nineteen and one month. my university closes for an entire month, and the headmaster is forced to resign for his lack of involvement in mental health at the school. i lose my identity, and become The Girl Who's Roomate Is Dead. each time someone asks me something about sid, wounds that i had covered with small bandages burst open again. i see everything in shades of gray.
on the day of sid's funeral, the sky matches the same faded blue she liked to wear with that one black shirt she said her grandmother had handmade for her, and i find it funny, in a deeply twisted way, that i remember details like this right now, and not three months ago, when all she wanted was my love and attnetion.
addie wears a black cotton dress. i hold her hand to keep me from sinking into the dirt foundation.
the priest chosen for the occasion was sid's childhood pastor, a round, heaving man who preach-yelled to the congregation of fifty people. he stops halfway through his soliloquy about her 'beautiful relationship with God' to blow his nose into his coat-sleeve and cry, which is disconcertingly ridiculous, because sid thought God was fake and the closet thing to him was maybe the feeling of waking up aftera good nap. her mother and father sit in the front; her mother's face permanently frowned and bitter, like all her happiness had died with her daughter.
i cannot look at her body in the casket. every time i think i can, an army of nausea and sadness knock my legs out from under me.
i sit in the very back of the church with addie, and sid's brother, max. he speaks after pastor johnson does. i can tell from the pinched, monotonous voice he uses that this would hurt him much harder later on. it is better to feel now than later. sometimes, when it is too much, later is better than now.
"sid was everything you could ask for, in a sister, in a best friend," he says thickly. "unfortunately, the things in her head overcame the things in her heart. but she doesn't have to fight anymore. it's okay."
it's okay. i find myself wanting to believe max, even if it was untrue.
once the service ends, i watch her father and brother load sid's body into a hearse, and i wonder what kind of supernatural strength it would take for me to do something like that.
it still didn't feel real. only when the hole in the ground they set for her is filled to the top do i begin to understand that this is a forever thing; that there will be no more sid-and-me, that death is a forever thing. i grip the flowers in my left hand until i can breathe properly and stop thinking about jumping under the ground with her.
"let's go for a walk, yeah?" addie says softly, guiding me away from the crowd. max is screaming at sid's body, buried too deep to hear him now. the silence on the other end reverberates in my hollow chest.
addie walks ahead of me, her fingers clasped around mine, keeping me here but separate from the present. i focus on the perfume that scents on her and the dirt beneath my feet.
she leads me to a clearing of grass half a mile away from the funeral location. her dress hikes and settles on the ground smoothly. i collapse besides her, my head resting in her lap.
"i was the last person she talked to, addie. i killed her," i whisper darkly. addie shakes her head sadly, stroking my hair.
"no, love, you didn't kill her. remember what max said? she had a mental illness, it wasn't you —"
"you don't have to lie, addie, you know he saying that so i won't kill myself too," i reply coldly to her. addie flinches and shrinks.
"i didn't mean to say it like that," i say, regretting it immediately. she nods sympathetically.
"the problem with you, sam, is that you blame yourself for things out of your control. you blamed yourself for what happened with chris and me, you blamed yourself for everything with your mother —"
i draw in a sharp breath when she says this. addie knew things about me that i refused to acknowledge.
"—whose fault it is entirely, and also, by the way, called me last night. she wants to have dinner with you, with us. you should talk to her. after all these years, i just —we're okay, baby. things can be okay between you and your mom again, too, if you want them to."
i sigh heavily. maybe this was the death of the things that say at the back of my head at all times too.
"of course i do. we can go now, if you're ready."