Prologue
June, 2014
A deep crack in the asphalt trailed from the middle of the parking lot right under my shoe. My foot leaned into it from one side to the other, my body trying to force my brain to focus on the way my sole weighed into the rut. But I couldn’t focus on anything.
The wind blowing around me was light and warm. A heavy contrast to the situation I found myself in. Perhaps the breeze was her final hug.
The airy embrace subsided, and the hospital’s sliding doors opened about a hundred feet in front of me. A woman emerged, pushed on a wheelchair with a newborn baby in her arms.
The cycle continues.
Nothing would be the same now. No one would see me the same way. I would see nothing the same way. A lonely eighteenth birthday, a solitary graduation, a dorm room with a stranger as my roommate. That’s what awaited me.
The world swallowed me and kept spinning as I stood still, foot pressed into the pavement, gaze locked on the door as if the doctor was going to appear and tell me they’d made a mistake. As if Alana herself would come walking out into this parking lot, bump me on the shoulder, and say, “Come on. Get in the car. Let’s go home now.”
But she wouldn’t. She was gone. My best friend.
The hole in my soul left by her departure could never be filled. I didn’t want it to be, nor did I need it to be, nor was it even possible.
Death is funny like that, isn’t it? One moment, everything’s the same, and the next, it’s all different. But not just different. Completely changed. Utterly permanent. Etched in stone. Just one moment, the blink of an eye, a snap of fingers, and the world crumbles.
How fickle.