My stomach is achy and empty. I should have grabbed something, but I don't want to eat. I don't want to eat or breathe or do anything.
I will not cry, I will not cry.
Once, my parents had tried to get me to go to this family therapy, but I'd refused. After threatening to drag me, Mom relented. Something about not forcing me to do something I wasn't ready for. Instead a book on the five stages of grieving had been left on my bed when I came home from school the next day. I'd gone in the middle of the night to burn it at the beach, using a lighter stolen from Dad. He'd started smoking again, so it was easy to attain. I'd been able to replace the lighter, and the book had never been mentioned again.
I turn on the radio and roll down the windows, feeling the cold air whip at my cheeks and wonder how I became the girl who goes driving in the middle of the night, and how much I wish I could go back in time to a place before tonight. Before the dinner. Hell, if I'm traveling back in time I'd go back a year-and-a-half. Back to when things were the way they were supposed to be. Before Dad started smoking, before the treatments, before I had panic attacks and threw up when I didn't have the flu and when I cared about going to school and getting invited to parties. Back when I cared about anything.
Three
Sussex had been settled in the 1700s, which means there's an abundance of historical sights and forts and ruins, and cemeteries. Lots of those. My destination is a ten minute drive from my house and affords the solitude I crave. No one will be there in the middle of the night on a Friday, unless they're teenage vandals. In that case, I'd leave an anonymous tip with the County Sheriff.
There are no cars in the little pull-off when I get there. I rest my hand on the little iron gate before I vault over it. Fourteen years of ballet comes in handy sometimes. I'd quit last year, but I knew my mother wanted me to go back. Now... I don't know.
Using my cell phone as a flashlight, I decide where I'm going to go. The ground is uneven, which creeps me out, but I try not to think about the effect of erosion on cemeteries. I go up one row, pausing to read some of the names. Many are so worn that you can't make them out, even in the daytime.
I run my hand over a small stone for a child who had only lived seven years. Life is so fragile, taken away so easily. I move from one stone to another, touching each one as if saying hello to a friend. They have been my friends this past year. I find more comfort in the dead than I do in the living. The dead don't ask me if I'm fine, or tell me that they are there for me and then never call. The dead don't make horrible tuna casseroles and drop them off, even though I've told them I'm a vegetarian and my mother is allergic to fish. The dead don't look at you like they're scared and pity you at the same time.
I sit down in front of one large stone that was so old, it nearly topples over when I brush it with my hand. Nothing lasts.
I have to go to school on Monday. I have to text my best friend and smile and take a geometry quiz and figure out where I want to go to college. Those things are so unimportant in the face of losing my mother. No, that's not right.
I wasn't losing her, like an earring or a set of keys. She's going away and never coming back. I'm still on the fence about the whole afterlife thing. I haven't thought about it much, because I always assumed she would get better. Everyone said so.
The sobs come up, consuming my entire body, making me shake as strange sounds escape from my mouth. There aren't tears, not yet. I'll have to let it go on for longer, and I'm not going to do that. My crying sounds are loud in the quiet night.
It takes me a while to get control of myself again. I hate it when I lose it, like some animal part of me takes over and I'm not human anymore. I can't see or feel anything. I am my grief. It consumes me, owns me. I let it, if only for a little while. I always come out of it in the end. Exhausted, but back in control. So I can put on a smile and continue pretending I'm fine.
At last, I'm able to inhale normally, and my legs support me when I stand. My jeans are wet and covered in dirt and my face is swollen and sticky from my tears. I'm going to look so awesome tomorrow morning.
I stare up at the stars, breathing in the night air. I read somewhere that people used to think that night air was bad for you. The vapors, they called it. They thought it brought disease. I can't understand why. I pull in a lungfull of it.
I walk around a bit after my episode is over. My crouched sobbing-position had made my legs stiff. My muscles also have a tendency to seize up on me when I really let the grief take over.
I stop to trace some of the names on the stones. Some are sharp and fresh, as if a knife carved them yesterday. Others are smudged with time, worn away by water and wind and snow, the flowers and candles are long gone. Near the back, at the oldest part of the cemetery are several mausoleums. Built, no doubt, by people who wanted to show how important they were with stone angels and iron doors to protect their dead, but no one cares. Nobody cares about you after you die.
Okay, so my thoughts are super-morbid, but that's what happens when one of your parents gets a life-threatening disease when you're a teenager. Still, I refuse to make the jump to full-on emo. There will be no completely black outfits with chain belts and combat boots. There will be no thick black eyeliner and random facial piercings. Yurgh.
Wandering a little more to compose myself, I go near the back of the cemetery, farthest from the road. It's older here, more wild. The ground is so uneven nobody mows it, so the grass is thick and tangled. Rocks are strewn about, and I have to tread carefully so I don't fall. Moss clings to everything, and it's like the air is different here. The oldest stones are nothing but crumbles of stone. No one bothers to come this way anymore, especially with the hulking mausoleums.
There are only five, built back when how important you were was determined by how ostentatious your grave was. What a stupid thing to spend money on.
I'd often wondered what it was like in there, but they're all sealed. I raise my cell-phone light to read the plaque over one of them, but the words are too small. I move on to the next one and stop. The doors are wide open, the two angels standing guard having failed in their duty. I hear two voices. Taking a step back, I consider trying to go back without being noticed.
“We go through this every year.”
“I know.”
The voices are both male. Using my amazing powers of deduction, I can guess they aren't here to visit a relative in the middle of the night. They're not here to cry their eyes out about their mother's terminal diagnosis, like me. So that leaves adolescent hijinks, my fave.
“She will never let you go.” I might as well figure out what they're doing so I can call the cops. My hand twitches on my phone. I'll have to get farther away so they won't hear me.