Page 11 of His to Save

It’s almost my birthday, and Mama keeps asking me what I want and I keep telling her I don’t know and she keeps getting frustrated and saying they don’t sell that at the store. But, Diary, the problem is, they don’t sell what I want…

Unless you can bring people back from the dead for real and I just don’t know it.

My best friends—well, former best friends—told me I needed to get over my dad dying because no one likes sad girls. But how? How am I supposed to just get over it? It’s only been six months since he passed. Six months that somehow feel like the blink of an eye and an eternity all at the same time.

But I can’t just tell Mama all of that, because she’s been smiling recently. And for a while there, I didn’t think I’d ever see her smile again. So, I’ll just keep my mouth shut and make up something that I want so that she can feel like things are the way they should be. And so she’ll think I’m “healing.”

Because I know she feels guilty. Which is kind of dumb because she didn’t do anything. It’s not like she killed him. But like Ms. Maggie (that’s my therapist) says, grief isn’t always logical.

In fact, she says that sometimes grief is downright sneaky. That you can be fine and then all of a sudden sobbing and then raging at the unfairness of it all in a single breath. I guess she’s right, too, because I’ve done just that.

Like, even silly little things will make me so mad that I just blow up. I know it worries Mama (clearly, since I’m seeing a shrink every week—luckily, she doesn’t work for thesame place Mama does, because that would be weird) but she mostly just tells me to write down how I’m feeling.

Over and over, she tells me to put my pain to paper and to give it away.

But sometimes I worry that if I keep writing it all down that I’ll forget. Not my dad—I’ll always remember him, Diary, because he’s the best man I’ve ever known. No, I worry I’ll forget how sad I am without him. I worry that one day I’ll smile like nothing ever happened…like he was never here.

Deep down, I know he would want me to be happy and to smile, but here’s that illogical grief creeping in again, like it always does, wrapping itself around me like a heavy blanket, making sure I stay a sad girl—the kind of girl Kelsey and Eliza say no one likes.

But maybe that’s my lot in life. To be the sad girl without a dad who dreads her birthday and smiling. Or maybe today was just a lot and I needed to vent.

Who knows. I guess time will tell.

Sadly, Nora

DIARY ENTRY, AGE 14

Dear Diary,

Today’s the big day. As of 4:45 this afternoon, I’m officially fourteen. Mom started the day with waffles and bacon, like always, but where Dad always made perfect bacon, hers was burned. I mean it, too—it literally looked like strips of a tire. But I ate every charred bite with a fake smile on my face because she’s been sad again.

We’re both sad girls now, except today I have to pretend to be happy. Which sucks, because I’m anything but.

Mama insisted on throwing me a party last night, and she double insisted on me inviting pretty much my whole grade. She said fourteen was a special year (I don’t know what’s so special about it) and so she booked the skating rink and bought a bunch of pizzas and cake.

Surprise, surprise… No one came.

Mama kept asking if I handed the invites out (I did) and I kept asking if she had the date and time right (she did), which really sucks because it means Kelsey and Eliza were right after all. No one likes sad girls.

No one likes me.

I somehow went from being in the cool crowd to the weird loner who eats lunch in the library. I guess this is what Mama meant when she said teenagers were fickle.Although, I’m pretty sure that’s just a nice way of saying shallow assholes.

Then again, I barely like me at this point, so maybe Kelsey and Eliza are actually onto something. All I do is cry and read and listen to all of Dad’s favorite songs. Mama says I’m suffering from depression, and Ms. Maggie agrees. They think I need to be medicated, like some freaking happy pill can take away the ache of losing him.

But the thought of the pain ever really easing only makes me hold onto it that much more, because won’t being happy again mean that I’ve forgotten him?

Mama says it’s not healthy to carry around this kind of hurt, but I say she’s a hypocrite because she carries it around, too. She just hides it with concealer, lipstick, and brittle smiles.

I guess I should tell you about my birthday gift. I ended up telling Mama I wanted a gift card to the local bookstore. She bought me and loaded it with a hundred dollars. She also bought me some nice pens (I’m using one now) and a framed picture of Dad and me from my thirteenth birthday. We’re both making silly faces in the picture, and I cried like a baby when I saw it.

So, even though I’m apparently a giant loser with no friends, it was still a pretty good birthday…as good as it could be, anyway.

Numbly, Nora

CHAPTER 3

ATLAS

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