And he’s gone. He’s really, really gone. The rope was around his neck and he put it there and I couldn’t save him. No matter what I do, nothing will change that. Not counting. Not making videos. Not getting high. Not wandering meaninglessly though life.

He’s gone.

My mind continues to race until the anger, rage, pain, confusion, love, heartbreak—every piece of him and me builds up inside my chest like shards of jagged glass, cutting me from the inside. When I can’t take the pain anymore, I open my mouth and let out an uncontrollable scream as I reach for my phone.

My fingers tremble as I turn it on and unlock the screen. Loud voices blare around outside along with the unbearably deafening sound of the music. My heart is thrashing inside my chest as my mind searches for numbers and control, but there’s so much noise and I can’t think straight. Everything around me and inside me is a mess, unstable, erratic like my pulse and my breathing. I can’t think straight.

Then I click open the file, and with a faltering breath I hit Play. Seconds later the video clicks on and then everything becomes silent.

Chapter 19

Nova

The song plays in the background, the one he had playing when I found him that day. The camera is angled crookedly, so his honey-brown eyes look like shadows; his inky black hair hangs over his forehead and only conceals his eyes more. I can barely note the pain in them, but it’s there and it’s radiating in his voice, more than I’ve ever heard.

The moonlight trickles through the window in the background, his skin hauntingly white, but in the most amazing way. He’s beautiful sitting in front of the screen, like he sketched it himself, his final portrait. The heart-wrenching lyrics playing through the speakers only amplify the finality in the scene.

I hold my breath as I wait for him to say or do something, speak, or move, but he’s still as a statue, staring at the screen, like he’s trying to decipher me instead of me deciphering him. He’s eerily calm, like he’s sedated, and maybe he is. It’s to dark to see if his eyes are bloodshot, and I’m not there to smell him. I wish I was, though. God, I wish I was.

Finally, he takes a breath. “I’m not sure who will watch this… whether anyone will or if it will be put away with the rest of my things… boxed up… shuffled away… forgotten.” He shifts his weight in the chair, crossing his arms on the desk. “I’m not sure if I actually want anyone to watch it, either. I’m conflicted, like I am with everything else in my life.” He pauses, and I can hear him breathing. I almost expect him to cry with how much repressed sadness is flowing out of him, but his eyes look like the stay dry. “I really did try. I promise I did… but I just couldn’t do it anymore. The days… they just became too hard… waking up became too hard… I couldn’t even numb the heaviness in me anymore… Not even with drugs…” He rakes his fingers through his hair, his breath trembling. “Life’s just too heavy. Walking around, breathing, functioning, when I can’t even find a point of doing it.” He drops his hand on the desk. “There’s just no point.”

He drags his hand down his face, glancing around at his room, then he reaches over and turns the music down, but I can still hear it quietly haunting the background. “It feels like I’m living in this hole… this dark hole in the ground, and all I can do is stare at the same damn dirt walls every single day. And there’s no point to it, but I have to do it because there’s nothing else I can do.” He inhales and then stridently exhales. “And then there’s all this pain inside of me and I can’t figure out how to turn it off. I keep waiting for it to turn off, but it just keeps getting worse… Everything does… God, I can’t even remember the last time I fucking smiled for real.” He shakes his head, muttering under his breath. “And Mom, if you do watch this, I know what you’re thinking. You’re blaming yourself because that’s the kind of person that you are, but it’s not your fault. My head is just seriously fucked up.”

He taps his fingers nervously on the desk, studying the screen. “I really don’t want to be here. I think about it every single day, the idea that maybe something will happen and I won’t wake up and have to deal with the same goddamn weighted routine of my life, but it just never happens and I just keep walking around, lost. All the fucking time. There’s nothing there inside me. And I just feel like I’m dragging everything—everyone—down around me, because I can’t get past it. I can’t find the will to smile and walk through life, pretending to be content with the heaviness on my shoulder, living in the same dark, goddamn hole forever.”

He sucks in a deep breath and his voice drops to a soft, barely audible whisper. “Nova… beautiful, amazingly… wonderful… Nova. The one thing that was good in my life.… I know you’re going to watch this eventually, because that’s the kind of person you are. You’re strong… your dad died and you moved on, and me… I haven’t even gone through anything that tragic and I’ve barely been hanging on for years.” He pauses his voice dropping even softer. “I love you. I really fucking do, even though I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to drag you into this mess, but I wasn’t strong enough to stay away from you… I got too caught up in your smile, your kindness, the sound of your voice and your passion about life. Everything you did…” A small, distorted smile fleetingly reveals at his lips. “From playing the drums to knowing who you are… knowing what you want… It was amazing to watch everything you did with some freedom.… You just did stuff and never overthought it. There’s so much good in you… and it was the one thing that made living life just a little bit easier…”

He trails off and stares at the camera for the longest time. The song ends and then starts up again, playing on Repeat, and I can feel it in my heart, the moment where he’s going to say his final words and then click off the camera. Leaving. Going. Dying. Giving up. He takes a deep breath and another, then reaches for the screen.

“Please just forgive me,” he says. “I know you can… stay strong… move on… Please, please, forgive me.”

Then the screen goes black.

Chapter 20

July 31, Day 73 of Summer Break

Nova

I’m not even sure how long I cry for. It feels like forever, but when I finally close my eyes, it’s still dark outside. I surprisingly don’t dream, at least nothing that I can remember, and I wake up in the morning with a splitting headache, puffy eyes, and swollen cheeks. But strangely the weight on my chest, the one I’ve been carrying since Landon left me, feels a tiny bit lighter. His last words echo my head. Please forgive me. I hadn’t even thought about it before. Not in those terms. Forgiving him. And how can I? How can I forgive him for leaving me? I’m not sure, but the Nova he described in the video sounded like she would. The good one, the one that smiled and was able to hang on even after her dad died. But this one, the Nova I am right now, can’t hang on to anything.

An overwhelming homesick feeling wells up in the pit of my stomach, not just for my mom but also for my dad. He’d be so disappointed if he saw me now, and honestly, I feel kind of ashamed of myself. And so would Landon. Nothing about this place is making me happy, not even the music playing outside or the people I came here with.

I slept alone in the tent last night and I was angry, because Quinton just left me and I haven’t seen him since. But I’m also relieved, because it allowed me time to cry alone. Not just over Landon, or the video, but over what I’ve become. I’ve been so afraid of everything. Afraid of living life without Landon. Afraid of moving on. Afraid to lose control, ever since that night, that I’ve made my whole life about controlling things and counting, yet I never had control, just an illusion of it. I’d used numbers and order to cover up everything in life, give myself a fake sense of stability, and not fully accept that Landon is gone and I’m going to have to move on without him. And not admitting the real problems out loud has broken me into fragments of a person that once use to be a good person, but now she’s scattered all over the place. I’m sitting in a place that I don’t understand and I don’t think I ever really wanted to be here. I just fell into it and it only took me 73 days, 1,752 hours, 105,120 minutes to get here.

I smell like a Dumpster, my clothes are still muddy and stiff, and I shower dry dirt to the floor every time I shift my weight. I need a shower. I need a good meal. I need everything that this place can’t offer.

I climb out of the sleeping bag, slip on a clean red tank top, a pair of shorts, and pull up my hair into a messy bun. I rub some black stuff off my arm, and then douse myself with perfume before I exit the tent.

The sun seems really vivid today and stings at my eyes and my thoughts. There’s a guy playing his guitar solo, his melodious voice carrying across the field, and the sound of it brings me a little bit of peace. But the people who surround me look rough and broken, muddy, wearing very little clothing; some have cuts and bruises on them like they got into a fight. This isn’t where I want to be.

I open the cooler and take out a bottle of water. I twist the cap off and devour half of it in one gulp, letting out a sigh as I put the cap on. The chairs in front of the tent are empty, and when I tap my fingers on Dylan’s and Delilah’s tent no one responds.

I’m not really sure what my plans are. Who I should be. How I should move forward. Where I should go. But it seems like I should be doing anything else but standing in this exact spot. With the bottle of water in my hand, I start wandering around the outskirts of the field, zigzagging around the tents, searching for a familiar face but wondering if it’s even possible to find one. I keep replaying what happened in the pond and the memory that’s opened up inside me, even though I fought so hard to keep it hidden for the last year. I’d always been so afraid of the memory, fearing my reaction when I finally remembered that awful night. I feared almost everything about that night because I lost so much and I didn’t want to accept it. But after watching the video, hearing his last words, the blunt truth is I’ll have to finally accept that Landon is gone. He left this world forever. And now I need to find away to forgive him and figure out my place in this world. Somehow. Do I want what’s around me? The fake silence? Do I want to keep aimlessly searching for where to go next or finally figure it out?

The people around me are smoking and drinking, laughing and talking. They make it look so easy. Like just one drink or hit will take it all away. And it does. For a moment. But what about after? Then what?

I’m considering backtracking to the tent when I round the tailgate of a truck and there they all are. Quinton, Dylan, and Tristan all have their backs to me and on the other side of them are three guys; two that look really tall and one that looks shorter than me and has a bald head like Dylan, only his has tattoos all over it. Delilah’s standing in the middle of them and she has her T-shirt knotted at the bottom so her stomach is showing and her shorts rolled up so high her ass is pretty much hanging out.