Another Chance (Sequel to: It's All Over Now)

Chapter 29: Why Can't We All Just Get Along?

Morrigan's P.O.V.

I walked home slowly, trying not to hurt my bad leg. How could I hide this from Mason when I got home. I really hoped he wasn't there because I had no idea. 

I got home and shut the door as quietly as possible.

"Mason you home?" I yelled up the stairs. I got no response so I assumed he was still with Tyler at the hospital. I rushed downstairs to the cabinet and grabbed the first aid kit. I opened it to find a bandage wrap for my bloody leg and some band-aids to cover the marks on my face. 

I had just finished wrapping up my leg when I heard Mason coming up the porch stairs, but by the amount of foot steps I could tell he wasn't alone. I ducked behind the kitchen counter and didn't say a word.

"Would you like something to drink?" He asked the person he brought home.

"Sure just some water." The other person and I recognized was Tyler. I heard them moving closer to where I hid so I opened up the cabinet I was closest to and hid in it. Suddenly I heard a lot of soft whispers and suddenly I heard them kissing and quietly talking. Were they back together?

I heard soft talk and sobs as they went upstairs and I heard the door slam. My eyes opened wide and I figured something out for myself.

They were going to need sometime alone to talk.

I got the hell out of there as quietly as possible and limped down the street until I got to the bus stop. I didn't know where the bus was going, yet I didn't really care. I just stayed on the bus and listened to music until I was in Tony's neighborhood again.  The bus drove past his house and I felt my heart sink deeper and deeper as the music kept playing over my iPod. I got off at the next stop with heavy tears in my eyes and hard felt feelings in my heart and for the first time in weeks I couldn't take it anymore. I ran back to Tony's house full blast with my legs burning in pain but I didn't care what was going to happen to me anymore. I just wanted to feel alive again. 

I made it to his front yard and just stared at the structure of his house for one moment. I could see a light on in his room from where I stood and his Dad was there standing near Tony's blood stained floor and closet where he had passed away. From what I could see, Tony's room was still the same mess it was months ago with posters, CD's, crumpled papers, books, and cabinets astray all over his room. His Dad looked petrified and couldn't move a muscle. My mind rushed back to that night and I felt my vision start to fade.

"No." I told myself and snapped out of my own trance regaining my balance. 

I watched the window again carefully to see to my own surprise that Tony's mom walked in the room. She looked around the room with the same blank dead stare she has always had. Suddenly that blank stare I always knew turned into deep sadness within seconds. She knelt onto the floor crying and suddenly I couldn't watch anymore. I walked up and rang the door bell waiting there. The door opened to Tony's Dad hiding tears. He saw me and suddenly his eyes widened.

"What brought you here?" He said curiously. I wasn't sure if he was mad or scared. He looked over tired to the next degree, the same way I looked only a few months ago.

"Well, my brain bought me on the bus by it's own will, but somehow I ended up here, as I always do." I said laughing. "No matter what, I guess I'll always end up here." 

He laughed with caution and let me in. "Well, I was about to show you where everything is, but you've basically lived here for nine years." He left the room and let me to wander free.

I walked upstairs to Tony's room to hear sobbing. I opened his bedroom door to see his Mom sitting there on the floor next to glass from a knocked over mirror from months ago. I was about to ask her what was wrong when suddenly I felt sick. More sick than I have ever felt in my entire life. My heart was tightening and my brain was having some sort of black and white flashback of it's own. A rush of sickness came to me and I rushed to their bathroom in the hall and threw up all the bad memories. 

"What's happening?" I whispered to myself. 

Only to have someone answer me in a hushed voice.

"It's called PTSD." His Mom said leaning outside the door. "I kept having memories of how terrible of a mother I was to my own son. I went to the doctor and described the same things that are happening to you now. Seeing something and getting sick, of course everyone's sickness is different. He told me it's a mental health condition that can only be triggered by terrible event's in one's life. For you, that's being there for my son's death, and for me, it's being a bad mom, bullying him mentally everyday and not even going to his funeral." She said.

"PTSD?" I said confused.

"Post Traumatic Stress Disorder." His Mom said lighting up her cigarette leaning against the wall and shook her head. 

"I'm not a doctor but I'm sure I'd need to be diagnosed with this rather than told by someone like you." I said staring at my own reflection in the mirror. 

"Someone like me?" She said. "What does that mean?" She asked turning the corner to stare me in the eyes. She looked tired, more than usual. Her eyes had the dwelling painful sadness that I knew well from years of battling with myself everyday. Her clothes were baggy on her, and they were the same clothes that would've fit snugly on her only a few months ago. She stared at me with longing hatred, yet fear and I didn't know why.

"I mean, look at what you did to Tony. You destroyed him completely to the point where sometimes late at night when he couldn't sleep he would ask me things like 'Why does she hate me so much? Did I do something to her? I don't remember what I did but can you tell her I'm sorry? What did I do to hurt her?' He hated himself all the time for things he didn't even do to you. Yes he got cancer, but that wasn't something he could control and it wasn't something you should've made him feel bad about. Why would I believe anything you say when everything you say could be a lie to make me freak out and worry if there's something wrong with me? I rather be diagnosed than have you tell me possible lies." My voice dropped after the last word and my entire body went numb.

I picked myself up off the floor and wandered back to Tony's room. It was still the same mess and the last few hours of his life not long ago and I didn't want to touch anything. I was afraid I'd break the latest moments of his life if I so dared moved anything. I trailed back to the closet where he had died as I had held him. I remembered the blood stained clothes and trying to patch up his bleeding body, I remembered his last words and the sound of his final breath that sounded like a cold shiver from winter cold weather even though it had been summer at the time.

As his Mom had stepped in the room to pick up something I smacked her hand away.

"If you touch it, his last living moments here will disappear." I said crying on my hands and knees..

"Morrigan. His last living moments disappeared months ago." She said so bluntly as if nothing had happened her.

My eyes widened at her response and attempted  to block her hands from touching the picture frame she wanted to pick up but I wasn't fast enough. She picked up the picture and showed it to me. It was a picture Tony, Angel, Yui, Mason, Tyler and I had taken together. Tony's Dad had taken it. We were at Tony's house in the middle of a sleepover about a year ago. The picture showed us sitting at the dining table making cupcakes together and we all had frosting on our faces. Tony's arm was around me as he held a frosting tube pointing it at my face, I had a smile on my face brighter than the sun as I laughed. Angel had covered Yui's face completely in pink frosting like a face mask. Tyler was trying to smash a cupcake in Mason's face while Mason tried to slap him away and smile for the picture at the same time.

"Look at this picture, do you really think Tony would want us to keep his room like this mess? Or would he want it to be cleaned up to the way it formally was before all of this. If we were to have never touched anything in his room again you would've never seen this picture again." She said tossing the picture into my lap.

I caught the picture in my hands and sighed. 

"Neither of us know what he wants us to do. He can't tell us now, and if he could, I'm sure he wouldn't because he wants us to figure it out ourselves. I don't know why I think this, but I knew him well enough to know he'd want us to remember him in the way we think best." I lied down on the floor and held the picture close to my chest. I didn't know what to think anymore. I knew he was gone, but like any kid I didn't want to forget what had happened.

Because sooner or later I knew my memory would start to fade, even if I wanted it to, or not. And I would never be ready for it.