Worth the Trouble ✓

29 | school in session

I MISUNDERSTOOD WHAT BREAKING UP means.

I watched Mom and Dad go under the knife-edge of loss and I thought I knew what separation looked like. In the days that Mom left, when Dad became a ghost, I thought that breaking up meant learning to live without all the things you got used to. After she walked out Dad threw out old photographs, bought new sheets and linens, changed the layout of all the rooms in the house.

I thought breaking up meant learning to let go of the past—but it's letting go of the future you thought for sure was yours.

Yeah, fuck, I miss all the things Suki and I did. Studying in the library after school. Taking the bus together and pretending we weren't friends. Staring at the back of her head in Math class. Strolling through Haywood Park. Dancing around in my bedroom. Watching her doze off in bed. I miss that.

But coming home to an empty house, because Dad's still at work, devoid of the laughter and crying and life that I was certain would fill it right about this time? That cuts like nothing else ever has. I imagined being a family with Suki. I imagined a future with her. Notching Cassie's height on a door jamb. Giving Suki massages because she always carries tension in her shoulders. Teaching my daughter how to throw a punch.

And now I'm giving her my blessing to date new guys just so she doesn't have to feel the same pain. So she can move on.

I'm not ready to move on yet. Behind me is a happy past with Suki, but that's been wrenched away. In front was a happy future, but that's been wrenched away, too. The road I walk has crumbled either side of me, and I'm left teetering on a single pillar of asphalt. I can't go forward and I can't go back. I'm just stuck, in this maddening limbo, trapped in a present that offers me nothing.

I blink my eyes open through a splitting headache. The sunlight streaming into the room feels like a laser, searing my retinas. I drag my hands over my eyes, but that motion sets off a wild nausea in my stomach. "Fuck."

I roll over on the bed, emptying the contents of my stomach into Reece's wastepaper bin. Derek must have put it there last night. This morning? I lost track of time. However long I slept for wasn't enough to metabolise the alcohol saturating my blood.

I'm beginning to understand Dad better. If he feels anything like I feel, suspended between the past I had and the future I crave, I get it. I may not approve or condone drinking his life away, especially when he's supposed to be looking after me. But I get it. Moving on isn't an option. Going back isn't an option. Standing still hurts.

I haven't really had best friends before. In middle school I was simply close with the students in my class, and after I was wrenched from the public school system and dropped into this private school hell, those connections inevitably faded and snapped. I liked Jethro in freshman year, but I made the mistake of pouring all of my time into Suki—there was no-one else I would rather have hung out with.

These four really crept up on me. At parties or during lunch or when we drive to the Stereo Shack after school, Madison will say, "Smile, Terry," tag me in whatever picture she's posting to social media, and ignore me afterwards. Whenever I'm dragged into plans to hang out, Reece drives to my house and honks to announce himself without messaging first. Derek saw my inexperience with drugs and alcohol and seemed determined to not let anyone else at school notice, teaching me how to roll or use a bong or cut a line with no judgment.

And Brittany...she really surprised me. When she's not involving me in her drama, she's a good listener. Smart. Intuitive. Her cruelty really only flares up when people encroach on her territory, on the people and relationships that she holds close to her. It's bad to like that side of her, but the only reason Reece offers a ride and Derek looks out for me and Madison publicises our hanging out is because Brittany started it first. Because she pities me, because she knows me, whatever the reason, she makes an effort.