For Him - Shawn Mendes

COMPLICATED, miscommunication

SHAWN
6th of December, 2013.

"How?" I whisper, the edge in my voice sending a chill down my spine.

No one answers.

I shift in the stool, my eyes closed as I try my best to make sense of the situation. But I'm running on one hour of restless sleep, and my mind is a complete clusterfuck. "Dad?" I urge, a little louder.

He looks up at me, his hands numb against the steaming cup of coffee in his palms. "Son," He stops, a shaky breath leaving his lips.

"How?" I repeat, anger spreading from my pounding chest to the tips of my toes.

He shakes his head again, words unable to form.

I breathe out, my teeth clenched as I try my best to trap the tears. "Mum's gone and you won't even fucking tell me why!" I shake my head quickly, eyes squeezed in frustration at my dad, "Fuck you, honestly."

And I leave. I walk upstairs to my bedroom, no feeling in my toes, no feeling in my heart. I shouldn't have said that. I shouldn't have left him. I bury myself in a pile of pillows and throw my face into a pit of darkness, hot tears falling from my eyes before drying on my cheeks.

I sleep, two more restless hours of dreamless unconsciousness. And I'm awake now so I write. I'm writing because I'm alone and cold and sad and so confused. So damn confused.

Yellow hangs from my shoulders. Cotton in a shade so happy that it feels disrespectful, but I don't care. Mum liked yellow.

You're supposed to wear black, right? To mourn, to form into the crowd at funerals waterlogged with rain that blends into tears as miserable people stand around someone that now ceases to be. It tears apart at my brain, the idea that someone can be alive, breathing, existing, and then suddenly they're just a name on the 7 o'clock news.

There has to be more to it, right?

HANNAH

Shawn never texted me.

I wondered if perhaps he'd forgotten - too caught up in his rising fame to remember girls he had pointless late night adventures with.

And I knew it meant more to me than it did to him.

"Do I text him first?" I asked Noah, my voice quiet so my parents wouldn't hear as we crept past them and down a flight of stairs to the basement.

Noah shrugged, his tongue scraping his bottom lip as he opened the door to a downstairs games room. He eyed the room, a table tennis table stood proudly in the middle, lights and artwork covering the walls. "Fucking sick!"

"Noah!" I groaned, "You're not listening to me."

He spun on his heels, his attention now on me. "Right. Look, I don't know who this dude is," Pausing, he ran his hand along the edge of the table, "but he seems nice. Honey, I'm sure he's just got school or something."

"Of course," I nodded, "I forgot about school."

School. We'd have to move to a new one; to meet new people and to make new friends. "Mum and Dad like this place," Noah went on, signalling with his thumb upstairs, to where our parents were talking to agents, "do you like it?"

"I love it," Chloe butted in, her blonde hair bobbing as she jumped up and down. "It has a pool! Han, have you seen the pool!?"

I nodded, my lips pressed firmly together. It was nice, I couldn't object. The brick facade, though boringly similar to every other house in the neighbourhood, gave it a sense of coziness.