Shadows of Yesterday

Chapter 32: Scissors to String

They'd found a loaded gun in his pocket.

One bullet.

Where had he even gotten a gun? He didn't have a job to afford it, and my parents hated guns. It didn't matter, but it ate at me, anyways. Maybe I was just trying to force myself to feel anything, even if that thing was confusion instead of horror or worry. Anything to bring the third dimension back to my personality.

Liam never left my side, even after I didn't answer anything he said to me. Even after my face stayed flat as a line, blank as an unused, useless canvas. He sat in that awful, stupid waiting room right next to me, offering that same unspoken support he always had. I knew distantly that if I had still been a human, I would have been touched. Honored, even.

Still nothing.

Dimly, I registered that my parents were talking. I heard Ben pacing the floor restlessly, and I saw his hands shoved deep in his pockets. But none of it changed anything. Because of course it didn't.

The boy sitting next to me offered to leave, to give me my privacy and my space to process things. But my head was shaking "no" before I even remembered it could. He was the only good thing about this--a light in the darkness. A lone dandelion crayon in a box full of dull grays and angry reds. He couldn't leave.

"How did this happen?" my mom cried. My dad tugged her closer, and she clung to him like he was a life raft. 

I didn't realize I still knew how to speak until the words had already left my mouth. "How didn't this happen?" 

My voice, like my soul, was hollow. Empty. Flat. But it carried across the waiting room well enough to make my parents snap their heads up, anyway. 

Mom sniffled. "What?"

"You heard me. This is your fault, and you know it."

Dad didn't seem to appreciate that comment very much. Ever on the defensive, he tightened his arms around Mom and hissed, "Excuse me? How dare you."

"Think about it," I continued, my voice still calm and flat in a way that ate me up inside, "Declan wouldn't have had a reason to get that drunk if you hadn't accused your own son of causing the death of his sister. He wouldn't have felt desperate or reckless enough to get behind the wheel like that if you had just kept your mouth shut. When is the last time you actually listened to him, instead of just assuming the worst? When is the last time you thought about how he might be feeling instead of just how he makes our family look?"

"You have no right to speak to us this way! Your mother and I are doing the best we can!"

The other people sparsely scattered around the room glanced at my dad nervously, clearly sensing a fight brewing. Little did they know, this particular fight never really ended. None of our family fights ever did.

I crossed my arms. Feelings were returning to me slowly, but they weren't the ones I wanted to feel. I expected the first one to be worry. Terror. Devastation. Instead, it was rage.

My body was slowly burning with ever-increasing anger, and after all this time, I was done pretending that this argument didn't concern me. Declan deserved someone on his team, and if Ben really had decided not to step up to the plate, I was going to swing his bat until I broke something. Maybe this hospital. Maybe my parents. Maybe myself, if this discussion went south.

I swallowed the bitter taste in my mouth and tried not to sneer. "Yeah, well, your best is turning out to be really pathetic. All things considered."

"Well, 'all things considered,' I don't remember you knowing what it's like to try and raise two broken kids."