1. Summer #2
I’m not sure what’s worse: spending more time in this house, which is the embodiment of grief, or starting this school year.
This year was always going to be different.
Connor would have graduated over the summer.
He would have been an archangel with a Legion, but we would be married, and he would be living here with me.
He would come home at the end of the day.
I shouldn’t have come back, but I made a promise to Connor.
I promised, and I had already failed him in every other way.
I nod and wordlessly push myself from the floor. Alice follows behind me as I head upstairs to shower. She said Connor’s room had remained untouched, but it didn’t prepare me for seeing his name messily etched on the door, the room frozen in time.
My eyes dart away, and I turn to walk to Rafe’s old room, which is my room now.
I don’t even take in the decor, going straight to the bathroom.
I turn on the shower, and as soon as I’ve removed my clothes, I step in.
The water is freezing. Good, I don’t deserve warmth.
I deserve this freezing cold nothingness.
I scrub at my skin, even now able to feel Connor’s blood clinging to me, haunting me, taunting me.
Your fault. Your fault. Your fault.
When the chant gets louder, I slam my palm against the shower wall before turning the water off.
I step out and wrap a towel around me. When I walk back into the bedroom, it’s harder to ignore all the details.
Nothing of Rafe remains in here, and it has a very similar vibe to my old dorm room.
Several of the items that used to decorate my room are here, including the Polaroids Alice took during our first year.
I walk to the closet, unsurprised to find my uniforms hanging in there.
I brush my fingers over them, remembering the first time I put one on.
It was the first time I felt like I might belong. How stupid I was.
I choose a uniform at random and dress by muscle memory.
It drapes on me. I’ve lost all the curves it once clung to over the last three months.
I can’t even bear to look at myself in the mirror, knowing my frail, hollow frame will make me cringe.
My gaze locks on the high heels I used to wear to make it easier to reach Connor’s lips, and the memory makes me ache.
Alice knocks on the door and then peeks around it. I glance at her in the mirror and see a glimpse of my broken body. I’ve tried to hide it as much as possible with thick tights and a large hoodie, but it’s obvious I’m nothing like I was.
“Ready?” Alice asks. There is no surprise in her expression at my appearance. This is what she’s seen for months now.
I nod, turning to face her.
She holds out her hand, a small muffin resting on her palm.
“Made this for you.” My stomach curdles at the thought, but I take it as I walk past her.
I don’t eat it, and Alice doesn’t expect me to.
She’s started cooking and baking every day, anything and everything, trying to get me to eat something.
It hasn’t worked yet, but she still tries.
Together, we leave the house and walk toward Manananggal Hall.
The last time I made this walk, it was with the headmaster as he pretended to be Connor.
People stared and whispered because my best friend was murdered, or so they thought.
This time, they stare and whisper because my fiancé was murdered.
Before, I had to act broken and devastated.
This time, it is not an act. I am a glass vase that has been thrown against a marble floor.
I keep my eyes on the ground, taking comfort in Alice’s arm around me. The only things keeping me upright are the ice encasing my heart and a best friend who refuses to give up on me. We walk in silence, the whispers a cacophony, but I block them out. They can talk all they want .
Alice guides me into one of the back rows of the auditorium and tugs me into the seat next to her. I am vaguely aware of Alice hissing at someone, but I keep my gaze on my lap, pulling at the sleeve of my sweater and trying to hold back tears with every fraction of strength I have left.
The entire room goes completely silent, but I feel the tendrils of his power brushing against me before I hear his footsteps as he makes his way to the middle of the stage.
“Normally,” the deep, rumbling voice of Headmaster Emrys begins, “when I take to the stage at the beginning of each year, I tell you that this is the place where you can be different. You can be who you are meant to be. That nothing you’ve been told since birth is true.
Yet everything is different this year, and that is because of Connor Azrael Morningstar. ”
The sound of his name hurts more than any of the blades Aqua plunged into me, and I try to hold back the sobs, locking them in my throat. Alice’s hand digs into mine, mooring me.
The headmaster stops for a long moment, long enough that the sense of unease grows in the room. Alice gently nudges me, and I glance at her and then at the headmaster. His gray eyes penetrate me.
“Avalon used to be a sanctuary for those of us who never felt like we belonged. And that was shattered at the end of last year. We were shattered last year. A single act of bravery at the moment it counted, saved us. A heroism many of us could never hope to achieve. Connor Morningstar is the reason we are here today. So I don’t want to know who you truly are.
I want to know what he died for. Who he died for.
” His stern gaze is still locked on mine, pinning me in place.
“Dismissed,” he says before finally freeing me from his gaze, and a tear finally escapes.
Something small and light drops into my lap, and I look down. I pick up the card with the words My office written in the headmaster’s script across the front.