Dead To You

27. grief hub™

I spent the weekend alone in my room, bundled underneath all the blankets I owned like the grief I felt was a fever chilling everything down to my bones, ignoring each one of the calls that lit up my phone on the pillow next to me whenever I wasn't scrolling through the old photos I had taken of Bridgette. There hadn't been one that didn't elicit the telltale burning in my eyes, not the blurry one in the back of my car when she excitedly proclaimed that she got an extra nugget in her McDonalds order, not the one when she pretended to toss her gum wrapper at me when she saw my camera, not the one of the four of us together at the county fair a few weeks before the website hack, in front of Ferris wheel as we waited in line, our tans prominent and our sophomore makeup applications somewhat questionable, but it was the last picture we had taken all together.

I stared at it until the collar of my shirt was thoroughly soaked and I couldn't breathe out through my nose anymore, wondering how four sunburnt girls could've drifted this far apart. I sniffled at the sight of the girl Bridgette had been, just barely fifteen, with an elusive toothy grin and her head tilted back, a cartoon cotton candy sign reflected against her sunglasses, and thought about how she only had three years left. And none of the other girls standing beside her in that picture were going to be there for them, for her.

My mom came in a few times, usually with a plate of my favorite foods—evidently, she had ordered a Korean pulled pork sandwich from the café down the street at some point, made a pan of brownies with M&Ms on top, and picked up a bag of salt and vinegar chips—and seeing her made me even more emotional in a way I couldn't really describe, but every time she said my name in the past three days made me burst into tears. She even cried too a couple of times as she wrapped her arms around me and smoothed back my hair, whispering that she was sorry.

My dad called but he mostly spoke to my mom after I declined his calls that first night because I wasn't sure what to say to him over the phone, and he eventually had to call her instead. It was a number he didn't dial often, usually their exchanges were limited to brief and cordial text messages about me, but, according to my mother a few minutes later, he was worried about me. She crouched down in front of my bed where I curled, clutching my blankets close to my face, and said, "He wants to know if you want him to come stay for a while." I didn't say anything for a moment, quiet as she tucked the comforter back from my chin. "If you want him here, honey, that's okay. It won't upset me. Maybe you guys can make those homemade pizzas again?"

My face crumbled at this weird, stupid thought of smearing marinara sauce on pizza dough with my dad like we used to, back when his voice was one I heard coming from down the hall instead of coming through a phone line. "I don't...I don't really want to...see anyone r-r-right now," I told her, feeling another tear trail down my nose. "But don't tell him I-I don't want to see h-h-him. I don't—"

She nodded, rubbing her thumb along my knuckles. "I won't. I'll talk to him."

Adele had reached out too, texting me that Saturday morning with a simple but pointed Mom says you're pretty depressed rn about Bridgette. I sighed at I stared at it, in one of the rare moments where my eyes were shockingly dried up—but now tight and inflamed, still a little blurry—before the text bubbles appeared again and she followed up with, I was thinking about visiting tonight. Maybe stay over until tomorrow. There's a new Netflix movie I thought we could watch.

I bit down on my lips then quickly replied, you have a class on Monday morning. We can just watch the movie when you visit for Homecoming.

Homecoming is for freshmen, she answered, as if that had stopped her any of the other previous years, but I didn't feel like participating in this banter she was trying to start with me and left her text on read. It felt almost hypocritical of me to refuse the offers my dad and Adele made to come visit, or the texts that Jun and Bronwyn had sent over that weekend, when just a few weeks ago, I would've given anything to have all of my family in the same room again or have friends to text until it got late, the date changing on my phone like our topics. All I wanted for the past three years was for someone to reach out, and now they were, and I was softly rebuffing all of them for a feeling I couldn't explain.