Leaving Laurabelle Falls

Chapter 17

"You're doing better in school now." My mom informed me. We stood in the kitchen, me in my pajamas, and her in her bath robe. She still had a towel wrapped around her hair, letting it dry.

"Yeah," I agreed.

I had been working my ass off to try and get my grades back up. I was functioning under a policy of pretending like all of this was real, pretending like this world was normal.

It was better than dealing with the consequences of being stuck outside of Laurabelle Falls.

"All of your teachers have emailed me back saying that you're turning in your late work. You aren't failing art anymore," I could hear the judgment in her tone; she didn't have to say it out loud, "And you even have a low B in English class."

She reached into the cupboard and turned around. She handed me the little black box that I had relied on for the past three years. I gratefully accepted.

"Thank you," I said, pulling it back.

"You'd better be responsible with it," She warned, "Or I will take it again. I'm serious. You need to spend just as much time studying now as you did before."

It's not like I had been doing anything else the last few weeks.

Maddie was still barely talking to me. Now that I was using a walker to get around, she didn't wheel me to and from class. A few of the popular girls had invited me to sleep-overs, bowling, or out to dinner. I couldn't bowl, and normal food tasted bland in comparison to some of the food that I had eaten in Laurabelle Falls. It didn't really feel worth it to pay $6 for some cheese fries I was barely going to enjoy.

None of them had wanted to hang out with me before the accident. I wasn't about to have a bunch of temporary friends that pretended to care because I was fake-empathy fodder.

"I'll study." I promised.

"It doesn't need charged." She said, "I went ahead and took care of that for you."

"Thank you," I responded.

I eagerly grabbed my walker, setting my phone down on the flat tray. I used it to help me get to the stairs, and left it there at the base. I slipped my phone in my pocket instead, and I used a combination of my grip on the railing and my legs to push-pull my way up the stairs.

I had come a long way in my physical therapy since I had started to act like this world mattered.

I made it to my room, and immediately opened it.

I made my way meticulously through the notifications that I did have, one by one responding to some concerned distant family (again, people who had never cared about me before), and Sam, who had heard about the accident and reached out.

It was nice to talk to Sam again. Their family had moved somewhere south-er, to where the beaches were a little warmer and, according to her, the people were friendlier. It had been a couple of years since we had talked before the accident.

Then, when all of my notifications were checked off, I stared at my blank phone screen. I wondered whether or not I was missing something.

I opened my messenger app again, scrolling down three weeks. I hovered over Clyde's name, seeing the little, colored-in grey check-mark that determined that he'd received my message.

It looked like he hadn't opened it yet.

And that one stung.

I knew that he was probably busy. Hell, he had moved away. I didn't know how much he remembered from Laurabelle Falls, or whether or not he was even allowed to talk to me. But every day my mom had my phone, I had thought of him.