Everlance Academy

Chapter 25

According to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, there are five stages of grief. Five emotions you need to go through in order to truly accept the loss of someone you used to hold very dear.

Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. In that order.

I've finished denial already. I told myself there needed to be a logical explanation as to why he ignored me, why he is still ignoring me. Someone must've gotten suspicious, and he kept his distance to maintain our secret.

However, at some point, I got sick of it. I know better than to wait for somebody who does not care for my attention. I won't waste my time searching for an answer when it is right in front of me.

He had grown tired of me. I was exciting to him at first—our secret thrilling—but now it's lost its fun, it expired. Now I'm not his new, shiny toy anymore. So he had cast me out without a second thought.

Moreover, he was too much of a coward to say it to my face. Or he did say it to my face and then run off without a word of explanation. He doesn't even respect me enough to have the dignity to end things with me correctly, like adults would. He just withdrew himself from my classes, my life, so he won't have to do the we're over talk properly.

Nikolai Coleman is a fucking coward, and I was a fool to believe otherwise.

I would rather chew off my own foot than admit it aloud, but sometimes I am a fool still.

Now I'm stuck on anger.

It's throbbing deep inside my stomach. I hate everything he does with a burning passion.

He laughs with his friends in the dining hall?
He must be laughing at me.
He's lost in thought?
He must be thinking about how easy it was to make me fall for his lies.

Rage is a funny thing. It's perceived as negative, as something that eats you up from the inside.
But that's not true at all. At least not for me. Because I am beyond grateful that I feel it.

Hating how he looks when he ruffles a hand through his hair is so much better than missing the feeling of the soft, blond strands beneath my fingers.

Wanting to gag whenever I hear him talk is so much better than remembering how his voice sounded when he said my name.

Because I am not ready to move on to bargaining. Not now, not ever. The day that I beg a man to stay with me after he casts me out is the day I want my friends to push me off a cliff.

And God forbid I ever enter a time of depression. I won't shed a single tear for someone who doesn't care one bit about me. I have done so in the past, and I will not allow myself to ever be that little girl again.

I will not allow myself to sink that low ever again. Both my pride and my self-esteem are far greater than that.

And acceptance? That is something I don't even dare to think about.

I will not forgive him. Not if there's not an explanation, one that makes sense. One that changes everything. Not if he doesn't apologize, falls to his knees, begging for my forgiveness.

"June? Are you feeling ill?"

If I took a shot every time someone interrupted my thoughts by asking whether I was physically ill, I would be an alcoholic by now.

My head snaps up from where it rested on the palm of my hand, my eyes flying open.

"What? Yes. I mean, no. I'm not feeling ill. I'm sorry, I wasn't paying attention."

Mr. Morrison, my English teacher, watches me carefully. Just like everybody else in this godforsaken room.

"Well then...", he trails off and continues his lesson, having lost my attention already.

All the talk about bravery and self-worth aside, I am a mess. A pile of pieces being held together by a thread that grows thinner with each hour that goes by. The last three weeks were just me waiting for it to snap.

I had talked to him once. The evening after I had met his father. By the indoor pool.

It had been stupid of me to come to our spot at the time when we used to always meet up. Yet I had hoped that he'd be there, that he would take me in his arms, kiss me, hold me, apologize, explain.

He was there, though I am not sure whether he was waiting for me or if it was out of old habit. Without the mat, though, where we usually rest. He just stood there by the pool, staring at the water.

I walked up next to him. Looking at the lit pool. Then at him—at his stupid, breathtaking side profile.
"Hi," I had said carefully.

He hadn't answered. Just continued to stare straight ahead. Swallowed once, hard. Turned to me, said, "This is the last time I will be at the indoor pool at night."

A bad feeling had crept up in my stomach, slowly eating up all the hope I had had. And because I had been stupid, hopeful, and naive, I had asked, "Well yeah. We have already established that your room is far more comfortable."

He had almost laughed at that. That asshole almost laughed at me for my foolishness.
"It is. That just won't be any of your concern anymore. You won't be in it again. What I meant is that we will stop seeing each other."

He had said that like it was a statement, a matter of fact, like it had already been decided and I just had to live with it.
At that moment, I snapped. "What the hell is wrong with you?", I had yelled. "What happened? What happened to you?"

He hadn't answered. He just stood there, watched me with that weird look in his eyes.

"Talk to me, at least!", I had screamed, "Come on! Say something. You owe me an explanation at least!"

"I do not owe you anything," he had said, his voice sounding like steel feels, "and I would appreciate it if you stopped being so emotional."

That made me want to push him into the pool. I stood there, my mouth open, starring at him. Searching his face for an answer, for affection, for something. But there was nothing. Nothing but indifference.

I always knew he could be cruel. Stupid me had just liked to believe he would never be cruel to me.

Then he left. He just turned around, walked through the door, let it fall shut behind him. It was like he ripped the floor from beneath my feet, and I fell so deeply, yet I couldn't stop falling.

Gone. Just like that.

The bell rings, and once again I jump. My hands tremble when I gather my stuff and push it into my bag, shouldering it. I am just about to hurry out of the classroom when Mr. Morrison calls my name and waves me to his table.

Walking over, I think that he will probably give me a lecture about my lack of attention in his lesson, maybe he'll even ask me if I'm okay. I'll just lie, like I have been to all my friends lately.

However, none of that happens. Instead, he hands me a stack of papers.

"You sat next to Nikolai Coleman, did you not?", he asks.

It's weird hearing his name come out of my teacher's mouth.
I nod once.

"Very well," he says, "would you give those to him then? Please? They're his essays, which I had graded but didn't have the opportunity to hand back to him. You would do me a great favor!"

It's funny, almost. Oddly ironic. To him, there is no reason why I should refuse. To him, it seems like a piece of cake to just walk up to Nikolai, give him his stuff, and leave. He doesn't know what he's asking of me.

"Yes," I croak, because there is no way I could explain to him why I could very much not do that, "that would not be a problem."

He thanks me and turns around to wipe the board. I take that as my cue to leave.