I am dealt another day with an almost casual cruelty. Waking up made so much more sense yesterday. The sun wasn't such a blinding yellow. It didn't shear off into the sky in these giant, garish blades that cut my eyes.

How can you possibly tell me this is the same world? The same planet, the same galaxy, the same dimension? I refuse to believe it. Everything has changed. 

In this world, Henrietta is dead. Her car drifted into a ravine, not even 5 miles away from our dorm. Nothing has been the same since.

She had been working two jobs and going to college. Just like her parents said she should. Just like her parents did at her age. Only, back then, money spent better and you could get a two-story house and an acre of land without a demonic contract. 

Henrietta was a great woman. Now she's a dead woman. She fell asleep at the wheel and never woke up. She was the best friend I ever had. I loved her, even though she was better than me at absolutely everything and it made me feel like crap. I would give anything and everything to feel like crap right now. 

I feel so much worse than bad. "Black hole in the center of my chest," is about how I feel. Today is the second worst day of my life. Second worst, only because yesterday took the top spot.

Yesterday, I cried so hard I literally spat up blood. No one was around to stop me, so I kept crying. I think I was punching my steering wheel at some point too because my turn signal got broken off. I guess I was screaming too much. Maybe I should have called my mom or something. 

I didn't though. I got the news through my college message board. Every student has to make an account with Thattin University when they enroll. Additionally, there's a checkbox in the online form that opts you into texts before you click agree. If you don't uncheck it, you are automatically signed up for the texts. 

That text still leaks into my thoughts without warning. Bits and pieces, like glass shards drizzled over my brain. "Dear students…" it began.

I never thought that one tiny box would change so much in my life. If I had just unchecked that one little box, maybe I could have found out later. Maybe that terrible text wouldn't have sucker punched me in the solar plexus.

"...we regret to inform you that another student here at Thattin University…"

Not that there's a good time to have your entire world shattered, but there are better times. Like at dinner with your mom, or at your dorm with people to check in on you. Not in a Chinese food parking lot. 

"...has unfortunately passed away this morning."

It's not fair at all. I'm not capable of processing: "Hey! Your favorite person in the world is just GONE now!" while a plate of tofu orange chicken is sitting in my lap. Of course I am going to sling that shit around my car and cover myself in orange sauce.

I have to laugh, it was so ridiculous. The fact that it's sad doesn't change how awkward it was and still is. I came home and spent the night washing sticky crap out of my hair while sniffling. And I can't even get into what it was like trying to clean that crap out of the frames of my glasses.

In a show or movie, the girls always have nice pretty hair when their dad is killed by the mob or whatever. Then the intern on set squeezes an eye dropper on their cheeks that somehow only affects their eyeliner. 

Let me tell you: before I stepped in the shower, I looked like a half-melted clown and smelled like sugar and MSG. There was no angle or lighting on earth that could make me look pretty.

"We ask that you respect her family's wishes at this time…"

The text is still there, squatting uninvited in my head on the day of the funeral. It battles for my attention with the eulogy currently going on.

The preacher: "She was a thoughtful, hardworking girl…"

Meanwhile, that text: "...Don't hesitate to contact our counseling office…"

"She excelled in school, where she was studying clinical psychology…"

"...if anyone needs help processing this tragic event…"

"At least she is at peace now in Heaven… and we will be postponing classes until Monday."

The two competing consolatory statements have begun to blend together. Time begins to blend, present mixing with future and past, and I swear the funeral seems to have lasted 30 minutes, tops.

But it was 10 in the morning when it started. Now, it's 4 in the afternoon by the time Henrietta is buried. So that math doesn't check out. My brain is simply not able to process what's happening and I guess I have to accept that.

I remember Henrietta's sister was there. Beth, a good kid like her sister was. She is 14 and she watches ghost hunting shows religiously. I watch vintage horror movies on a near daily basis, so we have always had some cross over interest. I even let her borrow a couple of spooky movies about hauntings and what not. She seemed to really like them. Though, Hen got mad at me when her sister ended up sleeping in her bed afterwards. 

I wonder whose bed she will go to when she's scared now? Who is supposed make her feel safe if not her sister? Her parents won't work for that. "You're 14 years old," they will tell her. "You're too old to be acting like this. There's nothing in your room that can possibly harm you, so go back to bed." Useless, practical advice.

I saw her crying. I can recall that. I wonder if I was supposed to cry more. My eyes were wet, but I didn't have enough energy to sob like everyone else. I slept 3 hours in 4 days. 

I get my best sleep on the way home from the funeral. Mom is driving and the exhaustion finally just takes me out.

They really did bury her quickly. The news hit like a meteor strike on Wednesday and they had her funeral ready by Saturday. Goes to show how loved Henrietta was, even by the church she went to. The university loved her too. Everyone seemed to love her. I felt so privileged to be her best friend. It's like being a sidekick to the coolest superhero on Earth.

Mom is asking me how school is going as we walk up the steps. She asks if I'm behind on any subjects as we walk into her small, yet tidy, mobile home.

"Kyrielle Ravinale, answer me!"

I look at her. I don't have anything left in me to placate her. There's not even enough ash in my feelings to stoke an ember. There's just nothing. So I just tell her, "I quit college, mom." And then I walk away and let her berate me.

I must've been too honest with her. She loses the careful, gentle tone she had with me at the funeral. 

Did I tell her that I don't want to be successful, or did I just think that really hard? She's so pissed, and my friend is still dead, so I must have at least told her I vacated my dorm room. Otherwise, she would still want to be nice to me. Only her anger can override her empathy like this.

The next day, she gives me an ultimatum. I will be going back to college, apparently. I will be begging for my dorm room back, first thing Monday. She is trying her level best to be intimidating, bless her. I wonder why I ever feared her, or my dad. They could throw me out now, or even hit me. 

As a kid, I used to be so scared of being spanked but right now, I'd let them beat me with a belt buckle. Not that they ever did anything so harsh- just hand to bottom spanking, that's it- but the point remains. I'm just not worried about being kicked out or kicked around anymore. It's weird.

Monday comes and she's shouting. My throat still hurts from my screaming fit in the Chinese restaurant parking lot, and I think I'm losing my voice. Maybe an infection? So now I have a physical motivation not to answer her. God, does that piss her off.

I agree to be kicked out for a while. My plan is to live out of my car and to not eat and not answer phone calls very often. If she doesn't let me back, then I'll just stay in my car until…. not sure.

I live out of my car for about… 4 days, I think? I walk around a bit. I buy some gas. I curl up in a comforter in the backseat when I'm cold. I cry, I cry a whole lot. Still, I'm waiting for an "until" to come. It never does, and I wonder how many more bread loaves I can get with the spare change I have left in the cupholder. 

Bread is all I have eaten. It gets the job done, it's easy on my aching throat, and it's all I want. Whatever "wanting" even is right now. I thought about being daring and getting some peanut butter to go with it. But I decided I didn't actually care. So I just got more bread.

Mom comes by after a few days. She says something about me being in shock or traumatized by some such yadda yadda. I'm supposed to look into college when I'm done grieving though, according to her. 

Will I ever be done grieving? This does not feel like it will ever end.

If I ever go back to normal, I might agree with her. Right now though, normal feels so far away. I can't even imagine what it feels like, or how it can possibly exist in a world where Henrietta is dead. She was my normal, my stability. 

My room is the same at least. It sort of feels like a passing facsimile of "normal." Werewolf and slasher maniac posters on the wall, a bookshelf dense with pulp horror novels and discount bin DVDs, and a familiar bunkbed, covered in towers of linen stacked on the top bunk. 

I have no siblings. My mom got the bunk bed for free, from a friend, so I got it. Suits me fine. Better than the squeaky bed I had before that sagged in the middle and made me wake up stiff.

Wonder why mom never got rid of my books or posters like she threatened to do a hundred thousand times. I was away at college, she had every opportunity to finally purge the defenseless "nasty stuff" I left behind. Yet she didn't. Wonder why.

I stop talking to my parents. It hurts to talk now. I'm sure I've damaged my throat, but I have no fever so I deal with it. I don't want to talk anyway. So I decide to just… stop.

Mom is worn down. My apathy has finally eroded away her anger and shown the real Sandra Ravinale core beneath the "concerned mother" facade. That is a person who cares because she feels she's supposed to, but really she just coasts through life on autopilot. She drinks on the porch, she watches TV, she collects disability. For what? I dunno, hip pain or something. I never hear her complain about any pain, just about new cars being parked around the neighborhood. "I bet it's a P.I. working for the disability office," she always says. "I bet they're trying to catch me- but I really am disabled."

I'm not one to judge. I doubt she has anything keeping her from working, but I'm also lazy. I learned it from her. My dad is the only one who works regularly and cleans the house. Us ladies just… exist.

My dad does ask me to do dishes though. He figures out pretty quickly that I'm going to be back for a while, so he gives me stuff to do. Especially since my mom won't do much besides cook on the odd occasion.

I don't talk to him or to mom. I just nod or shrug. I do what I'm told unless it's to go back to college. No one asks me to apply for a job, but I'd do it if they did. I wouldn't talk at the interview, though. I'd just play my muteness off as a disability. Another thing I learned from my mom.

My friends never call, never text, never drop by. It's not shocking. We weren't close. I didn't… I wasn't a great friend, I think. I wasn't funny, I didn't do much to be memorable, I was just… there. I existed near them, and the understanding came later that we were friends. Frankie, Ira, Jessica, Brandon. There were nice friends while they lasted.

Mom hands me a box, 12 days after Henrietta's death. Instead of introducing the box, she talks to me about college. I figure I just have to wait out her motherly mood. Soon, she will go back to barely caring. That should happen when being a parent becomes too inconvenient for her.

"You should be grateful," she says, handing me a red shoebox. "After… what happened, I thought your life would be ruined."

It takes a second for me to figure out what she's even talking about. A tide sweeps out from the blackest part of my id, the bowels of my subconscious. I shudder, feeling a cold wave crash over me.

"Do you know what I had to do to get your record cleared? You were just a little girl, but the judge wanted the book thrown at you. But I–"

She figures out that I'm crying at about the same time that I do. Just shaking, holding myself, crying. How can she bring that up? How can she kick me when I'm already so far down, I'm under the dirt? I have made her agree not to talk about that incident too many times. I have even made her promise- still she brings it up. At least a few times a year, she just has to dig at that old scar on my soul.

She apologizes and leaves. The box is in my lap. The star logo on the top is dotted in tears. 

Mom didn't bother explaining it. She was too busy chastising me for being a disappointment. I have to open it to learn what I have.

A pencil. A pair of cheap butterfly earrings. Two notepads. Another pencil, with bite marks under the eraser. Three pennies dating back 30 years. A patch for repairing jeans, featuring Snaggle the Cat, a cartoon tabby. And lastly… a ticket to some local concert being held for charity.

It's a treasure trove. The first pencil is the one I threw into the ceiling and got to stick. It stayed their my entire senior year, and Henrietta made sure she grabbed it on graduation day. The second pencil was one used by my former crush, Kurt Byrne. The fact that his mouth has been on it made it useful to tease me. It remained a faithful prop for the duration of our high school career.

The notepads were used to write down our crimes. Though they were fictional crimes, and nothing that could actually get us in trouble. It became a collaborative crime story, told in short bits and usually revolving around some heist or revenge plot to embarrass someone bad. We kept the stories hidden so that our teacher wouldn't catch us. We filled up two notepads in sophomore year before moving on to a new fad.

We found the pennies while walking on some train tracks with another mutual friend. Her name was Darlene, and she was more Henrietta's friend than mine. But we all made wishes that day on the penny and agreed not to share it. 

We just ended up losing our pennies though. So Hen tracked down some pennies from the same year and made us promise again. She kept the pennies then, to protect them from us losing them.

The patch was used one fateful day when I tore my pants. I was climbing over the fence in Henrietta's yard and by the time I reached the other side, I felt a breeze on my left butt cheek. Snaggle was unearthed from a drawer brimming with sewing supplies. I wore the "Snaggle pants" for about 2 years. I outgrew them just before starting High School and gave her the patch before tossing out the pants.

The ticket… is for a show at a bar called "The Jetway." It's in the north end of our home town, Morgan. The headlining band is called "The Dead Drop Kids." I have never heard of them. Henrietta never talked to me about them.

As it happens, the ticket is dated for tomorrow.