Chapter 62
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
DAKOTA
Six Months After
“Hey, butterfly,” Eric started, a slight nervousness in his voice as he clasped his hands together.
It was the third time he’d come out of the office to check on me today.
Usually he just offered me food or asked if I wanted to go on a break.
I always told him no. “I’m just gonna be honest. I’m really fuckin’ worried about you, and I don’t know what to do about it. ”
I bit my tongue, focusing on the painful sensation of my teeth cutting into my flesh so I wouldn’t think about any other part of my life, wouldn’t start crying.
“I’m okay, Eric.” I looked up at him.
“I don’t think you are. You graduated, right? With your fancy degree now?” he questioned, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand.
“Yeah. In May.”
“I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but, I mean…what are you still doing here? Can I help you with anything?”
Tears stung my eyes and I had to look out the window just to breathe through the lump in my throat. “What does it matter to you? Getting a new job isn’t easy.” Not that I’d actually tried.
“I know that. But I just wanted you to know I’ll help you with anything I can. I’m sure it won’t matter much comin’ from me, but I’ll write you the best letter of recommendation I can. If you need that. If you think it would help.” He cleared his throat.
“Are you trying to get rid of me?”
“No.”
“Then why are you talking to me about getting another job? You want me to leave.”
“That’s not it at all. I don’t care if you get another job, I’m just—I worry about you.”
“You don’t really need to do that, Eric.”
“Well, I—”
“Do you think you’re my fucking dad or something? You’re not,” I snapped.
He froze, hurt coloring his expression.
Guilt made me nauseous.
“I’m perfectly aware of that,” he said, his voice thick. I curled my fingers into my palms harder. “But I’ve known you for several years and you’re acting very different in a way that concerns me.”
“I don’t see why my behavior would concern you. Like I said, you aren’t my dad. You don’t know me.”
“I need to know if you’re safe.” He leveled me with a gaze, and I hated it. I hated it so much. Hated him. Hated everyone who was concerned about me, because they didn’t know anything. They would never know anything.
“Oh, you think I’m going to kill myself? That’s what this is?” I said, louder, my voice getting higher in pitch. I hated myself for losing control in front of him, but it was impossible for me to hold myself together all the time. “I can’t do that!”
“I just want to make sure you’re safe, Dakota. If something’s going on—”
“It’s none of your business!” I screamed, then got up from the stool. “It’s none of your fucking business, Eric. And you’re right. Your letter of recommendation wouldn’t do shit for me.”
He looked so shocked, so hurt, that I almost couldn’t stop the sob as it built in my chest. But I swallowed down all my grief and shoved my shit in my bag, then stomped out of the store, the door swinging shut behind me.
Gravel crunched under my boots across the parking lot, and I didn’t turn back once, despite the fact that I was leaving in the middle of my shift.
I walked for a long time, until all my thoughts disappeared into the sound of my footsteps, and I’d made it to the entrance of Micah’s forest. My gaze swept upwards, looking at the pine branches and the gray sky peering between them, the wind tangling high above my head.
My feet carried me on autopilot to his tree.
Not along the flat path that I could walk to reach the cliff, but through the underbrush, weaving between tree trunks and ducking under branches until its faint glow came into sight.
I went over to it and sat right at the base, leaning against the trunk while my eyes slid shut.
I’d been coming here most days for the past month, since I’d really noticed it for the first time.
This was the first place Micah touched the Earth.
Right here, at this tree.
I knew it, because it glowed. There was a slight ultraneon emanating from the whole thing, gleaming stronger between the cracks in the bark.
When I asked Mason to come with me to the tree, he couldn’t see it glowing at all. He’d argued with me the first time, accused me of lying. I yelled right back at him, accusing him of other terrible things. Because I wasn’t lying.
He tried to fuck me on the ground because I thought it would fix things, but it hurt and I screamed at him to get off, screamed at him about Micah, which made him spiral even more. Until the ocean exploded with storms and all I could do was cling to the edge of my own slipping sanity.
I’d spent a lot of hours wondering why the tree only seemed to shed light for me.
I used to think it was because Micah had been the one to sacrifice his life for mine, the angel to breathe neon into my lungs and transform me into what I’d become now—but when I thought more about it, I remembered how I’d seen this glow before.
When I was still human, with Micah flying me over the trees, I noticed a little glimmer somewhere below us.
Back then, I didn’t give it much of a thought.
Now, I thought about it all the time.
Maybe I was simply hallucinating it.
Maybe it was real.
I didn’t know.
Quiet tears trickled down my cheeks, contrasting with all the angry irrational shouts that’d come out of my mouth earlier, all the hatred and agony and panic and grief that always seemed to overtake my brain and turn me into a monster.
There is a graveyard inside of me, and this is where I live. I never leave.
In it, there are two gravestones.
Micah and Ivy.
I tipped my skull back against the bark of the tree, a light breeze blowing the baby hairs around my face. My fingers brushed over pine needles on the ground, pressing into the dirt.
Sometimes I thought about those few days when I’d known I was pregnant.
I’d been more scared and unsure than ever.
I’d felt trapped in my own body, paralyzed with fear because I had to make a big decision, one way or the other.
But in the end, the decision was taken away from me, and it didn’t matter what I wanted.
I don’t know what I would’ve chosen.
I didn’t want the baby.
But maybe with him…
Pine branches swayed above me in a net of life. The sun poked through the clouds sometimes, but it didn’t reach me here in the heart of the forest. Not fully.
Even when I stood out from any cover, the sun couldn’t quite touch me anymore.
I breathed deep, inhaling cedar and moss and damp earth, feeling mist in my lungs. To anyone else, the scent would’ve been rich and fulfilling, but to me, it was flat and dull.
Because I knew how much deeper a scent like this could be.
I knew that shadows could smell like love, that rain-damp rocks could breathe, that pine trees could hug me and tuck me into bed.
Not anymore.
I turned my head as I cried, my hand extending upwards to brush along one of the branches extending from the tree, glimmering softly, outlined with the steady sheen of ultraneon.
There was a small bit of sap dripping down the trunk near my head, like the tree was crying, too.
I took my journal out of my bag and extended my legs, kicking aside pine cones with the heels of my boots so I could plant my feet, anger tying a knot in my chest.
My fingers traced over the lace on my journal, trembling slightly, then I opened it and uncapped my blue pen. This was my life now. There was no change coming up in the future. I’d graduated college, was no longer pregnant, and had no plans to try getting a new job.
I gripped the pen tightly, scribbling a lot of angry words onto the paper, giving myself something to focus on other than sobbing again.
I contribute nothing to the world.
He contributed so much.
Why is he the one dead and not me?
If I’d stayed in the truck…
If I’d waited thirty more seconds…
If I’d let him respond to me…
What sort of predator would sacrifice himself for his own idiotic prey?
The cries came back, even when I tried to suppress them, as if my lungs would never be rid of the need to scream forever. Everything hurt all the time, and I wasn’t strong enough to keep up with it.
Had he still been angry?
Had he thought I’d hated him?
Had he died believing that?
I wanted to take my last words to him back.
I wanted to take my anger back.
I wanted one more ordinary argument.
I’d walked away because I thought there would be another chance to return.
I’d stupidly believed there would be another tomorrow.
That I could fuck up and he could fuck up and we’d always get time to fix it, even if fixing it eventually meant the end of our relationship.
I never thought it would be the end of his life.
I could barely even remember what we’d been fighting about anymore.
Only that it had somehow been important enough to leave.
And I’d spend the rest of my life trying to outrun a decision that had lasted less than a minute.
I kept replaying the fight as if there was a version where I didn’t walk away.
I could still hear my own footsteps, in my memory. Boots on asphalt. Pulse pounding in my ears.
It was almost like a countdown.
Tires skidding off the road, my breath caught in my chest, headlights bearing down on me…
I flipped over to a different page in my journal, furiously wiping the tears from my hot cheeks, sniffling, choking back my sobs.
This page was covered in ideas, most of them crossed out now.
When I came to this tree for the first time, I started to think maybe I could bring Micah back in some way.
There had to be a reason it shone for me.