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No sense in being completely useless.
|| 17 || Liv-Andria
The fresh air at the park isn’t helping my bad mood.
Nothingin the last week and a half has helped my bad mood.
I watch Rae quietly drag her feet through some grass nearby. She’s looking at the ground, her shoulders slumped, her expression dull.
I haven’t told her why we haven’t seen Landon in eleven days.
Eleven days—that’s how long it’s been since I wrecked everything.
She has noticed every minute.
And I have felt fury.
After I got back home that night and made myself sick from crying, my sorrow shifted intofury. I felt furious with myself for letting him get so close to me and Rae. I was such a fucking moron to believe friendship with him was possible. There had never been one single time in the past when I saw him around the building and didn’t think he was handsome, and then I went and got to know him—I learned he was a good guy after just a fewconversations. And then I got smart and stepped back after that day with the ice cream, but then I went in again! Why the hell did I notstayback? Why did I let green eyes and a gorgeous smile and some tattoos override my better judgement?
I’ve ignored his apologies. I’ve ignored the glaringly empty space in my and Rae’s days that he’d been taking up. Pissed at myself. Pissed at him.
And pissed at the fact that there are other emotions under the fury.
I haven’t so much as glimpsed them since our friendship ended, but they’re there.
At least…
…I hadn’t glimpsed them…
…until he sent the text about the dance.
When I read it, indescribable sadness spiked up through my anger for the longest moment.
Sadness for Rae.
Yes, she has noticed his absence, and no, I haven’t explained it to her. I’ve answered her constant questions with the vaguest variations of,‘We can’t see him,’unable to be honest about what happened because there isso much morethan anger twisted up with what happened and I can’t handle it.
Before the text, I wasn’t even able to look at her long enough to see howshewas handling everything.
Since the text, I haven’t been able to keep my eyes off of her.
And it’s beginning to hurt more and more.
She’s asked about Landon every morning before school, every afternoon in the car, every evening before bed, and many times in between. I never plainly told her we can’t see himanymore, and since the text, I’ve realized she’s been thinking we just can’t see himfor now.
She’s been holding on to hope that this will end soon.
She trudges over and sits on the bench with me. It’s not the bench we usually claimed when Landon came to the park with us because I made sure not to pick that one, but that one is still in view, and I watch her gaze over at it. Her shoulders lift the tiniest bit; I can see her hope again now.
For a short time, that’s all she does: she looks at the bench, still silent, the slightest lift in her skinny shoulders at the memory of seeing him.
But the sliver of hope and lingering happiness doesn’t last, and soon she’s looking at her lap, dismay radiating off of her.
Yes, watching her hurts, because my sweet angel is losing her color.
She’s had Landon taken away from her and her beloved Annie is shutting her out.
What is wrong with me?
