Amber

Chapter 29

Hailey

November 22, 2015

Sometimes Lauren looks like a ghost. A fading, fleeting image. A silhouette. Like Hannah. She's so thin that she's practically invisible now. Chalk-white and see-through against the black backdrop.

We're all ghosts. No one can be alive in here.

We are all dead. Every one of us. All of humanity. An entire race of walking corpses marching toward our graves. Some walk slowly. Others sprint. Others are dragged there against their will. Some skip along hand-in-hand as if what's waiting for them on the other side is significantly better than this life. A promise of eternal happiness free of pain.

That promise is a lie. I see it all over Hannah's face. She's not free of pain. She's not free of anything. I hear it in her voice.

I remember the night she told me she wanted to die. She didn't say it in those words exactly, but she came to me in the middle of the night, dressed in Hello Kitty pajama pants and wearing a smile on her face for the first time in months. She flipped my desk lamp on and knelt beside the bed, folding her hands under her chin and calmly reciting my name.

She told me she had thought of a way to be happy again. She thought of something that would make it all better. A place she could go and find herself.

I thought she was referring to her little cult in the mountains—or whatever the hell they were. Her secluded get-away that she would travel to and ultimately hate, and it would shake her out of this strange mood that seized her. Then she would return home, refreshed and ready to be herself again.

But she was being herself. I just didn't know it. The Hannah who smiled at me over the thought of her own death was the same Hannah who smiled when the birds would gather in the tree outside of her window and sing her out of bed. The same Hannah who had guys offer to carry her books to class for her at school. The same Hannah who was going to light up Broadway.

They were all the same person, just different versions. The same song, just different verses. The force field and the time bomb. She hid one of those versions so well. All the way up until the last day. She didn't even tell me where she was going or what thought made her happy.

She gave me a gift. A box wrapped in heavy pink paper and a yellow bow. She watched me open it, her eyes trained on mine as I stared down at her gym shoes, the laces worn and frayed at the ends. Her favorite pair. The ones she wore to recitals and auditions.

"For all of the places you'll want to go, Lee," she said. Then she smiled up at me and kissed me on the forehead before turning off the lamp and tiptoeing back to her room to smile silently and alone about the journey she decided she had to take.

The next day, Mom and Dad decided to go shopping for a new bedspread. Life had become predictable. They needed something new in their lives to shatter the ordinary. I went with, but Hannah insisted on staying home inside on one of the warmest and most beautiful days in May. She wore that same unending smile while she told us she wanted to be alone for a little while, but to have fun without her. Then she said her goodbyes by hugging each of us. If I knew what was about to happen, I would've never stopped hugging her. I would've attached myself to her. If she wanted to die, she would have had to stop my heart before she could reach hers.

We were only gone an hour when Mom suddenly felt ill. A feeling in her gut called her home.

When we got back to the house, Mom called out for Hannah, but everything was still and quiet. Mom said she was probably in her room and asked me to go see if she was hungry for an early dinner. Hannah's room was the first door on the left after the stairs. The door was open, and she was nowhere to be found. I moved on, casting a quick glance in my room beside hers before reaching the bathroom door—closed with no light coming through.