Page 63 of Thigh Highs
I stare at the letters of her name, carved into the marble. She would have hated this headstone, with its stupid built-in flowervases.
“After I lost you, Tiff, people told me I shouldn’t be locking myself up in my room. They said that’s not what you would have wanted. That’s bullshit, isn’t it? You wouldn’t have wanted to leave in the first place. You wouldn’t have wanted any of this, and you sure as fuck don’t want anything now, because you’re fuckingdead.”
I’m shouting now, ripping up clumps of grass at a time as my body shakes from the effort to hold back the sobs. I dig my fingers into the ground until the urge to knock the goddamn slab of marble oversubsides.
“You’re dead, Tiff,” I say, as my vision starts to go blurry with tears I can’t fight anymore. “I’m talking to a deadgirl.”
It’s too much. I can’t hold this in anymore, can’t keep it locked inside, but letting it out is going to break me. This isn’t the kind of pain I can handle on my own. I need someone to take some of it away, and as I sit here in a cemetery, losing my grip on everything, I finally realize who that someoneis.
There’s only one person in the world I know who would take every ache I’ve ever felt and make it her own if she could, and I’ve been trying to stop her from helping me for way toolong.
I get my phone out and she answers on the secondring.
“Mom?” I chokeout.
“Aaron?”
All I can do is grit my teeth and try to hold myself together enough not to break down on thephone.
“Aaron, baby, what’s wrong?” she asks, panic pitching her voicehigher.
“I want to talk. I want to talk about it. About her,” I blurt out in an almost undecipherable rush. I draw in a shaky breath. “I want to talk aboutTiff.”
* * *
“You knowI loved her too, right? We all loved that girl. Tiffany was part of thisfamily.”
I’m on the couch at my parents’ house. I made the hour and a half drive to get here as soon as I got off the phone. My mom and I are both crying, one of her hands braced on my shoulder as she sits beside me on the crocheted blanket shemade.
I did it. I owned up to all my feelings, admitted to how much damage losing Tiff did, how it’s been eating me from the inside and keeping me from letting anyone into my life. It felt like throwing up, finally letting it all out, and it left me just as raw and weak afterward. It’s true what they say, though: better out than in. I’d gotten so used to carrying everything inside me I didn’t realize how heavy it allwas.
“You don’t have to be all alone.” My mom’s voice is so soft and gentle it almost makes me start crying again, but I’m done with the tears. I came here to start gettingbetter.
“I know. It was stupid ofme.”
“Not stupid, Aaron. You were hurting. Youarehurting. Pain isn’t the best at makingjudgements.”
“I just wanted it all to go away. I didn’t want to have to deal withthis.” I gesture at her tear-streaked face, at my own, which I’m sure looks pretty much the same. “But it didn’t goaway.”
She pats my arms and then gets up from the couch for a moment, rummaging around a storage unit before returning with apamphlet.
“I never gave this to you before, because I knew you would have just thrown it out. You probably still won’t be too crazy about the idea, buthere.”
I take the folded blue sheet of paper and see it’s an information booklet for griefcounselling.
“Mom—” I start tosay.
“Listen,” she urges, cutting me off, “I know it seems a little out there, talking to a complete stranger about something like this. I thought so too, but I started going to some sessions a few months after she passed, and it helped, Aaron. It reallydid.”
I lift my eyes from the booklet to meet hers. They’re a warm brown, nowhere close to the blue ones I share with my father. Hers are filled with hope right now, with longing for me to agree tothis.
I’m shocked to hear she was affected by Tiff’s death enough to look into counselling. It was selfish of me, but I never really stopped to consider how she’d feel about losing Tiff atall.
“I’ll think about it,” I say, and it’s not even alie.
My mom’s right; the idea doesn’t exactly thrill me, but none of my own strategies for dealing with this seemed to have been particularly helpful choices, and I’ve opened up enough to realize I don’t know how to do this on myown.
I already lost Tiff. I don’t want the pain of that to make me lose anyoneelse.
