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CHAPTER ONE: STAGES OF GRIEF
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THEY SAY THERE are five stages of grief that everybody goes through. Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. Denial is usually the first one that happens right after you're told that somebody that you loved has just passed away. You can't believe that it's happening, because even though you know death is real, it's not something that people usually think of when they think about their loved ones. You are in a state of shock and denial as your mind tries to make sense of the information it just learned. It is the body's way of protecting itself by making the grief less painful, but really, nothing can make grief less painful.
Anger is the second stage. It comes in many forms. You could be angry at anything and anyone. Angry at the doctors that tried their hardest to save your loved one but failed, angry at anybody who was there when the incident occurred, or even angry at yourself for not attempting to save whoever it was, even if there was no possible way you could've done anything to stop it. Sometimes the anger is too much and other times it is the only thing that prevents you from feeling anything at all. You go from feeling total nothingness to feeling intense rage at anybody, even if they did nothing to you. You get angry because you truly loved who you lost.
Bargaining is the third stage. Evan thinks it goes hand in hand with anger. You get so angry and upset at the world that you would do anything to replace whoever you lost. You start questioning the world, and your own beliefs, wondering why the hell this all happened. You wonder how such an incredible person could be taken from the world so early. You wonder why a teenage girl doesn't get to grow up with her mother by her side. You start wanting to go back in time, and see if you could prevent any of it from happening. The guilt starts to eat you alive and with the guilt, comes the fourth stage: Depression.
Evan could safely say she was in the depression stage of her grief. The guilt she felt had started to manifest itself into something much darker and deeper. Withdrawing from life in any way possible is common when grieving. Losing somebody that you loved, somebody who you thought would be in your life for a very long time is extremely depressing. Evan had been bouncing between the depression and anger stages for months. She had pushed every single person away who had tried to help her. She had even ghosted her therapist, not caring to talk about what had happened. The more she talked about it, the more she remembered, and she didn't want to remember what had happened, which is part of the reason she had turned to drugs and alcohol to numb herself.
A couple of weeks before school got out, her father found her stash consisting of several bottles of liquor, marijuana, several different kinds of pills, and even a little cocaine residue. He freaked out, of course, but he wasn't angry at his daughter, he was more worried and concerned for her mental health. He wanted to do anything to make her feel better and he knew therapy wasn't working, so he made a phone call to Susannah Fisher. Marcus Lou wasn't very close with Susannah Fisher but he knew that his late wife had been. The two had gotten close after Martha had gotten diagnosed and due to that, Evan had spent a good amount of time at the Fisher household with the Fisher boys and their family friend, Isabel Conklin. He didn't know what else to do, so he asked if his daughter could stay with them for the summer. Susannah agreed, of course, wanting to help in any way that she could.
