Total pages in book: 143
Estimated words: 130275 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 651(@200wpm)___ 521(@250wpm)___ 434(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130275 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 651(@200wpm)___ 521(@250wpm)___ 434(@300wpm)
I hugged the notebook to my chest. “They’re sending me away, Pops,” I said, my quiet voice carrying around the near-silent grove. “To try to make me better.” I sighed, the heaviness in my chest almost bruising my ribs. “I just don’t know how to let you go.”
The truth was, if Poppy could talk to me, I knew she’d be heartbroken at how her death had paralyzed me, wounded me irreparably. Yet, I couldn’t shake it. Rob told me that grief never left us. Instead we adapted, like it was a new appendage we had to learn to use. That at any moment, pain and heartache could strike and break us. But eventually we would develop the tools to cope with it and find a way to move on.
I was still waiting for that day.
I watched the setting sun disappear through the trees, the waxing crescent moon rising to take its place. The golden blanket adorning us turned to a silvery blue as night arrived and I stood to leave. “I love you, Pops,” I said and reluctantly walked through the grove to our home. Our home, that these days, missed its heartbeat.
Because she was buried in the ground behind me. Eternally seventeen. The age I was now. Never to grow old. Never to shine her light. Never to share her music.
A travesty the world would forever be deprived of.
Abandoned Dreams and Frozen Ponds
Cael
Age Eighteen
Massachusetts
“IT ISN’T HAPPENING,” I SAID, STARING DOWN AT MY MOM AND DAD ON THE couch. I stood in the center of the living room, seething, body live-wired with anger as I listened to what they were saying.
A morsel of guilt tried to carve its way into my heart as I watched my mom’s tears spill over her eyes and track down her cheeks, but the fire flooding my veins burned that flicker of remorse to vapor.
“Cael, please …” Mom whispered, hands held out, placating. She shifted to the edge of the couch, like she would come to me, to offer me some kind of comfort. I shook my head, taking three steps back until I was almost on top of the unlit fireplace. I didn’t want her comfort. I didn’t want any of this. What were they even thinking right now?
My dad sat on our ancient brown couch, stoic, like the upstanding lawman he was. He was still dressed in his uniform, Massachusetts’s Finest glaring at me, face reddened as Mom cried over me again.
My jaw clenched so hard I felt my bones might crack. My hands curled into tight fists, and I fought the urge to plow them into the brick of the fireplace my back now brushed up against. But that was my every day in this hellhole. In this house full of memories I no longer wanted to have lodged in my brain. My dad was sick and tired of patching up holes I’d made in the walls with my fist. Just as sick as I was of my constant stream of anger. But that anger never left me. So I guess we both weren’t getting what we wanted.
“You’re going, kid,” Dad said, authority lacing each of his words. He was a man of few words. Succinct, and expected his orders to be obeyed. Everything inside of me screamed to tell him where the hell to go. His hard tone was fuel to the flames inside of me. I tried. I really tried to keep calm. But I was losing it. Like a ticking time bomb, I could feel I was about to blow.
“Cael, we have to try something,” Mom said, a subtle plea in her broken voice. Once upon a time, my mom upset would break me. Now? Nothing. “We’ve talked to your newest therapist. You graduated from high school last year. You refused to start college. This trip can help you. Give you back some purpose. Now, you just exist. No job, no direction, no school, no hockey. We’ve talked to the coach at Harvard. He checks in on you all the time. He still wants you. He wants you on next year’s roster. You can do this. You can still go—”
“I DON’T FUCKING CARE ABOUT COLLEGE!” I screamed, cutting off what she was about to say. I had cared about college once. It was all I thought about. All I dreamed about. So I could join him, so that we could play side by side, like we’d always planned …
My eyes involuntarily went to the mass of pictures on the wall above my parents on the couch. Shot after shot of me and him throughout the years. Playing in stadiums, arms around one another, smiles on our faces and sticks in our hands, Team USA written across my chest. I wasn’t even sure how to smile anymore. It felt foreign for my facial muscles to function that way. I averted my gaze from those pictures—now a goddamn shrine to what could have been. I couldn’t even look at them. They were all a lie. Told a story of a life that was fictitious.