But my parents? They were trying to erase everything about Xavier and me.
“Yes, I do,” I said, my voice rising before I could stop it. “That’s—he’s—” I cut myself off, swallowing the rest down. “Can you just tell me what’s happening? When is his sentencing? What are they saying?”
My mother shook her head. “I’m not discussing that.”
I blinked at her. “Why?”
“Because it’s not your burden to carry.”
A short laugh slipped out of me, sharp and hollow. “It already is.”
She stepped closer, lowering her voice like that would soften it. “Baby, this is exactly why I don’t want you wrapped up in it. You have a future. You have plans. I’m not letting this pull you off track. This never happened.”
This.
That’s what she called him.
Not Xavier.
Not the boy I loved.
This.
As if he were something to avoid. Something inconvenient. Something dangerous.
My throat burned. I had called YaYa four times since I walked in the door, and she hadn’t picked up a single call.
“Yaya won’t tell me anything either,” I said. “Nobody will.”
Mom scoffed and whispered under her breath, “At least she’s good for something.”
Mom walked away and asked my dad if he wanted to watch theFive Heartbeatstonight. She was unfazed. My dad carried remorse on his face, but he refused to cross her.
It never mattered to me in the past that my dad was passive. I thought that because he was a man of the cloth, he pridedhimself on peace, but his silence said more than anything else could. His silence was complicit in my pain.
Everyone had to know what was happening. Everyone had details. Everyone had pieces of what was happening to Xavier. Everyone except me.
They said it was to protect me, but it felt like they were erasing me.
I backed away from the family room slowly, my chest tight, my head spinning with questions that had nowhere to go.
No answers.
No closure.
Just space and distance between me and everyone I thought I loved in this life. Everyone had made a controlled decision that my life was supposed to keep moving as if nothing had happened.
Like Xavier hadn’t existed, like we hadn’t loved one another.
And I realized then that it didn’t matter how much I loved him. It didn’t matter what we had been to each other. The universe was separating mefrom it.From him.From everything. And I had no say in it at all.
* * *
I didn’t packmy bags. My mother did.
That’s how I knew my feelings were not taken into consideration.
It was already decided. When I went upstairs, my clothes were folded in three large storage bins. My shoes were in suitcases, and I felt like my life was broken down into piles, as if it were something easy to move. Like it didn’t carry weight.
