After 2

Chapter 170.

This is the day I decide to join the ranks of normal teenagers and had Landon show me how to download music onto my phone. Once I started, I couldn't stop. Over one hundred songs were added and headphones were put in my ears and barely removed for almost twenty four hours and every time I felt weak after that. The music helps a lot. To hear about other people's pain reminds me that I am not the only one to suffer in life. I'm not the only one who loved someone who didn't love them enough to fight for them.

Day five was when I finally showered and attempted to go to class. I got myself back in yoga, hoping that I could handle the memories it would produce. I felt strange walking around in a sea of cheery college students. I used all the energy I had to hope that I wouldn't run into Hardin on campus. I was past the stage of wanting him to call. I managed to drink half of my coffee that morning and Landon told me I was gaining the color back into my cheeks. No one seemed to notice me and that was exactly what I wanted. Professor Soto assigned us to write down our biggest fears when it comes to life and how they relate to faith and God.

"Are you afraid to die?" He asked us.

"Aren't I already?" I answered silently.

Day six was a Tuesday. I began to speak in sentences, broken sentences that usually didn't relate to the subject at hand but no one had the heart to call me out on it. I returned to Vance, Kimberly couldn't meet my eyes for the first part of the day but finally attempted to have a conversation which I couldn't bring myself to participate in. She mentioned a dinner and I remind myself to ask her again when I can think straight. The day was spent staring at the first page of a manuscript that no matter how many times I read and re-read the first page, it wouldn't soak in.  I ate this day, more than rice or a banana like the days before. Karen made a ham, I only noticed because it reminded me she made one for the dinner Hardin and I had here in the beginning. The images from that night, the picture of him sitting next to me and holding my hand under the table send me back into my tragic state, making me spend the night in the bathroom vomiting up the small bit of food I consumed.

Day seven my car was ready to be picked up. I signed a few pages and was handed the keys. If I were them I would have been concerned to give car keys to the zombie girl with matted hair on top of her head and a ratty t-shirt from the drawer in her lovers old bedroom that he never spent time in.

As Landon followed me out of the mechanic's parking lot I began to imagine what would have happened if I had been hurt worse in the accident. If I had died perhaps..wouldn't that have been easier? The thought terrified me, not of my death but that my mind was capable of going to such a dark place. That thought snapped me out of my downward spiral and brought me to the closest thing to reality my mind can handle. I changed my shirt and vowed to never step foot in that bedroom again, no matter what happens. I began to look up apartments that I can afford close to Vance and online classes at WSU. I enjoy academics too much to close myself off and take online classes so I decided against it, but I found a few apartments to look into.

Day eight I smiled, briefly, but everyone noticed. day eight was the first morning that I grabbed my usual donut and coffee when I arrived at Vance. I kept it down and even went back for more. I saw Trevor that day, he told me I looked beautiful despite my wrinkled clothes and hollow eyes. Day eight was the shift, day eight was the first day that only half of my time was spent wishing that things had went differently between Hardin and I. I heard Ken and Karen discussing Hardin's birthday in a few days and I was surprised to only feel a slight burn in my chest at the sound of his name.

Day nine is today.

'I'll be downstairs!" Landon calls through the door of 'my' bedroom.