It took me three weeks to get over the loss at that comp.

It took me three seconds to trick my mind into believing that the pain of Becca walking away didn’t exist.

So I get into bed, my mind clear and my dad’s final words replaying in my head.

“Time to coast, son.”

10

—Becca—

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise. The moment we pulled out of Grams’s driveway to head to the airport, I knew something was wrong. Aaron barely spoke to me on the flight and he stayed that way on the drive home. As soon as we were out of Dad’s car, Aaron asked if we could talk. That was the first time he actually looked at me. He was upset. It was obvious. And I was upset for him. We broke down, sitting in his car, outside my house and we released the truths to the lies we’d been living. But there was no yelling, no arguing. Just… understanding. And sadness. So much sadness. He confessed that he used the trip as a way to determine our true feelings for each other. The fact that I basically ignored him the entire time was proof that I didn’t feel the way he’d hoped. I tried to argue with him in my own silent way, but he kept shaking his head and telling me that it was okay. It was okay because he realized that it didn’t hurt him the way it should have. It was painful—to have him sit there and tell me that he thought we’d been using each other in the hopes that it would somehow help us forget our losses. There was a reason he was drawn to a girl who couldn’t speak, a girl who he’d hoped would rely on him the way Brandi had, a girl who found comfort in his need to understand her. But like he said, I wasn’t Brandi, and he didn’t love me. Just like he wasn’t Josh, and I didn’t love him. Again, I tried to argue with him. Or maybe it wasn’t him so much as it was myself. I didn’t love Josh. I couldn’t love Josh. But even through my silent cries and untrue declarations, he felt the weight of the truth as much as I did. He held me while I cried, and I did the same for him, and we promised each other that we’d remain friends. That we wouldn’t let it change our relationship. As much as I wish that was going to happen, I knew it wouldn’t. And as much as I didn’t realize it while it was happening, he was wrong. Maybe I didn’t rely on him the way he wanted, but I still did. In my own way. A way I’d feared.

I became sad, and then angry, and then desperate. I lay in bed, tears soaking my pillow, and I wished my mind to be as empty as the rest of me. I’m not exactly sure why I became so upset, why I took it so badly. It’s not as if I’d planned to spend the rest of eternity with him. Maybe it wasn’t so much the fact that he broke up with me as it was the reasons why. I tried to justify my actions over the course of our “relationship.” Tried to convince myself that I wasn’t a horrible person. I wasn’t using him. Not really. But he’d said it himself. We were using each other. And that would make him just as horrible as me… only he wasn’t. Not at all. And that made me feel worse.

So I became sadder.

Angrier.

More desperate.

I spent days in bed wallowing in my self-pity, ignoring Dad’s constant concern. I didn’t open up to him. I couldn’t. I skipped classes, didn’t show up to therapy, and on the fourth day of crying silent tears, I left my room, sat on the couch with Dad, and told him I was fine. Only I wasn’t. Not at all. I was so UNfine that all I could think about were the horrible things I’d done. Not just to Aaron, but to everyone around me. My dad relocated, took a lower paying job in a city he’d never been to just so he could take care of his daughter—a virtual stranger. My mother died. DIED. Because of me. I thought about everything I’d done, all the people I’d lost, and I became so lost in the depths of my loss that I could no longer think straight. I guess that’s why I found myself walking to a mailbox at three in the morning in a night gown and mailing a letter that, up until that point, I had no intention of sending. I regretted it as soon as the envelope slipped through the crack, and I cursed myself the moment I heard it land amongst all the other ones. For a while, I just stood there, staring at the mailbox and wondering how many of those letters held pain and regret and hopes. Unjustified hopes. Then I started kicking it. Over and over. Until I felt my toes become numb and a wetness seeping through my socks. I knew it’d be blood, but at the time, it was better than my tears. The walk home felt like an eternity, and once behind the closed door of my bedroom, I continued my spiral into depression. Dad came in a few hours later, saw my emotional state, witnessed what I’d been failing to hide from him, and after holding me and assuring me that everything was going to be okay, found The List on my desk, hidden beneath a pile of used and discarded tissues. His eyes scanned the items, one after the other, and then he looked up, a smile pulling on his lips, and said, “How hard would it be to sell things online?”