Stasi
Chapter 16
Stasi
38 Days Dead
For the first time since I died, I feel like I can breathe. I hadn’t realized how toxic the atmosphere had become, all those pollutants—my hunger for justice I’ll never receive and her self-destruction—building up in my lungs. This distance between us has given me a much-needed reprieve from Becca’s suffocating presence. In the days since, I’ve focused on letting go of all that anger, employing the lessons I learned from Aphrodite even if I don’t have access to her anymore. It’s hard work, but I’m determined to regain my sense of self bit by bit. With every day that I avoid sneaking into her room, I become more hopeful that maybe even if I never get the closure I want, I can exist separately from her. And maybe I can heal just enough to not spend eternity chasing the things that caused me to run right off a cliff.
Unfortunately, that illusion of peace is shattered with a bloodcurdling scream that travels through the walls of the main house and straight down my spine. Before I can process what I’m hearing, I’m barging through the back door, the hook that’s sunken into my gut reeling me toward the bathroom. The symphony of distress grows louder with each step I take. Beneath all their voices, I distinctly hear Becca’s desperation. Fear grips me, cold fingers forcing me to look . It takes a minute, but then I find her. Limbs limp, mouth gaping open, eyes unfocused—helpless to the thing that looms over her in the tub. That haunting mass of black swells a bit larger than I’ve seen before, its shape shifting ever so slightly. While it has no distinct features, I would bet money that it’s staring right back at me. But there’s something even more terrifying than that sight, the blood trickling over Becca’s slashed wrists.
She’s dead.
Her eyes meet mine. Pits of agony that threaten to swallow me, but it’s there in her self-centered sorrow that I finally see that I was so, so wrong .
There’s no relief in her eyes, no registering how or why I’m here, only the need for someone else to witness her pain. Her dismissiveness stings like a slap to the face. Becca never cared about me; not the way I deserved. She’s never looked out for anyone but herself. It’s clear as day in the tears she cries for herself, not for me. No, never for me . They’re for her and the guilt my presence is making her feel. They’re for her and the cracked image of perfection that this stain on her soul has created. The thing that’s changed is that I don’t want to care about her anymore either. I’m done worrying about her, fawning over her, chasing after her, for real this time. My heart can’t bear it anymore.
The reminder of her pain is an obnoxious mosquito trying to feed on my empathy. Even though I swat it away, it keeps popping up any time I let my guard down.
I need to do something. Rifling through storage bin after storage bin, I hunt for the diaries Becca used to keep. If they’ve kept all this other useless junk, she definitely held onto those. Daily diary entries were Becca’s ritual once upon a time. Somewhere she could confess those thoughts that she was too afraid to share with anyone else.
If it were anyone else, I’d consider it a betrayal of trust, but given our history, I feel entitled to know what’s on these pages, especially the ones labeled 2003 and 2004 in Becca’s proper cursive writing.
The notorious floral notes of Curious waft off the front page. Despite myself, a small laugh escapes me as I rub my finger over the splotch on the page from spraying too close. Thumbing through the pages, it’s mostly pretty bland—complaining about her day or humbly bragging about how she aced her last test—but I’m surprised to see it wasn’t all a walk in the park for her.