Life doesn’t make sense.

It used to, when I was happy. When I went to a regular school and had a few friends who would come over for sleepovers. When I had both my parents in the same house, smiling to hide the broken part of their marriage. When Stacy was here instead of six feet under.

I don’t know when it all feel apart, honestly. I couldn’t tell you how it got so screwed up. I guess it started when that bus ran off a cliff, but the potential was there. The animosity and hatred stirring before there was any place to direct it at. The turning point was that crash, though. I wish I could go back and stop her from going to school that day, but I can’t. The damage is done.

Stacy’s bus was driven off a cliff into the ocean by a serial killer. No one knows why he chose her school bus, or if he even had a specific target on board. It may have just been his way of going out with a bang, since the police had pretty much caught him anyway. Only one person survived that crash, and Gabriella Simpson is paralyzed from the waist down.

It was horrible. Stacy’s body was...unrecognizable. We needed dental records. Mom didn’t come out of her room for days, and when she did there was yelling. When she finally accepted Stacy was dead and pulled out of her disabling depression, the fighting never stopped. She said it was dad’s fault, and dad said she was crazy and maybe she should jump off that cliff and join Stacy. I hid under my bed and waited for it to stop.

It didn’t. Mom said she couldn’t be married to a lowlife leech who was so cheap he couldn’t pay for his own daughter’s funeral. So she left. Or rather, we left. Dad bought a tiny apartment in a new city. He had to work ‘day and night’ to support me. He stopped talking to me, really. He would tell me about the bills each month, but that felt like a guilt trip I didn’t want to go on.

Then there was school. I was wearing worn out clothes and I was unhealthily skinny. How could any teenage kid resist taunting me to the point where death was better than life? The words they said so freely, so carelessly, they left a mark. Each time someone called me a freak, that left a brand on my soul. Each time they said words I can’t repeat, it burned me. Soon my soul was as black as charcoal and I was carrying around the burden of being an outcast everywhere I went.

Even at home. It’s not like I could tell anyone. My dad practically screamed ‘look how hard you make my life’ each month when he read me the bill, so how could I add to that? How could I make myself even more unbearable by breaking down about a few bullies? I couldn’t do that to him. It was my job to be strong. I thought if I could take each blow I would come out stronger. Like the Kelly Clarkson song.

But this was too close to killing me. Every night I’d ask myself, how can I do this to myself? I found myself wishing Stacy was here to hold my hand and help me sleep. Stacy, who could sing a song so sweet it could wipe away any bad. I even wished for my mother. My mother, who abandoned me and my dad to this life of endless agony. I wanted to talk to her again, but she didn’t want to talk to me. She had moved to a new zip code and changed her number and last name.

I spiraled down. The black walls were getting too high to see over, and I can’t climb out of this hole. I can’t save myself. In the stories, it says when you’re at your lowest point you can find your happiest future. That didn’t happen. No white knight on a warrior horse, no happily ever after. The darkness surrounded me and there was no way out. Not even my dreams could help me escape hell.

Then I saw it. The point of all the evil, all the horror. The end. Death. Why would there be evil people like the man who killed my sister and so many others if it weren’t a relief to see them die? Why would there be life if it weren’t a blessing to have it end? My life must be one of the ones where everything is twisted and wrong, so when I die I can finally feel real bliss. So when I die, there’s no one to miss me.

And who would? The mother who has abandoned me? The father who hates me? The school that swallowed me and has yet to spit me back out, destroyed? Who alive will mourn the name Eve Wells when she no longer breathes? Who will stand in a cemetery for an hour to watch me be buried, sent to a better beyond? Who will remember me?

It doesn’t matter if I give up. It doesn’t matter if I turn evil, lose sight of my morals and ruin my life. It doesn’t matter if I end myself and everyone around me with a horrible finish. It doesn’t matter…but so why do I care?

This is the part where it doesn’t make sense. If no one cares about me, why should I? Why do I care so much about my life if I’m the only one? Why? Then I realize it must be Stacy. She is still looking after me even though she’s dead. I can almost hear that song she used to sing in the wind.

The sun is shining through the dark, no matter who you are.

You’re standing at the edge, but just like I said,

You won’t fall-al-al…

With her voice echoing in my ears, I run. I run with a bag full of clothes and money. I don’t stop running until I reach the bus. It takes me out of town, out of hell. I’m eighteen today, and I’m standing taller. My soul is still black, but I can fix that when I get wherever it is I’m going.

The stars are light up the night, don’t tell me you can’t see that light.

The end is coming, but let it keep on because we,

Are standing tall-al-al…

I feel like I’m bigger. Like I am stronger, because I didn’t die. I’m right here, right now. I’m alive and I’m going to be what I want to be. I smooth a hand over the notebook on my lap. This is everything I have ever written in my life, this is my future. Writing is my future.

Dream about the future, forget about the past.

Be alive and free and trust that it will last.



Right here, right now, we belong.

Right here, right now, tell the haters they were wrong!

I haven’t faded away. I’m not solid anymore, but I will be one day. Right here, right now, I’m following my dreams. And I hold the locket with Stacy’s picture. My guardian angel.

Don’t fade from me, there’s a part you just can’t see.

The part that bleeds for you, knows what you’ve been through.

“I always remember you,” I whisper to my angel as the bus pulls out of town. I look out the window at the passing scenery that I’ve never seen before. It will be hard, but I can be stronger than the past I’ve just left behind. I sing the last part of her song under my breath.

“Right here, right now you’re powerful.

Right here, right now you’re wonderful.

You are the light that’s standing tall,

Watch those dark walls fall.

You and me, we,

We are invincible. Invincible…”