Breaking Down ➳ m.n.z.

Eighteen

Chapter 18
Maddie's POV

Dead. All they are is dead. They're not looking down on me saying I should continue and have hope, they're not helping me through these stages of grieving, and they are most definitely not still alive-both in spirit and physicality.

I stared down and the yellow grass beneath my feet as I swung back and forth on this little wooden swing. All I could think of was them, Kendall, Kenzie, and Choloe. Dead. They are all dead in the ground and nothing more. In the ground being eaten by worms and maggots. How could I possibly believe they are anything else but dead, because that's what they are, aren't they?

It has been five long months since the accident. The accident that killed my sister, my friends, and me. So okay, the accident itself did not kill me-if it did I would be a log rotting flesh and a pile of bones in the ground like the rest of them-but everything else around me was seeming to be working to do so.

After Chloe's death, Paige hid. Hid from the world, from the truth, but the one thing she should did not do was hide from me.

On the day that marked the fifth month of the accident, Paige and I were in my bedroom sorting through Kenzie's old stuff which my mom has continually insisted be done away with. I on the other hand had the argument that if Kenzie is dead then someway somehow her memory has to be kept alive. I wanted to believe that there was a future for all of them, but I was yet to convince myself of it.

"Find anything yet, Mads?" Paige asked, stuffing her nose into one of Mackenzie's old diaries and I shifted through a brown box full of Mackenzie's trophies and crowns she had won over the years. We were looking for things to start a fundraiser in the name of Mackenzie, at least that's what Paige thought we were doing. In reality, we were looking for hope that Mackenzie still exists somewhere.

"Nothing important that could help us." I answered. Paige sighed in reply and went back to her reading.

"You know," I exclaimed, looking up from the box and at Paige. She lifted her eyes from the dusty leather notebook filled with scrawled handwriting. "Kenzie used to tell me how each trophy brought her closer to her goal." I watched Paige's eyes fill with question and I announced this. "One day I asked what her goal was, and she told me, 'Every trophy I earn is mine. And when something is mine, it makes up a part of who I am. One day I will be content will all I have won because when that day comes I will know. I will know the knowledge of what it is like to win and what it is like to loose. And when I know that I will know how to be humble and gracious. Maddie, the day I become both humble and gracious is the day I will know I have become the person I want to be, for I be filled with the memories and the lessons of each trophy.' "

"Mads," Paige whispered to me, as if she hid some sort of secret. "she reached that day. I know she reached that day because that is the day she died. Do you remember what happened during the competition the week before?"

I bit my bottom lip, trying to remember that weekend so long ago.

"That was the competition when my mom got into a fight with Abby because Kenzie beat me with her solo." I finally answered after I had thought about that weekend that seemed like such an average one to me.

"And during the argument Kenzie announced, 'This trophy completes my collection.' And then she walked over to you with a smile as wide as the Mississippi River on her face. I remember you whispered to her good job and she answered, 'Thank you, Maddie, I appreciate it, but this really belongs to you.' And she handed you her prize."

"She was both humble and gracious." I whispered to myself.

"She was okay with dying because she met her goal." Paige said, smiling. I did not smile, there was no reason to. No reason to be happy. In that moment I did not realize that it does not matter why Kenzie died, what qualities she died with, or how she died. She was still dead. Still in the ground. Still just a log of rotting flesh and a pile of bones in the ground. Mackenzie Ziegler may have died humble and gracious, but what difference does that make now?

In that moment I came to the realization that it was not that everything around me that was making me die inside. I was dying inside because of the fact that everything I have done and will ever do will make no difference when I am dead like the rest of them. May I be content or not with my life when I die will not matter after I am gone, because, well, I'm gone. I am dying because there is no hope, and there never will be.