Chapter 2: Still water makes you ancient
The first morning without them didn't feel like morning at all.
The sun came up, I guess. I saw the light, pale and impersonal, slide across the kitchen floor. But it didn't touch me. It just existed, like the clock ticking above the microwave or the silence that sat next to me at the table. Everything was still. Too still. The kind of stillness that settles in the bones and makes your chest forget how to rise properly.
I didn't cry.
I made toast. I burned it. I stared at the blackened bread until the smell filled the kitchen like a funeral song. Then I threw it away and sat down again, hands limp in my lap.
That was the sound of after. Not crying. Not screaming.
Just toast burning in a house too quiet to be mine.
The funeral happened in pieces. First, it was phone calls and papers. A woman with sharp glasses and soft eyes walked me through "arrangements." I hated that word. Arrangements are for flowers. Or chairs. Not for the last place you'll ever see your mother's name printed on anything.
I nodded a lot. That's what I remember. My neck hurt from nodding so much. Like maybe if I looked like I understood, I wouldn't fall apart.
Tyler showed up the second day. No warning. No knocking. Just the soft thump of sneakers in the entryway and his voice calling my name like it hadn't shattered something in me every time before.
"I brought food," he said, holding up a Tupperware container like it could fix me.
I didn't tell him I hadn't eaten since the accident. That every bite felt like a betrayal, like I was stealing something from a world they weren't in anymore.
"Thanks," I said.
It came out rough. Rusted at the edges.
He didn't say anything. Just sat across from me and pulled out the chair like he'd always been there. Like nothing had changed. Like he hadn't stepped into a version of my life where my heart was a broken lock and I didn't have the key anymore.
I couldn't look at him.
He started talking, low and aimless. About school. His dog. A movie he watched the night before. I think it was The Matrix, which he called "weirdly comforting." I wanted to ask him what comfort even meant anymore, but I kept my mouth shut.
Sometimes, grief isn't loud. Sometimes it's not sobbing or screaming into pillows.
Sometimes it's sitting across from the person you want to love and realizing you don't have the pieces left to try.
---
The house didn't feel like a house after the funeral. It felt like a waiting room. For what, I wasn't sure. Maybe for time to pass. Maybe for the moment I'd finally snap. Every door creaked louder. Every shadow lingered too long.
I kept expecting to hear Alex's music thumping through the walls. To smell Mom's perfume lingering near the front door when she left for work. But everything was still. Like the house was holding its breath.
Tyler came by every day.
He never said he was sorry again after the first time. Just showed up. Sometimes with food. Sometimes with bad jokes. Sometimes with nothing at all.
"You don't have to keep coming," I told him once. My voice didn't even sound like mine.
"I know," he said. "That's why I do."
I hated how that made something in me crack open.
Because I wanted him to stop. I wanted him to go away and leave me inside the numbness that protected me. But I also wanted him to stay. To talk until the walls weren't so heavy. To laugh until I remembered what air felt like when it didn't hurt to breathe.
So I let him stay.
---
At night, I stopped sleeping. It wasn't insomnia, exactly. It was something quieter. Something deeper.
I'd lie on the floor of my room—because the bed felt too far from the ground—and stare at the ceiling like it owed me answers. My thoughts would circle like vultures: what if I had answered the phone? What if I'd asked them to stay? What if the crash wasn't a crash but a punishment for not loving enough?
Guilt is a cruel god. It demands sacrifice and offers no mercy.
Sometimes, I'd text Tyler. Stupid things.
> "Do you think dogs know they're going to die?"
Or:
> "If you eat a whole box of cereal dry, is it still a meal?"
He never made fun of me. Not once.
Sometimes he'd answer:
> "Only if it's Cinnamon Toast Crunch."
> "Dogs know everything. They're just nice enough not to say it."
And sometimes he didn't. He'd just show up the next day with that look in his eyes like he was trying to read all the words I wasn't saying.
---
I found Alex's hoodie in the laundry hamper one afternoon. It still smelled like him—cheap cologne and vanilla dryer sheets. I sat on the floor and held it like a lifeline.
He'd drawn on the sleeve. Little stars and dots in permanent marker. It looked like a sky he'd been trying to remember.
I put it on and didn't take it off for three days.
Mom used to say grief is like waves. But waves crash. They're loud. They leave you breathless. This wasn't like that.
This was more like drowning in still water. No motion. No struggle. Just sinking. Slowly. Quietly.
And the worst part? No one could tell.
---
The school counselor called me in the following Monday. She had a kind voice. The kind that made your throat tighten just from hearing it.
"I can't imagine what you're going through," she said.
I wanted to ask her not to imagine. I wanted to ask her to stop talking. But I just nodded.
"You're not alone," she added.
I almost laughed. Because that was the joke, wasn't it? That I could be surrounded by people and still feel like I was the only person alive in a town built for ghosts.
She handed me a list of grief groups. Typed in Comic Sans like that made them more digestible.
I never went.
---
Tyler took me to the lake one night. Didn't ask—just drove. His truck smelled like old fries and something pine-scented.
We sat on the hood and watched the water flicker under the moonlight.
"I used to come here when my dad left," he said.
I blinked. "I didn't know your dad left."
He shrugged. "Didn't talk about it. Felt like if I said it out loud, it would become more real."
"Yeah," I said.
He didn't ask me to talk. Just passed me a soda and kicked his feet against the bumper.
After a while, he looked at me.
"I'm glad you're still here," he said.
I didn't answer. I couldn't.
Because I wasn't sure I was.
---
Weeks passed like pages I wasn't reading. School blurred. Teachers stopped calling on me. I walked through hallways like a ghost in training.
Tyler kept being Tyler. He made space for me without asking questions. Played stupid videos on his phone during lunch. Threw a crumpled note at my head once in chemistry that said: "You look like a sad raccoon. Eat something."
I wanted to hate how much I needed that.
I started drawing again. Not real things—just shapes. Lines. Scribbles in the margins of notebooks. My grief didn't have a face, but I gave it form anyway.
Tyler stole one and taped it to his locker.
"This is depressing," he said. "But it's good depressing."
I rolled my eyes, but I didn't take it down.
---
I almost told him once.
We were in his room, watching some zombie movie. He was half-asleep, legs tangled in a blanket, hair sticking up like static. He looked soft. Unsharpened. Like maybe he wouldn't laugh if I said it.
"I…" I started.
His eyes opened, just barely. "You what?"
But the words jammed up behind my teeth. I felt them pulse, begging to be let out.
Instead, I said, "I miss them."
His hand found mine under the blanket. Just a brush. Just enough.
"I know," he said. "Me too."
And I hated myself for letting that moment pass. For choosing the safer ache.
---
There's something about grief that makes you feel ancient. Like you've lived a thousand years in a season.
I saw people move on. Heard them laugh in hallways. Watch them complain about math tests and cafeteria pizza and wondered what it felt like to have that kind of space in your chest.
But me?
I carried a house in mine. A house full of echoes and sharp corners and voices I'd never hear again.
---
One afternoon, I found Tyler waiting outside my locker with a bag of chips and a stupid grin.
"We're skipping," he said.
I raised an eyebrow. "You skip school?"
"Not usually. But today feels like a 'screw it' day."
He drove us to an abandoned train station on the edge of town. Said he used to come here with his cousin to take photos and pretend they were in a band.
The graffiti on the walls looked like a hundred kids had screamed at once and left the colors behind.
We sat on the tracks and talked about nothing. About everything.
I almost kissed him.
He looked so alive in that moment. Like someone who didn't know what it meant to lose everything. Like a fire I wanted to walk into.
But I didn't. I laughed instead.
Because laughing was safer than loving.
---
Sometimes I wonder if he ever knew.
If he saw the way I looked at him when he wasn't watching. If he heard the way my breath caught when he smiled.
Maybe he did.
Maybe he didn't.
But either way, he never said a word.
And I never did either.
Because this wasn't a love story.
It was survival.
And love was a luxury I couldn't afford.
Not then.