Thief(11)

My pieces can’t be put back together.

My best friend is dead.

Sleep.

I just need sleep.

But even then, he finds me in my dreams.

*****

“Vi, you need to eat something,” Dash says, rubbing his warm hands on my ice-cold ones. “Just have some of this soup, okay? It will make you feel better, and then everyone will leave you alone and stop harassing you to eat.”

He brings the spoon to my mouth, but I don’t open it. I don’t know why everyone can’t understand that I just don’t feel hungry. Food is the last thing on my mind. My body is perfectly fine surviving on emptiness, loneliness, and misery.

“How long are you going to do this?” he growls, clearly getting frustrated with me. “We all miss him, Vi, all of us. Do you think he would want you to do this to yourself?”

Max isn’t here to tell me what he wants, but thanks for the reminder.

“It’s been two weeks,” he continues, pacing up and down my bedroom now. “And you’ve barely said a word, barely eaten. Do you want to end up in the hospital? Have you even looked at you? You’ve lost so much weight you’re basically disappearing before our eyes!”

Had it only been two weeks?

It feels like two years have passed.

“I should have made him come home with me,” I say, my voice coming out throaty and dry. “If I insisted that he came home, I’d still have my best friend right now.”

Dash sits down on my bed. “You can’t think like that. He wanted to stay; he made the choice. He got in the car with a driver who was drunk. That’s not on you.”

I stay silent, pondering his words.

“I used to blame myself for my dad leaving us,” he says, looking down at his hands. “He just decided we were all too much, I guess, and I always thought that maybe if I was a better kid, he would have stayed.”

His dad is obviously an *, because Dash is amazing.

“There was nothing you could have done to stop this, Viola. Don’t blame yourself, because that is going to eat you alive. And Max wouldn’t want that. He’s probably looking down on you right now, yelling at you for wasting perfectly good food.”

My lip twitches at that, because it so is something Max would say.

Dash tries again, scooping some soup in the spoon and bringing it to my lips.

This time, I open my mouth.

He smiles, but I don’t.

I still feel numb and broken, but I don’t want everyone to worry about me.

Even though the person that would worry the most isn’t here anymore.

*****

Another week passes before my parents force me to go back to school. Everything reminds me of Max…everything, and I honestly don’t know how I’m going to make it through a full day, never mind finish the rest of the year without him. I feel like I’m honestly going to be in mourning for the rest of my life, and I don’t know how I’m going to live like that. Everyone stares at me in all my classes, with varying expressions of sympathy and curiosity. I ignore them all. I sit in our usual spot at lunchtime, on the grass, and place his lunch next to me in the spot where he sits. Dash comes and sits on the other side of me, and I manage to give him a small smile.

“You’re doing well,” he says, low enough so only I can hear. “Super proud of you today, Vi.”

“Thanks,” I say then ask a question I should have asked a long time ago. “How are you doing?”

He looks down at the grass. “I miss him.”

I lay my head against his shoulder. “I feel like half of me is missing.”

We sit like that in silence, together, until the bell for the end of lunch rings.

I survive my first day at school without him, but just barely.

*****

One Month Later

“She’s hardly sleeping and hardly eating! She’s like a walking zombie,” I hear my mum tell my dad. “We have to do something, David. She can’t go on like this. She just sits there and stares at Max’s house.”

“What do you suggest we do?” my dad asks, sounding tired.

My mum lowers her voice, so I can’t hear what she says next, and I’m curious to see what they think they can do to save me. Unless they know how to bring someone back to life, or how to go back in time to change an event, I think they’re shit out of luck.





Chapter Seven


“What the hell do you mean you’re moving?” Dash asks, grabbing my face in his hands. His violet eyes look a little panicked, and also a little sad.

“My parents are selling the house, and we’re moving somewhere new,” I say without any emotion, repeating the words told to me.

I don’t want to leave. All my memories with Max are here, in this house. His parents are next door, his room the exact way he left it. This is my last connection to him, here. I know he’ll always be with me anywhere I go, but staring at his house comforts me in some way. I can replay memories out and daydream about all the conversations we had over the years. It’s almost like seeing time pass before my eyes, of us as kids running around with water balloons, to us as teenagers sneaking out together at night.

“You can’t leave,” he says, resting his forehead against mine. “You can’t f*cking leave me, Vi.”