There are ways of dying that do not end with a funeral. Types of deaths you can't see, feel or smell. Because death, just like love, has a mind of its own and some things can't be prevented.
What started as an innocent high school quest in search o...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Life is an endless string of choices.
We're constantly choosing one option over the other, whether we realize it or not. Some decisions are based on the spur of a moment. You don't really think them through, you just do it.
Others, resemble more of an internal battle. Which is precisely how I feel right now, still in Timothy's room, so fucking close to what I came here for, but drifting away from something else that matters, too; driving into something that could potentially be irreversible without being fully present at the wheel.
It takes me a minute to decide, an excruciatingly frustrating minute –or perhaps more than that— where I'm clenching my fists, blinking and pressing my eyelids tightly shut but unable to move from the spot my feet seem to be rooted to.
I don't have an explanation for why I turn toward the MacBook, put it back into sleep mode so everything is the way Tim left it, click the table lamp off, or swipe the phone propped against it up and rush after Aspen. I don't think how this might've been my only chance at getting the evidence – I can't let myself think that way.
Somehow, everything seems less urgent, less important in comparison to going after her and finally fixing this. Maybe it's the expression he had seated on her face before she fled the room, maybe I'm just tired of pushing her to the sidelines in my desperate attempt to protect her because look where that got us.
I should let it go. I should just drop it. The reasonable thing would be to let her cool off for tonight, give her some space and then talk to her about everything tomorrow.
But right now, I don't see the point of being reasonable and I can't bear the idea of her thinking that I don't care about anyone or anything anymore. That I don't care about her, and that everything I've ever done was solely motivated by my guilt. Towards her, towards Adam, towards Courtney, towards the rest of the world.
I have changed. And maybe she can't see the full extent of that because I haven't showed her, haven't gone out of my way to show anyone, but I have changed.
That's what I keep telling myself over and over as I pound down the stairs, cutting my way to the kitchen.
She's had a few minutes' advantage on me but she couldn't have gotten far.
I don't find her in the kitchen though, no matter how hard I strain my gaze through the throng of people, the sea of scattered bodies I'm pushing through as I make my way to the living room.
For some reason, I expect to see her on the couch, idled beside Timothy and Jason like she was when I hit the party but I can't see her anywhere. She could've gone to the bathroom, or outside onto the patio, or—
My eyes meet Jade's and her usually composed posture goes rigid as she takes in my expression, perhaps sensing something is wrong.
"Have you guys seen Aspen?" I ask no one in particular, still absentmindedly searching the space for her wavy blond head or the oversized sweater she had on, trying to put together a mental image of how it actually looked – what was the color?
