Chapter Three

Just Another Night

My school was annoyingly overcrowded. Sometimes I found myself doubting the reliability of the walls. How could a school so small hold over 3000 students? It just amazed me, is all.

I wandered through the regular group of kids who make it a habit to block the entrance of the building. As always, they shot me dirty looks that they thought I didn't see. There is a thing called peripheral vision.

I wouldn't say I was the most popular kid in high school, but I wasn't the least popular either. Being the least popular meant you had absolutely no friends. Zilch. Zero. Nada. I had one.

Ethan Ryans was his name. I'd met him my eighth grade year, back when my mouth was bound to heavy braces and his face was colonized with pimples. We were about the most unattractive people to ever find each other, but by some stroke of fate, he had tripped over my foot in the packed cafeteria and we'd been inseparable ever since.

When we'd first met, Ethan was a good foot shorter than me. The summer between our freshman and sophomore year, however, he seemed to shoot up almost overnight. He'd gone away on a two-month long camping trip with some distant family and came back almost twice his size. Where I'd once been staring directly over his mess of black hair, I now stared into his chest.

"Hey," he greeted me in that deep voice I was still trying to get used to. Even though it had been about two years since puberty finally took it's toll, I still wasn't used to his changing. I felt like I was the same as I'd ever been; small and lanky and awkward.

"Hi," I replied, rotating the dial on my locker. Ethan leaned against the metal doors, crossing his arms over his chest. I avoided his brown eyes at all costs, knowing exactly what was about to come my way.

"You were up again last night, weren't you?" I knew it.

After grabbing all the items I needed, I closed the loud door and began in the direction of my first class: Government. I wasn't quite looking forward to judicial review, Marbury vs. Madison, or anything relating to how a bill becomes a law.

"I guess I don't need an answer to know," Ethan said from behind me. "Why didn't you text me or something?"

"Because I knew you were asleep. Besides, its just another night."

As soon as we took our seats, the bell sounded. Bring on the court cases.

…

The night my mother died was the night I realized I couldn't do anything on my own. And that I couldn't rely on my dad for everything.

Ethan, who had just gotten his license the week before, joined us at the hospital at 2:30 in the morning. He had left his house without telling his parents, and boy did he pay for it later. But every time his punishment was brought up (being his fresh license was taken away for six months), he just shrugged and said, "Well, I got it back, didn't I?"

Dad was a mess while we sat in the waiting room. He couldn't even hold Tessa, so Ethan did. With one hand, he held her tiny year-old body on his lap and with the other, he held mine as tightly as I wanted. I couldn't even remember everything that had happened that night.

I remembered the urge to puke, though. Not knowing what was going to happen or what the doctors were going to say was possibly the worst anxiety I'd ever felt.

I also remember the numbness and dizziness that consumed me when the doctor, dressed in a horrible sea-foam green scrub, said the six words we didn't want to hear.

"I'm sorry. She didn't make it.