30. Sage
THIRTY
SAGE
BACK THEN
My heart beats the rhythm of a war drum preparing the troops for battle. My breath gusts out of me in panicked hiccups. I threw myself around the trailer. Desperation and panic raging for dominance up my throat.
Every corner came up empty. Every nook is only filled with shadows. It felt like my heart was splitting at the seams.
The trailer is small, so my frantic search only took seconds. I stopped in the living room, leaning over onto the couch, head hung when the despair grew too heavy to hold.
I knew when I first woke up. I knew when my hand touched the empty space beside me. Mac was gone. I felt his absence immediately. The trailer only felt this empty without him in it. Felt barren and withered.
Even with Mom’s snores filtering through her closed doors, I knew I was alone. He told me he had to leave. Had to run. He begged me to follow. I lied to myself. Tricked myself into believing his tear-stained promises. I think he was trying to lie to himself, too.
I swallow and swallow, trying to force the dread back down, but I can’t.
Mac is gone. He left me. I told myself he wouldn’t leave, not like this. Not a mirrored image to the way my dad left me. He wouldn’t. But when every spot I checked came up empty, I knew he had. Knew he left. Leaving me alone with his blood as my only reminder he was ever there.
The familiar feeling of anger creeps up. It threatens the desperation and sorrow, holding a blade to its throat. He. Left. Me.
I slink into the familiar feeling that’s growing, finding a sliver of comfort there.
I look at the door that my mother is behind, and my anger grows.
She sleeps, unaware of the world I woke up in.
Unaware that I’m here at the edge of something I cannot name.
The anger flares again, directing it towards the woman I stayed behind for.
The reason Mac left in the middle of the night.
The reason I have lost the one person I loved.
My search continued for a few days after his disappearance. I would call his number until my battery died. Drive to every spot I thought he might hide in. The boat house, the arcade, the woods behind the old farm. Then the hysterical calls to hospitals, police stations.
Every trace of Mac is gone. No trail to follow.
No hope. And every day I lean more and more into the anger.
Every day it grows, consuming more and more of me.
Every memory becomes tainted by it. Every smile, laugh, joke, prank, dare all begin to corrode.
I’d see his face in the photos around my room, and it feeds the wrath.
But no matter how hard I try, I can’t bring myself to rip them from my walls.
I can’t erase him. Not from my walls, or my heart.
Mac left me. I’ll never forgive him for this.