Katie didn’t look dead when I saw her the morning after she died. She was pale, but she had been paling for months, and she was so skinny in the final months of her life that I could see her bones through her sagging skin. Her blonde hair had long ago fallen out, and her dark blue eyes were closed as if she were sleeping.
She died in her sleep, and I wasn’t there to comfort her. Nobody was there for her in those final moments.
I was likely the last person to see her alive. Her mother had kissed her goodnight and tucked her in before we waved to each other that night. Had I known it would be the last time I saw her, I would have said more; I would have told her how I really felt about her, but I had no clue she would be dead by morning.
“She really loved you, Anna,” Joanne said from the doorway behind me.
I turned around and collapsed into her arms. “I know. I loved her too.”
We didn’t move for a long time, except for our chests, which heaved in pain against each other. Eventually, when the tears were gone, I unlatched from her. I wiped the tears from my eyes and gave her the smallest of smiles.
“Come downstairs,” Joanne said. “I can’t do this alone.”
“In a minute,” I replied.
I wanted to help Joanne, but crowds…I didn’t like crowds, and I didn’t like when they fawned over a girl they barely knew. More so, I hated the fact that they were all still alive and Katie wasn’t. It was a horrible thought, but I just wanted my friend back. Seeing all of them alive, smiling, and being with the ones they loved, was too much for me to take.
I sat down on Katie’s bed and fell onto her pillow. I could smell her shampoo. The sweet smell of roses and vanilla filled my nostrils, and for a moment Katie was alive again in my memory. I thought the tears were gone, but I was wrong. My body convulsed again, and they came back harder than ever.
Why? Katie. Why did you leave me?
It was a selfish thought, but it was a true one. I wept for Katie, for all the potential she lost, and all the days she would no longer have, but in that moment, I wept because I would never see her again. I wept because of what her death did to me.
I once had three people I loved in this world. My mother, Joanne, and Katie. Now I only had two. And I didn’t love them as much as I loved Katie.
Chapter 3
I didn’t want to sleep in my room any more. My room faced Katie’s, across the street, and that meant memories of her flooded into my brain every time I looked out my window. I had taken to sleeping on the couch in the living room, and only sleeping with Netflix blaring Parks and Rec on repeat. Otherwise, the dark thoughts infested my brain.
Why couldn’t you save her?
Why didn’t you die?
What makes you so special?
These questions filled my brain, and I couldn’t answer them. I had no idea why Katie couldn’t be saved, and why I was alive while so many people I loved died.
Was I the toxic piece that killed everything around me? Was I a mold, or a spore, that infected those I cared about? Or was I just unlucky that my love was met by death at every turn. I long ago decided never to love again, but perhaps that wasn’t enough. Perhaps I needed to curtail the love I had for those still alive. Maybe it was in their best interests if I just cut off all ties and ran away.
“Move over,” Mom said to me, sitting down on the couch.
“Mom,” I said. “I’m trying to sleep.”
“Too bad, chica,” she replied. “There’s a TV in your room. You can use it if you want, but this one is the family TV.”
I kicked her lightly, trying to get her up, but she wasn’t moving. “I have school in the morning.”
“You have a bed for that, my love. Now, what are we watching?”
I sighed. “Parks and Rec, I guess.”
“All right, I can dig it. Which season?”
“Three.”
“Ooh, that’s a good one. Before or after April and Andy’s wedding?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s just background noise.”
She stared at the TV for a moment. “Before, definitely before. Come on, sit up. Your bony legs are poking into my side.”
I pulled my legs up and Mom fell back onto the couch. “I hate you.”
She rubbed my legs gently. “No, you don’t. Sometimes maybe you wish you did, but you don’t.”
I couldn’t argue with her. There wasn’t anything in the world that could make me stop loving Mom, even if she was cursed to die eventually, just like everyone else I loved. It was just a matter of time.
“You realize if I don’t sleep then I won’t be fresh for school tomorrow?”
“Yeah, I know,” she said. “But there’s nothing I can do about that, besides forklift you upstairs, and I’m afraid they won’t let me take one home.”
Mom had the strong hands and wide build of a warehouse worker. Lots of people made fun of her when she went to work in the warehouse after Dad died, but it was one of the few places that paid decently enough for us to keep the house they’d bought before I was born. They didn’t want to hire her at first, but soon enough, she proved herself, and eventually they promoted her to warehouse manager. After a few years she might even get promoted to the day shift.
“Don’t you have work?” I said.
“My boss is a real dick, but even she wouldn’t make me work the night of
