and ice, passed. More time spent with Zachariah and his family. New Year's Eve had been spent with Zachariah, Gansey, Dorian, Ivy and Shawn, and he'd started the new year with a 4.0 GPA and an aching heart.

Shouldn't it have stopped by now?

He threw himself back into college and work, hoping he could run from the disappointment, run from the emptiness. And it did help. College was a good distraction, and work helped, too. But he already missed Zachariah so much that adding another layer of longing on top of the ache for his mother intensified both.

The difference was that he talked to Zachariah every day. It was a constant stream of text messages and phone calls that he would never have thought Zachariah, who'd previously despised his phone, to be capable of two years before. He even saw Zachariah at least once a month. The other boy randomly swung by, despite the drive. Usually because he just felt like it, Parrish, no big deal. It had embarrassingly taken Adam far too long to recognise the warmth that always spread through him at the words was love, not annoyance at Zachariah's impracticality.

The difference was he couldn't talk to his mother, now. Even if he wanted to. He knew, logically, that they hadn't spoken in over a year prior to hear death. But when she had been alive, at least he'd had the chance to maybe reconcile. To maybe have a relationship with her that couldn't have existed while he lived in the trailer park.

That was gone, now.

It was just gone.

It left a hollow feeling in his gut that ate away day by day. It didn't help he was still having trouble making friends. They all seemed so young. Or may they hadn't been through what he had; the abuse, the lost hearing in his left ear, Gansey's near death experience at the end of their final year. But they didn't seem to fully understand even the good stuff, like having a set of friends that had slowly become family. And he tried, but not that hard, because Adam had work and assignments and he had Zachariah and he had friends who were closer to family. He didn't need anything more. He wasn't in college for parties, frat boys, and beer.

He was there to get to the next part.

This was just another mile he had to walk to reach that distant version of himself he'd been working toward since he was little. He'd grown so much, and changed so much, but he still needed to prove to no one but himself that he could do it.