Member-only story
A Belated Song for Avery
He was like a calming melody leading to a crescendo.
It will soon be ten years since the day I met Avery.
Unlike the ghosts and storms I’d met who were wrapped up in human skin, he was an astonishment in the way he moved about a room so easily. He could make friends with anyone — talk to anyone — and that aspect of his personality was one of the first things I noticed about him.
My mother had just passed away months prior, so I was a wisp of what I normally could be. The words dried up at my fingertips. Emptiness became a way of life.
My family suggested therapy.
And what did I have to lose? This hollow shell of a girl couldn’t do anything after she’d been scraped clean through the fire of a sudden and pervasive grief.
I had no money, no job, no seeming grasp on a future ahead of me.
It got so bad that, upon receiving an Amazon gift card from someone, I even contemplated ordering a pack of sleeping pills. Then — well, it might have been the end. But I didn’t do it. I was too scared of what would happen if I woke up to my stomach being pumped and had to deal with the aftermath of what my family would say — and what they’d think about me ever after.
