So things are more confusing than ever now.

I’ve been trying to lead a normal college life, but it just keeps nagging at me. John’s behaviour, Susan, the missing time, Sam… everything. But I’ll be damned if I’m any closer to figuring any of it out.

And I still haven’t talked to John.

As sure as I am that John didn’t do this to me, the idea that he knows something more than he’s told me has taken root in my mind.

But I don’t know how to know for sure. I could ask him, but something tells me it wouldn’t be that easy. I could investigate, but I’m no detective.

I’m just… helpless.

God! No, I’m not. I can’t be. But am I? Again?

I groan and let my head fall forcefully onto the steering wheel. I just wish I could change who I am sometimes. Change my life, my memories.

It would be so much easier that way.

As it is, I don’t know how I even keep up appearances anymore.

But now I really have to decide whether I’m getting out of the car or not.

I eye the passenger seat. It’s carrying a bouquet of pink carnations. I don’t know why I bought them: she always did hate carnations. I don’t think they suited her, anyway.

Maybe that’s why I bought them.

Uttering a final groan, I grab the flowers, open the door, and step out into the cemetery.

****

Headstone after headstone follows me along the wending path, shadowed by mournful willows and solemn elms. The well-trodden path is soft underfoot; surely many people have gone here before me to pay their respects.

I wonder if any of them felt like this.

I feel the smooth plastic around the bouquet. Should I really be doing this? Is it the right thing to do?

But sometimes it’s like you don’t have any say in things: they’re just things you have to do and you end up doing them even if you don’t mean to. That’s how I think I found myself standing in front of my mother’s grave.

GLORIA SOMMERS

1963 - 2021

The gravestone looks new, just like it did the day of her funeral. It’s only been a year, after all.

And it’s only a piece of rock.

I set down the flowers on the grave.

Am I supposed to cry? People cry, right?

Why don’t I feel anything?

Except burning.

I feel a burning.

It hurts.

I don’t know what to feel.

I should feel bad.

So why do I want to break her gravestone, smash it into little pieces, until her name and her birth and her death are so illegible and messed up no one will ever read them again and no one will remember her except me, and then I’ll die and I’ll be smiling in my grave because now that I’m dead, she’ll be gone completely, like she never existed?

Except then I’ll also be crying because if she never existed, then who gave birth to me and raised me and loved me and cleaned my cuts and made me feel better and took me to school and fed me and—

But that’s not all she did.

No, that’s not all she did.

I don’t want to remember the bad stuff.

So why does it make me so angry even not thinking about it?

Why do these tears burn as they run down my face?

Why do my insides feel all wrong, like someone twisted them all out of place?

It was her.

She did this.

So why do I miss her so much?

****

Waking up is hard the next morning.

Going to class is hard.

Breathing is hard.

I can’t tell when I’m crying and not crying. I try not to cry in class, because people would look at me weird if I did.

So I pretend I’m okay.

I don’t think I’m very convincing.

At the end of the class, everyone’s leaving, but I don’t want to move. I’m tired. Why does everything have to keep repeating itself like this? Why can’t it just end, this cycle of bad things following bad things following…

I want to scream.

But would anyone listen?

Or would they just look at me weird?

When I wake up, there’s someone shaking me.

I look up.

It’s Susan again.

“Hey. Are you okay?”

I don’t say anything.

“You look like you’ve been crying. Do you wanna talk about it?”

I still don’t say anything. Any words would just sound empty. They wouldn’t mean anything to her, or to anyone.

“Is this about the party last weekend? You just disappeared, I thought you went home… did something happen?”

“Do you wanna… come in?”

The warmth of her lips on my lips. Her hands sliding up my shirt.

Her breath is hot on my face.

It feels horrible.

I jump to my feet and start running.

“Hey!”

The voice is faded, distant.

“Isaac?”

I hear footsteps, running.

She’s coming after me.

I run faster, but I hear her catching up. I can’t do it. I can’t escape. 

She’ll always come after me.

Lies sting, Isaac

Even dead, she’s not really gone.

She will never be gone.

I trip and fall, tumbling onto my side. I barely notice the pain, just the hand on my shoulder. Faintly, I hear a voice.

“…aac? Why did you run, what— what’s going on? Jesus, I—”

I look up at her.

Her dark hair makes me angry.

Her pretty eyes make me angry.

I don’t even realize I’m doing it.

I just start yelling.

By the time I’m done, she just stares at me.

I must’ve said something really weird.

“What?” 

She sounds confused. Her eyebrows are furrowed in concern.

“What?”

I am also confused.

“Why did you ask that?”

“Ask what?”

She looks at me disbelievingly. Does he really not know, is what her eyes seem to say.

“You asked, or rather, yelled, ‘WHY DID YOU FUCK HIM?’”

She waves her hand, still in disbelief.

“Who are you talking about?”

I collect my thoughts.

Ah, right.

“I was… probably talking about John.”

She looks even more confused.

“Who the fuck is John?”

Huh?

“John. John Quell. You didn’t—”

“Sleep with him? No, I didn’t. I don’t even know him.”

Wait, what?

“Are you sure?”

She laughs, but not because it’s funny.

“You think I wouldn’t remember if I had slept with someone?”

“But… you haven’t even met him?”

She shakes her head.

Huh.

I get up, slowly. She helps me.

“T-thank you,” I say.

“No… problem,” she replies. “Are— are you gonna be okay?”

I start walking to the exit.

I stop.

I look back at her.

She looks so alone in that big empty classroom.

For the first time, I see her eyes look lost, like she’s floating in a big empty ocean all by herself, a million miles from anywhere.

She’s like me.

“I’m sorry,” I say to her eyes. “I didn’t know.”

I turn and walk away.

I feel her watch me go. And maybe I’m imagining it, but it feels like she understood what I meant.

Because she knows what it’s like to be alone too.