rays of sunlight // Antoine Griezmann

Chapter 3

I find a notebook- a really old one, and the contents of it are enough to break my heart. I flip to the first page, and as I read on, it feels like I'm being torn apart, but I can't make myself stop reading it.

It's an account written from fourteen-year-old me's pen, shortly after my mother and younger sister passed away, and I'm sent to a time that I never, ever, want to go back to.

Flashback, 6 years ago, age 14

I sit in the parish hall in our church, feeling sick. I don't want to be here, not at all. I don't want to be anywhere. I want to disappear. I want to disappear, just like they did.

My eldest brother, Charlie, has his arm around me, but it's not comforting. Nothing can be comforting now. I know he's torn apart, too. All of us are. Two of our closest loved ones, gone. Completely gone.

People start coming in, I think, but I'm not really there. I'm no where, because that's where I want to be. People talk to me in gentle tones, but I don't know what they're saying. Younger members of the church give me hugs, and the older ones speak words of comfort and encouragement.

Why wasn't I in that car with them?

People tell me that God has a plan, or that he still loves us, or that he's with you.

But they're wrong. They all have to be wrong, because God's plan wasn't for my family to go. If God loves me, he wouldn't let them leave us like that. He can't be with us, because if he was, I wouldn't be here in this stupid parish hall right now.

If God really was there, and if he really loved us, he wouldn't do this.

I want to leave right now, because every single word that is spoken to me makes it worse. Charlie is speaking to all the people, so respectfully, expressing all his words of thanks, trying to sound thankful. But he's going through the same thing as me, I'm sure. He's just so much better at hiding it.

I find it funny we're all in the parish hall. I guess today it's the perish hall.

Someone else sits down next to me, and I look up to see him. Antoine. Why does he also have to be here? Well, of course he is. He's a family friend.

He says, "Belle, I'm, uh..." he clears his throat. He doesn't know what to say, but I don't mind. No one knows what to say. It's because there's nothing to say. They want to say something to make us feel better, but that's impossible. It won't happen, because no matter how much they try to mend it all up, everything will still continue to keep breaking apart.

Our eyes meet, and before either of us says everything, he hugs me, so tight. I haven't cried at all today, until now, because somehow an embrace of such care brings all the sorrow back up.

I'm trying to push it all down.

But it won't work, obviously.

We sit there for a while. I don't know how long, because time is gone for me. I don't know where it went.

He rubs my back, and I cry, because of everything.

When he finally leans back, letting me go, I mutter, wiping my eyes, "You're such a good friend, Antoine. Thank you."

He nods, his eyes downcast, unable to meet my eyes again. No one can meet my eyes, and I think it's because they can't bear to see the sadness, the tiredness, in them.

People have been saying things like 'so young', or, 'someday, something good will come from it all', but all that just makes me feel like throwing up, honestly. I don't want to hear any of it anymore.

Throughout the whole funeral, I try not to feel or think at all. I know that the Griezmanns are sitting behind us, because I hear Theo whispering something loudly every so often, but I don't have enough energy to life my head and look at anything right now.

They sing Mama's favorite hymns: Amazing Grace, Take My Life And Let It Be, and What a Friend We Have In Jesus. Half way through Take My Life And Let It Be, I can't sing any longer, and just get choked up with tears once again. I remember sitting in this little old church with her so many times. Just, like, a month ago, we sang this hymn in church, and I remember her nudging me, telling me how much she loved this one.

And I just nodded tiredly, not wanting to be in church, because I was missing a friend's birthday party.

It's hard to keep myself from loudly sobbing, and I just want to leave this church, right now, and run away, off the face of the earth, and never come back.

Charlie puts his arm around me again, very tightly, but his eyes are watering too. He's trying to be strong for us, all his younger siblings, that are still here.

There is one sibling here missing, Alice, because she was in the car with her. My heart teared apart when I learned that my younger, innocent, joyful eight-year-old sister passed away right alongside my mother in that car crash.

I can't take it anymore, so I get up, and run out of the church, and I sit on the grassy garden ledge outside the church, in the sunlight. Why is the sun shining? Why, on such a horrible day like this, does life go on? Why does the sun still shine? How does the sun still shine?

Obviously, God doesn't exist, because if he did, maybe he'd get the idea that nobody needs sunlight after he just took two of the most important people away from me in my life, with the snap of two fingers.

In some time, the church door opens, and people start walking out all around me. We're now going to the cemetery to bury them, I know, but I can't get myself to stand up. I feel weak and shaky at the knees, and the thought of watching them lower the two bodies into the ground makes me literally nauseous. I will literally never see their faces again.

"Belle," says a quiet voice in the midst of all the noises of sorrow. I look up, and there's Antoine, holding his hand out to me.

I sigh shakily, and suddenly, just enough strength comes to me to grab his hand, let him pull me up, and walk forward.

Mama would say to me that I can't let anything stop me in my life. She'd say that whatever happens in my life, I just need to remember to shake the dust off my feet and keep marching on. That's just about the last thing I feel like doing right now. But just the support from my friend, somehow, gives me just enough encouragement to keep going.