Anchor Grind (H.S. / A.U.)

Chapter 39

TRIGGER WARNING: Talk of death & pain

Alanis POV

Life is weird.

I hate how things never make sense at any age. I question how things can be so good and flip to bad so quickly. Everything became such a ripple as my life felt like a river that had a giant rock chucked in the middle of it.

I wanted things to go back to normal. I wanted to hang out with my friends, laugh, joke about mundane things... but my heart wasn't in it. I enjoyed everything the crew did for me with the celebration of life that they threw for me, but the next day when you wake up and realize everything is still shit you really feel lost.

I had a hangover from hell, a headache like an elephant was standing on it, and my heart felt empty.

I wanted desperately to revel in the fact I got the guy, the other night being such a different change of pace for everything in my life. I had a sobering few hours now to really be thankful that Harry had turned down rushed experience. I don't think the next day I would have felt as great about it, and he understood that.

I was using Harry and alcohol to distract me from real life, and although one of those is a really really really good thing in my mind, I needed to be careful with both before becoming too addicted.

The lights of the airport were blinding and not helping my hungover aching brain one bit. I trudged along behind mom as she made her way through the terminals. She would pause at some intersections to double check she was headed in the right direction of the rental cars. We both veto-ed the idea of bringing real luggage since we knew we would be bringing enough home with us.

Last night I snuck into the house at an alarmingly late hour, but mom was still up in her room. She wasn't crying and watching movies this time, which was a giant relief, but instead she had moved on to the eating her pain away stage. She invited me into her room and tried to encourage me to eat, lightly treading around the subject of how she noticed my drunkenness and lack of appetite lately.

Instead of being harsh, mom understood. We coped in different ways and in the end she just begged that I be careful and talk to her when I am ready. I know she wasn't happy about the drinking, but if she told me not to I think both of us understood that would have turned into a different problem that neither of us wanted to address. Why do kids always want to do the opposite of whatever their parents requested? Are we hardwired to be like that?

Instead of wallowing with her, I asked her what was keeping her up so late, and that's when I found out that she had bought us some plane tickets to go and pack up Levi's place with Tessie. Put that on my list of things I never expected or wanted to do, but here I am.

The drive from the airport to Levi's was about twenty minutes and it gave mom some time to tell me more about Tessie. I met her at the funeral but we weren't really up for getting to know one another and hanging out... a few too many tears instead of words were shared.

Everything here felt like slow motion. Mom drove down the streets of Pullman and the streets had posters and signs in windows of businesses mourning the loss of people that barely knew. I saw Levi's face at least four times staring back at me, a sentimental "RIP" written below or a slough of flowers in place below.

Levi didn't live on campus but we still passed the area. I looked out of the Toyota rental car windows and saw groups of students clustered around that were talking and mingling. Maybe they were friends of his, or people he had a class with at one point. It's a weird division now. Those that traversed the grounds of the school, almost tip-toeing across the campus with a new feeling of guilt and pain that stabbed through them, you could see it across so many of the faces that littered the space.