CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
SEVENTEEN YEARS OLD
· · ·
Ever since that night, I’ve been on medication.
My parents still don’t know exactly what happened.
Just that Cassian stopped coming around after. And I think that was enough for them to connect the dots on their own.
I’m grateful for that.
Because I couldn’t talk about it.
I couldn’t think about it without feeling like I was going to break again.
He broke me.
And I’ve been slowly trying to put myself back together.
I finally reached my limit.
That’s the part that hurts — the realization that there was one.
That I had been burying myself deeper and deeper for eight years and I would have kept going as long as he stayed.
I like the medication.
That’s the part I don’t say out loud.
It made my insides match my outsides.
Empty.
Blissfully, completely numb.
The days blended together.
The lightness I’d always felt — the thing I didn’t even know I’d had until it was gone — disappeared.
And now everything just dragged.
Every step. Every thought. Every feeling.
Like I was moving through something thick.
· · ·
My parents noticed.
I could feel them watching me the way they’d watched me at eleven, at fifteen — that careful, quiet attention they think I don’t see.
I felt bad about it.
About being just — gone.
But I couldn’t bring myself to do much about it.
· · ·
So I kept up the appearance of a person who was fine.
Grades stayed up.
Joined the debate club.
Made new friends — junior year, new classes, new corners of school I’d never been in.
They were fine. Good, even.
I blocked Taylor.
I couldn’t handle anyone trying to get close.
The pieces were too sharp.
· · ·
I was scared.
Not of being with people.
Of what would happen without them.
So I floated.
Existed.
Just barely.
But enough.
School. Club.
The vast blankness of lying in bed staring at the wall.
· · ·
Sometimes I took an extra pill.
To take the edge off.
Because the prescribed amount wasn’t always enough.
Because some nights the numbness wore thin and everything underneath came rushing back and I needed it gone again.
It worked.
That was the problem.
· · ·
Eight years.
Gone.
Like I was nothing.
I can’t say they were wasted.
Even now, as small and shattered as I feel, I can’t make myself believe that.
I’m glad I loved him.
So completely.
So stupidly.
I just —
· · ·
I throw the fucking pill bottle.
It hits the wall and breaks apart, pills scattering across the floor.
I get down on my hands and knees and pick up every single one.
Carefully.
Because I need them.
They’re all I have right now.
I don’t look at his window anymore.
Don’t watch who’s coming and going next door.
He made his choice.
But I still leave the window open.