Paper Hearts

c a r t e r [ 2 ]

zachary carter
❝ the damaged ❞

ramona places the bouquet of daffodils on the gravestone as well as dropping her brown sling bag on the ground before sitting down on the grass next to it, in front of the gravestone with her legs drawn up. she curls in on herself and places her chin on where both her knees meet. she stays silent and stationary for what feels like hours and then lets out a sigh, lowering her knees and crossing her legs.

ramona kavinsky takes out a black worn out sketch book and flips it open to a new blank white page.

and ramona kavinsky draws.

zachary carter was the only reason ramona had started drawing. her first sketchbook were filled with countless of quick simple or sometimes detailed sketches of zachary carter. all of them showed his side profile since he was always looking away. ramona didn't seem to have any photographs of him either. pictures that included him were never clear, mainly blurred.

ramona would have been slightly creeped out by how photographs of him were coincidentally blurred around his face if she hadn't known just how much zach would have preferred to disappear from the face of the planet. he had always been a troubled teen, ramona knew that much.

the only times ramona could see zach's genuine smile was whenever he saw or talked about his mother, who he admired whole heartedly as she was a tough single mother who managed to keep up with her son's crap.

ramona and zach had been up on the bleachers, in silence, watching the football practice go on when the school secretary had rushed over and called zach down from the bottom of the bleachers. ramona couldn't hear what mrs. brün informed him, but she knew it couldn't have been good news. zach's face was blank—and ramona thought after all the time they spent together, she was getting pretty good at reading his emotions from his face, but apparently not.

and on that day, zachary carter turned his back on ramona. he never came back to school that day. or the next. or the day after that.

ramona copies the wordings engraved on the gravestone.

IN LOVING MEMORY OF
Judith Carter
27th June 1972 ~ 25th July 2011

BELOVED MOTHER, DEVOTED NURSE

A SMILE FOR ALL, A HEART OF GOLD ONE OF THE BEST THIS WORLD COULD HOLD, NEVER SELFISH, ALWAYS KIND, A BEAUTIFUL MEMORY LEFT BEHIND

she finishes her sketch and flips to the middle page of the book, which holds fourteen year old ramona kavinsky's art project—a smudged charcoal drawing of a boy. she rips the page out of the book and places it on the dirt covered in flower petals, evidence that someone visited and mourned for the woman before ramona, as a gift to the woman who dealt with zach's crap every day and still loves him with all her heart.

because ramona kavinsky loved zachary carter, and she hated him.

she puts the book back into her bag and stands up. she picks up her bag and hesitates, before placing her right hand on the gravestone.

"i'm sorry,"

and ramona kavinsky turns her back on the grave where judith carter was buried along with her son several months after. it's been five years, and she still hasn't forgiven zach for the way he decided to handle his grief. it's rare that you see a headline on the newspaper about a fifteen year old boy who didn't have a clue how to drive, driving a car straight into a tree.

zachary carter had picked up the broken pieces of her heart and proceeded to rip it back to shreds.