Chapter 1
Everyone leaves eventually
At least, that’s what Dr. Ruth said to me. He always said things to cheer me up, to tell me that people die and it’s a part of life or whatever.
Sometimes I feel like he sees me as this stupid girl who shuts everyone out. But I’m not, I’m not clueless, my eyes have been wide open since the day I wanted it to stop.
I never even really listened in those sessions, I was too distracted by my own thoughts to pay attention to whatever shit some therapist was getting paid to tell me.
And in the end, I wouldn’t have to listen anymore, because, once again, we were back in the car.
Back in the old vintage car that my father wouldn’t dare get rid of. It reminded him of her, of my mother.
It didn’t make much sense to me because how could someone look at a piece of crap, and say that it reminded them of someone special. In my case, she never even got into the car. It always confused me, but I was used to the usual rants about someone that wanted nothing to do with me.
“Hey. Wake up, we’re almost there.” My father said, not taking his eye off the wheel, and instead glancing into the mirror that was pointed near the rear of our car.
It’s fine, I wasn’t tired anyway.
Today was a long day. I don’t remember much because it didn’t really matter to me, it was all part of the plan.
What I do remember is seeing the look on Dr. Ruth’s face when I got up and left the room. And just like that, we weren’t in Nevada anymore.
My father said that we needed to go, I didn’t understand why, all I did was leave, at least, I think that’s all I did. It didn’t matter in the end, because we were on the road to Oregon.
“How do you like it?” He said, his hands resting on his hips while grinning at the thing he called our new home.
I didn’t say anything back, only smiled with my lips pursed, trying not to seem off in a way.
I stepped foot into the apartment building, I didn’t question how he got us an apartment this fast, then I thought to myself: He's been planning this, you just didn’t want to believe it.
The room that was supposedly mine was very tight and could’ve only had room for a small dresser and a mattress at the least.
“Great.” I muttered to myself while standing one foot in the doorway, a trash bag and a small box in hand.
I walked into the middle of the room and set down my things. The trash bag was full of my clothes and some sheets and pillow cases. The box held my belongings. I didn’t ever ask for much growing up, they’d always say, Do you want to starve?
In the box was a couple of small diary-like journals, a cramped case of pens and pencils, a participation medal I got while playing softball for my summer when I was eleven, a worn and weak stuffed animal not even the size of my hand, a tiny chest of makeshift bracelets and plastic rings, along with perfume, deodorant, and some hygiene products I gathered when packing up my old room. There would be more things downstairs in more boxes, but for now, I only worried about how my new room would look.
Next I just ripped up the trash bag suffocating my clothes. I had a few jackets, one pair of bell-bottoms—from my brother— some white and black tees with wording and pictures on them, two flannels, two pairs of overalls—one old and one new—and some jeans along with a bunch of other crap I’d throw on later. Whilst dragging everything out of the bag, I noticed something hard, something wooden.
It was a picture frame. With a photo.
I held the frame in both my clamby hands and stared at it, my eyes were wide and something was clogging my throat. I wanted to cry or scream, but I couldn’t.
It was a photograph from a couple of months ago, not even that old. It was my brother, it was a yearbook graduation photo my father had snipped and printed out. I didn’t get to attend his graduation, because I was put on probation for shoplifting and handling contraband on school property—it wasn’t mine, I was holding it for a friend—I felt bad afterwards when they told me the news.
Not even a day later, I was at a funeral, in one of my mothers old black dresses, standing around a coffin about to be logged into the ground below a headstone, engraved in it: *Daniel Grayson Mereno. Loving son, brother, and father.*
Yeah, he had a girlfriend. She was a freshman in college when he just graduated, they’d find out later during winter break before graduation that she was pregnant with his child. She decided to start drinking after he died, still pregnant with the child, she knew she was harming the baby, she’s in grief group therapy and is now attending AAA. I never saw her again, and now we’re in Oregon, and I’ll never see my niece.
I wanted to forget about it. When the police banged on our front door, I didn’t know what to do. It’s like I was frozen, I could process everything, but at the same time I couldn’t. The details the policemen were describing ended up getting scrambled in my brain.
On the way home from his graduation, he decided to take a ride with his girlfriend. I wasn’t there, so I didn’t get to witness his last goodbye. Apparently they got in a car crash that afternoon, a log truck with logs in the back trunk had slid on the wet road and a log lodged into the windshield of their car. Daniel died, his girlfriend and her baby survived. He didn’t even look like him, they didn’t even put him in the casket during the funeral, his body was…his body wasn’t his body.
I dealt with it how I dealt with everything, I didn’t do anything. I locked myself in my room, I refused to eat, I was sinking into the depths of my bed and digging a deep hole that I wouldn’t be able to get out of. My father tried to help, that didn’t make it any better, I snapped. I just started hitting the walls when he tried to comfort me, it’s like I was broken and wanted to destroy everything around me. I broke my hands in the process, the adrenaline was too much to even notice, and just like that, I was put in extensive therapy with a psychiatrist to later diagnose me with what they like to call ‘Bipolar Disorder’.
Of course, I didn’t want to believe them, I didn’t want to be some crazy freak that saw things that weren’t there. But then again, I couldn’t deny it. For the longest time, all I’ve ever felt was nothingness. Everyone important to me either left or died, sometimes I would feel like they were the imaginary shadows that crept upon me at night.
Sometimes I thought about joining them, it seemed much better than having to deal with death. In the end, it was better to be dead than to deal with it.
