Before Sunday

Thirty Five

TIME MELTS INTO INFINITY

Twenty-seven days since I last left my bed for anything other than school, the painfully necessary task of eating or use of the bathroom or the shower.

Twenty-seven days since I accepted that he really is gone.

Twenty-seven days since I felt like I was whole.

Twenty-seven days since I ate anything other than ramen noodles dry from the package or drank anything aside from herbal tea and water.

Twenty-seven days since I fell to pieces.

I'm pathetic. I used to make fun of girls like me until I became one.

Tori and Madeline have become fast friends, united in their efforts to get me to move. Xavier stops by every single day to check on me. I never speak to him. I can't. I have excessive amounts of resentment directed to him and I figure since I have nothing nice to say, I should say nothing at all. He brings me cartons of Chinese food that I don't eat and tries to make me watch movies that I don't want to watch. He keeps coming, determined to get me to speak to him. He gets an A plus for effort but I can't bring myself to care.

I care about nothing.

I want to do nothing. Like I told X, I want to stop existing. It's such a stupid thing to do.

It's Saturday. Tomorrow will be the 4th Sunday without Jackson. I particularly hate Sundays.

Tori left to get coffee and Madeline has just let herself in. She's fussing with the curtain near my bed, trying to let the sun pierce through the darkness I have come to prefer.

I hiss at her and pull the covers up and over my head.

"Quit with the drama, Lola," she says. "It's almost six o'clock at night."

I'm sure Madeline is over my sadness, but I'm not. I never will be.

"Six o'clock is as good a time as any to sleep," I say from beneath my blanket.

Madeline tugs at it. "That's all you do is sleep."

Because it's where I can dream.

That's why I sleep. It's the closest I will ever be to Jackson Nathaniel Sunday again.

"I don't want to do anything else."

"I don't care what you want at this point," Madeline says. "I'm all for break up cartons of ice cream and makeshift voodoo dolls, but this has got to stop."

"We didn't break up," I remind her. "He vanished. Back of the milk carton style. He could be an episode of Dateline."

"I understand he's gone," she says, "but you need to move on. This isn't healthy."

Don't. Care.

I roll over, attempting to take my blankets with me, but suddenly they're being ripped off of my body in the most unforgiving way.

"Madeline!" I yell into the pillow.

"You're allowed to feel sad Lola. You're allowed to grieve and to hurt and ache and suffer for your loss. But you've been doing that for a month and it's time you got out and did something."

"I'd rather chew on a dinner of razorblades and wash it down with rubbing alcohol."

"You sure are a ray of sunshine. Razorblades and rubbing alcohol is not in your future, darling, we are going out."