Page 107 of The One

And numb.

I couldn’t feel a knife if it stabbed straight through my heart.

It wasn’t just my skin that was frozen.

It was my insides.

My blood.

Organs.

Muscles.

As though I’d been dipped in water and placed in the ice chest of a garage. A forgotten place where I didn’t know when hours passed. When days moved from one to the next.

What I saw was darkness.

In my room with the blinds shut.

In my bed with the comforter over my head.

In the hallway when I paced from my bedroom to the bathroom and back.

Even when I ran outside.

But out here, when I glanced up, raindrops hit my forehead. The drips cascaded down my cheeks and inside my open mouth, my lungs releasing every sound I could scream.

The rain couldn’t warm me.

It tried.

Everything tried.

Wet hair was plastered against my skin. My clothes stuck to me. The feelings of wetness and confinement were present, and I did nothing to stop it.

Because I couldn’t.

Because I was ice.

Because I was hoping the rain would bring me back. It would rewind time. It would wash away the memories—not all, just the recent ones.

Like when I had walked out of my hair appointment and my phone rang.

Like when I threw up outside my car.

Like when I left my car running in front of the hospital so I could run inside.

Like every moment that had followed.

Even now.

Oh God, especially now.

The ground looked soft from all the rain. The grass squishy. The smell of white flowers was so thick in the air. The white ones had a different aroma from the red and purple and yellow.

All I saw was white.

I hated them.