Exhale by Jennifer Snyder

Author:Jennifer Snyder [Snyder, Jennifer]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2012-12-02T06:00:00+00:00

* * * *

Everyone was here, all of them dressed respectfully in black. I’d heard the word ‘sorry’ tossed around so many times in the span of a few hours that it had lost all meaning, and didn’t even sound like a word anymore to my ears. I knew I needed to be here, I knew it was to be expected, but all I wanted was to be at home; sealed off in the coffin that was my room, because it hurt too badly to be here. To see Derek and Kyle’s parents so distraught over the loss of their son. I felt responsible for their anguish. But they weren’t the ones that I found it hardest to look at, Derek was. I looked into Derek’s eyes and it was like looking into Kyle’s.

It was as if Kyle was haunting me. It was too hard to look at him…too hard to see Kyle’s face, and from the way everyone else flittered around Derek and refused to meet his gaze, I could tell that I wasn’t the only one. My heartbeat slowed as the same pain from the hospital entered my chest. I was torn in half between wanting to reach out and console Derek, and wanting to keep my distance from him because he reminded me too much of Kyle and the reason why we were here.

I swallowed hard and thought of how horrible all this must be for Derek. I remembered him saying at the hospital that he could feel it, that he could actually feel that Kyle was gone. For a split second, I felt selfish for wallowing in my own pity like I had been for the last few days, but death was something I had never been touched by until now. I didn’t know how I was supposed to feel or how I wasn’t; all I knew was what I felt. In the end that was all that mattered, wasn’t it?

“I can’t believe this, can you?” Missy asked as she sipped from a Styrofoam cup of black coffee and ate some little pastry.

I wasn’t sure why, because I didn’t understand how anyone could have an appetite at something like this, but people had brought food and drinks and created a little buffet-style thing on a table in the back.

“I mean, I just keep picturing his last night on earth in my mind and how most of it was with me.” Missy’s words sounded strangled, and I knew from the sniffling coming from her that she had begun crying again, but I didn’t care. I stood up, leaving my untouched cup of tea on the table, and walked away. “If you’re going back to the food table, can you bring me some more of those little cream puff pastries?”

I wasn’t going back to the food table, but I didn’t say that, I didn’t say anything, I was leaving. I’d had all I could handle of this and desperately needed to be alone.

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