Being herself has never been a challenge for Nyla until high school, where bitches, boobs and boys invades the minds of everyone... Well, everyone except her, of course.
Nyla never cared much about any of the three B's until she grew conscious of h...
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“And then she said, ‘You don’t want him to come back for all of us. You just want him to come back for you.’”
I threw my hands in the air as I replayed the entire episode last night to Ginger, who was doing her best to sympathise with me.
After she found me this morning with “ridiculously puffy eyes,” as she put it, she made me promise to tell her everything. Now, it was the end of the school day, and we had just got a chance to talk.
We were on the front steps of the school, where we had a perfect view of the parking lot to ensure Trisha didn’t leave without me. She had been rather cold this morning and hadn’t said anything to me.
I guess I understood. I mean, our relationship wasn’t repaired over the weeks of Dad-searching, but we had managed a few decent conversations with a bit of laughing now and then to and from school. But this morning felt like the days when she’d act as if I didn’t exist.
“Well, Nyla, I have to admit—”
I groaned. “Ginger, please don’t tell me you agree with them?”
She looked like a deer in headlights. “I don’t,” she quickly defended. “But I don’t disagree with them either, Ny. This has caused you all so much pain, and you just … you might just need to let him go. And I never thought I’d ever say this in a zillion years and back, not even if a gun was to my head—”
“Your point,” I pressed.
“—but Trisha’s right. You can maybe find peace in his ‘death.’ Do you know how many people wished their loved ones were alive, living another life—even if they didn’t know of their existence—instead of rotting in a graveyard with a bunch of other dead people?”
Then it hit me like a smack to my face.
“Oh, my gosh, Ginger. I’m so, so sorry.”
Ugh. How could I be so inconsiderate?
“Here I was complaining about my dad being some stranger and my mom and sister leaving him alone when …”
“Yeah,” she whispered as she pursed her lips. “But hey, I’m okay. I just want you to be okay too.”
But she wasn’t okay. Ginger lost her parents in a car crash two years before I lost Dad. And her mom was five months pregnant with Ginger’s little sister.
