Chapter 19

Chapter 191

Its been one week, three days and five hours since I found my best friend in her car. Dead. Dead. Dead. Its not a foreign word. It’s come around a couple times in my life. Figuratively and literally. My mom. My brother, Adam. And now… my only true friend since Adam. “She’s gone, Anika… She’s dead.” Mr. Costa told me. Not even trying to spare my feelings. He walked away, not waiting to watch the tears fall. They didn’t though. Those tiny drops of salt water caught in my eyes and burned. Burned so bad. My throat became dry and felt as if there was a huge knot in the middle of it. Suicide was foreign, though. Suicide. I didn’t panic. I knew I deserved what I was feeling.
After all, it was my fault. 2

Mrs. Costa doesn’t talk much. She isn’t too colorful anymore either… and she’s developed this habit of bursting out in to tears at the most random moments.
I still can’t cry.
Mr. Costa isn’t ever home. I wondered where he’d been going, so a few nights ago I slept on the couch. The door opening woke me but I pretended to still be asleep. The smell of booze and cigarettes filled the downstairs. Guess I figured it out.
I haven’t had a drink since my birthday party. I had a cigarette before bed.
Autumn, who had left our group early on, came out of nowhere to send her condolences to Mr. and Mrs. Costa. Flowers and a card. Arianna had been her best friend before I got here…
I guess I feel kind of bad about that.
Everyone else is taking it their own way. Teigan and Aiden wrote a song for her. Quinn made a scrapbook. Anabelle drew a portrait of her from memory, it’s actually really nice.
We go to a therapy session together at school. Sometimes we laugh and sometimes we cry. And sometimes we don’t talk at all.
Arianna’s brother, Dominic, came back from college as soon as he heard the news. He’s a really nice guy. Black hair and soft brown eyes that match Arianna’s almost perfectly. It made me smile and it made me cry. When I saw him for the first time I didn’t know what to say to him. So I just hugged him. And we cried together.
I think I love him.
Donnie’s disappeared as far as I can tell. I think I saw him in the hall once. He looked gone. Or lost. I couldn’t tell, and frankly I didn’t care. If he thinks this is his fault: Good. He deserves that guilt.
Day’s seem to go by slowly. Thank God I’ve still got a house to stay in.
I walk down the school hallway really slow to my next class. The bell rings.
I’m late… again.
Nothing seems important anymore.
“Miss Osborne, you’re late!” Mr. Harris pipes up as I wander into class. His rabbit teeth show through his ridiculous all-year-round smile. I feel like punching him in the face.
“Sorry.” I whisper, sitting down in the back of the room.
“One more time and you’re getting detention….” He snarls, “Better get back on track before you fail. Get over yourself.”
I ignore him. I don’t even care anymore. Everything’s been so screwy lately…
“What language family does English belong to…” Mr. Harris scans the room for a victim. His eyes land on me. Of course. “Anika?”
I shrug my shoulders.
“No guess?”
I shake my head no.
“Okay, then… Frankie?”
“Indo-European!” He answers excitedly, sitting up straighter in his seat.
“Yes!” Mr. Harris jumps up on his tip toes and points his meter stick in the air excitedly. “Good.”
I’d like to shove that meter stick threw his eye. I don’t really give a shit about languages right now. I speak English. That’s all I need to know. And how can I care about if a language has a family when really I should be caring about my own… which seems non-existent lately…
Mr. Harris just passed out a new assignment. We have to make a language family tree.
I’m not going to do it. Or maybe I will to keep my mind off of everything. Maybe. I hate that word.
Maybe is just so… flakey.
Maybe she’s okay. Maybe I’m okay. Maybe we’re all horribly broken. Maybe I’ll finally have a best friend. Maybe she’ll get taken away. Maybe life will get better.
And maybe, just maybe, the whole world will come crashing down around us.3

Lunch is quiet. We don’t eat much. And sometimes we spend it in the guidance office when everything seems like too much to bear.
“So…” Aiden being the only boy tries to lighten the mood. He looks at all of us.
“Shut up.” Anabelle sighs, putting her head down in her arms.
We’re all sitting at the round table either with our heads down or staring off into space, old memories on our minds.
I’m remembering the day we talked in the grocery story. How pretty and happy she looked. And the things I didn’t know… the things I couldn’t even imagine. The things that are now my reality.
My very own living, breathing nightmare.4

Home is… not home. It’s a house of nothingness. A house of the loudest silence and the lowest noise.
When I walk through the door the first thing I hear is a muffled cry from the living room. Mom doesn’t even notice I’m here so I go upstairs. She’s gotten so pale and skinny. I can see her bones. Still no smiles to be found on her sullen face. Only a running nose, puffy red eyes and rivers of pain.
I think she’s going crazy.
Dad’s gone like always. There are boxes of things in the hallway.
I think he’s leaving.
I’ve been making dinner for myself lately since Mom doesn’t cook anymore and I quit my job. The manager wasn’t going to let me off for the funeral. Cold-hearted bastard.
Mindlessly, I shuffle into Arianna’s room. It’s too clean. And I hate it.
Before I lived in the house with her, her room would always be a complete mess. Clothes literally covering the entire floor. Millions of books that look like waves across the wooden piece in front of her bed. The bed: unmade. Make up, jewelry and hair products scattered on her vanity and CD’s stacked to the ceiling against her walls. I won’t even get started on her closet.
And now as I sit on her bed and scan the room there is: nothing on the floor, nothing on the wooden piece, a tidy vanity, no CDs and clothes put properly in the closet. Empty. I feel so empty…