Seeing Shane Gray ✓

twenty four | lucky

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November 2

I've never been stood up by a boy before.

I don't have an extensive dating history, a few cafe dinners here and there, rarely anything serious or worth mentioning. Every guy I was ever interested in got the rejection from Carter. Too rude, too dumb, too fat, too popular, Carter always had something negative to point out in every guy I so much as looked at. It became absurd soon.

'Can you shut up? He asked me out and he's cute.'

'He farts in class, Taylor, you can't date someone whose fart smells like beans and potatoes. That's not cute!'

I'd slammed the door of my room shut and blocked out my ears, but he stood there, banging at my door and telling me how unworthy every living, breathing, human being was of me.

'I'll die alone because of you!' I'd yelled at him the next day after he'd ruined my date by flattening the boy's bicycle tires.

'You won't be alone. You'll have me!'

I didn't care then. I told him I needed a boyfriend, a man who wasn't my brother, somebody to cuddle with and kiss. He'd told me he'd find me the best man in the world, marry me off with pride, and watch my kids call him uncle. I'd slapped him then while Mom and Dad laughed, telling us we needed to grow up.

'Let me live while I'm alive,' Carter had yelled.

It was almost as if he knew he won't live to keep his promise.

Passing a gentle hand over the new sheets I've just spread over Carter's bed, I sigh. I stand beside his bed and look around his room, his Linkin Park posters and the books he almost never read. His favorite pen -- one I'd gotten him on our thirteenth birthday -- lies over a notebook on his desk. I stare at the notebook, wondering what he would have written in it if he ever opened it.

Maybe he would have written goodbye to me.

Carter didn't leave a note behind. No complaints, no cry for help. He left silently, taking all his pain with him and leaving behind a void and a thousand unanswered questions. I waited and waited, searched his entire room to find a letter he might have addressed to me. A suicide note perhaps. A goodbye. An apology. Or maybe a request for an apology.

He simply vanished.

Walking to the door, I place a hand on the knob and stop, surveying the empty room. I see the bed we had spent countless days and nights laying on. I see the desk I always sat on while he sang me -- terribly, of course -- one of his favorite songs by his favorite band. He loved 'In The End', yelling each word as it echoed out of his phone's speaker and reached me.

I tried so hard and got so far,
But in the end, it doesn't even matter.

"It mattered, Cart," I mumble, talking to the walls as usual, all his belongings and the air he breathed. "You mattered. You mattered the world to me."

Exhaling a breath, I back out of his room and close the door behind me, wondering if, one day, the sight of his things won't bring tears to my eyes. Maybe one day his memories won't haunt me.

I make my way down the stairs and into the kitchen, hoping to make myself something to eat. I haven't started my insulin treatment yet despite the doctor's advice. He needed to see my parents who apparently don't care enough to take a few hours out of their busy schedules so they can discuss my treatment options with a doctor. I thought about it, seeing the doctor again and just telling him to let me know what I need to do. He's probably going to ask for my parents again so it's no use.