“No trouble at all, Chloe. I just want to make sure you’re okay.” I knew that was more of a question than a statement.
“Yeah. I’m okay. I’m just still trying to accept the fact that she’s gone.” I frowned.
She gave me an understanding smile. “I know, honey. I miss her, too. It was just very sudden and she looked like she had been doing great at our last visit, so there was no way we could’ve known.”
“Aunt Betty?” There was something I’d been wanting to her ask her ever since the funeral last week.
“What is it, Chloe?” Her familiar, kind face looked more sunken in and tired.
“Do you think she took all those painkillers on purpose?”
There was a brief silence as Aunt Betty’s face turned somber. “I,” —she let out a deep sigh— “I think it’s a possibility.”
I nodded, unable to respond in any other way at that moment. A part of me had thought that Aunt Betty would humor me and tell me my mom wouldn’t have done such a thing, but instead, she told me what she really thought.
“Do you think if I’d seen her more often, she wouldn’t have…” My voice cracked and I couldn’t finish my question.
“Oh, honey. Please don’t do this to yourself.” She reached over and pulled me in for a hug. “This did not happen because of you. Your mom has been battling depression since before you were born. Some days she’d be fine, but other days she’d turn to alcohol and drugs to cope. And over the years, it just got worse and worse. There was nothing you could have done. This was her battle that she had to face alone. This was her demon that she’d been facing for a very long time.”
“I just feel so guilty, though,” I whispered, my words slightly muffled against her chest. “I just keep imagining how alone and sad she must have been to do such a thing, to give up like that, to feel like there was nothing left in this world to live for.”
“Chloe, listen to me.” She pulled me from her arms to look me in the eyes. “Your mother loved you, very much. You were the most important thing in her life. You have to understand that she probably wasn’t thinking straight when she took those pills. She wasn’t asking herself if there was anything to live for.”
I knew she was right, but it didn’t seem to matter. Knowing she loved me didn’t bring her back. Aunt Betty stayed with me in my room for another half hour, forcing me to eat at least five mouthfuls of food before she would leave my room. When she finally left me, I felt exhausted and lonely. I realized I didn’t want to be by myself. I didn’t want to spend any more time inside my head where I would just think about my mom and wonder what I could have done differently.
A part of me wanted to call out to Aunt Betty and ask her to stay with me for a bit longer. But then there was the other part of me that didn’t want to admit that I needed any help.
But before I could make a decision on what to do, there was a soft knock at my door again.
“Chloe? It’s me again,” Aunt Betty’s voice came from the other side of the door. “Jackson’s here to see you. Do you want me to have him come up? Or do you want me to send him away?”
“He can come up. Thanks, Aunt Betty.”
A few minutes later, Jackson walked in to my room. “Hey.”
I could tell he was a little nervous. We hadn’t seen each other since the funeral, and other than a few vacations he’d gone on with his parents, it’d been the longest period of time we’d been apart. It wasn’t because he hadn’t tried to see me. He had. But each time he’d stopped by to see me, I’d told Aunt Betty that I wasn’t ready to see anyone.
“Hi. Thanks for coming to see me.” It wasn’t until I saw Jackson that I realized how much I’d missed him during the last several days.
He walked over slowly and sat down next to me on the bed. “How are you?”
I shrugged.
He nodded as if to say he understood.
There was a long moment of silence before he finally spoke again.
“So, I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately.”
My ears perked up and I slowly looked at him. “Reading? But you don’t really like to read, outside of mandatory school stuff.” I tried to think back to all the times I’d seen him read or mention reading something outside of school-assigned reading in case I was wrong.
His lips curled into a small smile. “Yeah, I don’t usually. But I wasn’t sure what to do.”
Understanding what he meant, I rolled my eyes. “Jax, you have other friends besides me to hang out with. And you love watching TV and browsing the internet—”
“No. No. You misunderstood me,” he interrupted. “I meant I’ve been doing a lot of reading about…well…about what you’re going through right now and how a friend is supposed to help.”
“Oh.” I was touched by his desire to understand what I was going through.
He looked down and looked uncomfortable. “Clo, it really kills me to see you so sad, and I just didn’t know what I could do to help you.”
I shook my head apologetically. “Jax, there isn’t really anything you can do, just like there isn’t really anything I can do.”
“I know.” He nodded solemnly. “All the things I’ve read said that it takes time, and what you need right now is time.”
“Yeah.”
“But I think you need something else as well.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“You need me. You need to be around the people you care about and the people who care about you.”
His words struck a chord with me, and I knew he was right. When Aunt Betty had left me alone earlier, I knew that was the last thing I had wanted.
But before I could agree with him, he continued. “I know you, you don’t want people to help you. You want to face this alone because you’re so used to facing life’s challenges on your own. So you never ask for help. But…” His voice cracked. Suddenly he grabbed my hands and looked into my eyes. “As your best friend who loves you more than you’ll ever know, I can’t just stand by and watch you face this on your own. I know you think you want to push me away. I know you think you want to be alone. I know you think you’re in this alone. But you’re wrong.”
“You’re right,” I finally said.
“So I’m—what? I’m right?” He was surprised by my admission, and I could tell it was the last thing he’d expected.
“Yeah.” I paused, realizing how vulnerable I was feeling. “I’ve been really lonely lately.”
“Clo, you don’t have to be lonely.”
I nodded.
“Hey, I have a surprise for you.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You do? What is it?”
He lifted a bag from beside him and grinned at me. “It’s in here.”
“Okay…” Confused by what he was about to show me, I watched him take something out of the bag.
“Come on. Sit down on the floor first while I get this set up.” I could hear the excitement in his voice.
“Okay, but what are you going to do?” I sat down in the middle of the floor and watched him move around my room.
“You’ll see in a minute.” He turned off the TV and then my bedroom lamp, leaving only the glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling visible in the pitch-black room.
“Okay…do you need me to do anything?” I asked tentatively.
“Yeah, lie down on the floor so you’re looking up at the ceiling.” I heard him plop himself down on the floor next to me. “I’m going to lie down next to you.
“Okay…” I said again, but this time, I couldn’t help but giggle. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but the anticipation of the surprise temporarily lifted the heaviness that’d been weighing down on my heart.
“You ready?” He said next to me on the floor.
“As ready as I’ll ever be.”
I heard him click something on.
I gasped at what I saw.
My entire room suddenly glowed with a kaleidoscope of magical lights that moved across the room.
“It’s just a rotating disco ball that shines different colors of laser lights. It was the closest thing I could find that might work. It’s my version of a—”