Chapter 34
Ash
I shattered after my father’s death.
I didn’t know how to deal with it, all the feelings that came spiraling toward me the moment Maa told me what had happened. The only other time I’d heard Maa cry so much was when she learned that Rian had died.
I wanted to die.
I wanted out of this world.
I wanted the hurts to stop hurting, but I knew I couldn’t go.
I couldn’t leave Maa behind. She needed me to look after her. That was Dad’s last real request of me—to look after Maa. I couldn’t disappoint him there, so I had to stay.
Yet for me to stay alive, I had to shift my mind. I couldn’t allow myself to feel everything so deeply. That meant I had to let go of the one person who made me feel the most: Karla.
I couldn’t have her in my life.
It was too hard.
She made me feel too much.
I shifted back to the persona that I’d taken on before my little brother died. I pretended to be me, the old me, who just liked basketball and talked about girls. I turned off my feelings. I stopped thinking about Rian. I stopped thinking about Dad.
I became a zombie in life, but no one could tell when they looked at me.
Over the next few months, I learned to trick people into thinking I was all right.
I fake smiled and forced laughs. I made friends in school.
I joined the basketball team again. I worked out for too many hours.
I studied way too late into the night. I stayed busy with my body so I couldn’t be busy with my mind.
Maa hated that I still wanted to be an EMT after what happened to Dad, but I now understood why he did it. It was a rush. In a job that moved that fast, you didn’t have time to fall apart.
That’s why my life couldn’t slow down. Because if things slowed down, I’d think of Karla, and if I thought of her, I’d have to feel.
I was done with feeling anything.
My world had gone black.
I fully lost my color.