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Hero lay in his bed, watching the alarm clock on his bedside table tell him that it was only three in the afternoon, too early for him to be this tired. But it had already been such a long day, full of forced smiles and narrowly avoided breakdowns, and Hero was exhausted. Then again, it felt like he’d been living in a constant state of exhaustion for a while now. A bone-deep weariness that wouldn’t go away with sleep and that sapped all his energy and motivation to do anything but lay there.
It had only been a few months since Mari died, but to Hero, it felt like an eternity. Day after day passed by in a blur, and he was frantically clinging to any sense of normalcy he had left, threatened by the one thought that had been relentlessly tormenting him: Why?
There was no note, no goodbye. Nothing. It was as though Mari, as beautiful and radiant as ever, had been standing right there beside him only to disappear without warning, leaving behind a gaping hole that drained all the color from his world.
It kept Hero awake for nights on end, desperately trying to figure out if there was something that he’d missed, something that he did, something that he could’ve done differently, anything that could have stopped Mari from…
And yet, the rational part of Hero knew that that train of thought would get him nowhere. What’s done is done, and as much as he wished that he could turn back time and get a second chance to do things right, he knew that there was no use dwelling in the past, so the only option left was to move forward.
But Hero couldn’t even imagine moving on when he was drowning in a sea of memories. No matter how hard he tried to forget, they were always there. The feeling of her hand resting atop his own, the warmth of her body as they lay beside one another, her delicate arms wrapped around him in a tight embrace. Little ghosts that dragged him into the dark corners of his own mind until he no longer had the will to fight it.
There was a brief moment when he considered following her. It was only a fleeting thought that crossed his mind as he lay in bed the day after her death when it was finally sinking in that he would never see her smile again, never hear her laugh, never see that spark in her eyes. However, he immediately pushed it out of his mind, shocked that he would even entertain the idea. But Hero had always been a romantic, and even he couldn’t deny that it would have at least been poetic.
It also just wasn’t in Hero to give up like that. He was a fighter and a hard-worker, and it was because of those things that Hero now felt more helpless than ever. Because Mari was already gone. There wasn’t anything he could do. There was nothing to fight for. He’d already lost.
There was one thing, though—Mari’s little brother, Sunny, who she loved more than anything else. Hero hadn’t seen him since the day Mari passed, but in his mind, Sunny was the last piece of her that Hero had left.
Sunny had always been a shy kid. Timid and quiet, but a good friend nonetheless. He was Mari’s pride and joy, and she was his role model, his protector. But now she was gone, and Hero could think of no better way to honor her memory than by taking on that responsibility. Of course, he could never replace Mari, but he could do his best. For her sake.
Coming to a decision, Hero forced himself out of bed and into the bathroom, where he tried to make his unruly hair look somewhat presentable. He pulled on his winter coat and slipped outside into the frigid air, shoving his hands into his pockets and starting off down the sidewalk. It took all of thirty seconds to walk next-door, but in that time, Hero couldn’t help but notice how bleak the world looked, how devoid of color everything was.
He stepped up to the house that was practically his second home but now felt like an abandoned ruin, a testament to his failure. The oppressive silence only emphasized the absence of happiness from the place where he once made so many happy memories. The mere sight of the once familiar front door that he’d walked through so many times before was enough to cause his throat to constrict. He knocked, hesitantly at first, then with a bit more force.
A moment later, the door was opened by Mari and Sunny’s mother, who gave Hero a gentle smile. “Hero, what are you doing here? I haven’t seen you in forever,” she said casually.
“I’m just here to check on Sunny,” Hero told her. “I wanted to see how he was doing.”
She frowned at that, glancing back into the house before looking at Hero with sadness in her eyes. “I’m sorry, but he’s sleeping right now. I don’t want to wake him up.”
Hero’s heart sank. “O-oh…well, that’s alright. Tell him I stopped by.”
“Okay, I’ll make sure to do that. Why don’t you try coming over again tomorrow?” she suggested. “I’m sure Sunny would be happy to have a friend to talk to.”
So Hero tried again the next day. And the next. And the next. And when Kel told him that Sunny had stopped coming to school, Hero knew that Sunny was as good as gone.
He’d failed again.
Hero wanted to scream. He wanted to cry. He wanted to go lay in the snow until he couldn’t feel anything anymore because he was sick of the constant ache in his chest and of feeling like he was teetering on the edge of a knife.
It had now been almost a year since Mari died, and Hero was sure he’d spent most of it in bed. If he missed any more school, he’d probably have to repeat a grade, but Hero couldn’t really bring himself to care. Everything was just too much work. School, talking, eating, sleeping.
There was nothing left for him outside the confines of his own room anyway. The one time he’d tried to bake anything, he was immediately overwhelmed with memories of the cookies Mari used to make for everyone, and his mom had found him crying on the kitchen floor.
Hero was huddled beneath a pile of blankets, listening to his parents talking out in the hall. They were arguing about him. Again. His mother was crying to his father about how her son was slowly killing himself, and Hero covered his ears, trying to block out the sound. He squeezed his eyes shut tight, letting a few stray tears slip down his face.
He moved his hands away when he felt someone sit down on the edge of the bed, the mattress sinking beneath their weight. A quick glance told him that it was Kel, who looked just as miserable as Hero felt.
“I miss when we used to hang out together,” Kel said quietly. “Just you and me. When we would watch movies and play video games. Even though you always beat me,” he added with a small laugh. “It seems like that was such a long time ago.”
Kel paused, waiting for a reaction from Hero, but got nothing. He let out a heavy sigh. “We’re all worried about you, you know. Especially mom. She thinks that you’re…gonna do what Mari did.”
Hero tensed and felt tears well up in his eyes at just the sound of her name spoken aloud. “Kel, can you please just leave me alone for a bit?” He wouldn’t let his little brother see him cry. He couldn’t.
“We just want you to be okay,” Kel continued, ignoring his brother. “And I know if Mari were here, she’d want that too. She wouldn’t want you to be sad like this. She wouldn’t want you to be so upset over her.”
Hero needed to calm down. This wasn’t like him. He was always the peacemaker…peacemaker…of what? Their group of friends was gone forever, and it was his fault. It was his fault because he wasn’t good enough for Mari. He wasn’t there for her when she needed him most, and now she was dead, and his entire world was crumbling around him, and he was desperately trying to hold it together, but he couldn’t because she killed herself. She killed herself, and he wasn’t there to save her.
Something inside him snapped. He threw the blankets aside and abruptly stood up.
Kel stumbled backward as Hero towered over him.
“You don’t get to tell me what Mari would have wanted, and you don’t get to tell me how to grieve,” Hero said darkly. “I don’t care if you’ve already moved on. Just leave me alone.”
“Hero, I-”
“You don’t get it, do you?” His voice broke, and the tears finally spilled over. “I’m fine with the way everything is. Our friend group fell apart, so what?! It happens. That’s life. I don’t need friends, and I don’t need you to come and try to make me feel better because all you do is make everything worse!”
Hero stopped to catch his breath when he was caught off guard by a soft sniffle. His eyes widened as he realized that Kel had started crying, silent tears streaming down his face. Hero immediately felt the anger leave him, giving way to overwhelming guilt and shame. He did this. He made his little brother cry. He was disgusting, worthless. He wasn’t any good to Mari, and he sure didn’t seem to be any good to anyone else either.
The bedroom door opened, and their parents rushed to Hero’s side, asking him what happened and what was wrong, and Hero made a half-hearted attempt to push them away. He didn’t deserve their worry, their pity. As he finally broke free from his parents’ suffocating concern, Hero caught a glimpse of his little brother, standing there with hurt and betrayal in his eyes.
He’d failed again.
Unable to take it anymore, Hero threw himself forward and pulled Kel into a tight embrace, clinging to the back of his shirt as though he’d vanish, just like Mari had. “Kel, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean that. Please.” When Kel didn’t answer him, Hero buried his face in his brother’s shoulder and let out a heart-wrenching sob. “I just loved her so much. I’m sorry.”
He hated himself. He wanted to disappear right then and there. If he were gone, then he wouldn’t have to feel like this. He wouldn’t have yelled at Kel, who had just been trying to show him that he cared, and Hero threw that back in his face with no regard for his brother’s feelings. It was despicable.
He needed a distraction, something to take his mind off things before it drove him off the deep end and made him do something stupid. And so from that moment on, Hero dedicated himself to his schoolwork. He spent all his free time doing homework or studying, determined to stay at the top of his class and get into a university far away from there. Maybe then he’d be able to leave all the bittersweet memories behind.
And Hero was okay. The trauma was still there, buried deep down, but he was okay just leaving it alone. He saw no need to deal with it because he was doing fine. He was living with it.
Of course, Hero’s relationship with Kel was never the same after that. They still talked to each other, still acted like family, but everything was surface level. Conversations were kept light and casual, balanced precariously over the underlying tension that sat between them in which Hero knew he was depriving Kel of the older brother he wanted, the brother that he should be.
It also didn’t help that their parents seemed determined to tear a rift between them. With Hero’s perfect grades and ability to excel at pretty much everything, he was his parents’ clear favorite, leaving Kel with even less attention than he deserved. Hero felt bad, always basking in the spotlight while Kel was left wallowing in the shadows, but traversing that space between them would undoubtedly destroy whatever fragile bond they had left.
Hero quietly got through the rest of high school and, as expected, graduated at the top of his class. He had a small celebration with his family since he hadn’t really bothered to make any friends, but he was okay with that. Everyone in his grade had known him as the smartest and nicest kid, and yet he was somehow able to hold everyone at a distance. Maybe it was the air of melancholy that lingered around him, the way his smiles always looked a little sad, the faraway look he sometimes got in his eyes like his mind was somewhere else, lost in a memory. Whatever the case, Hero went off to college alone.
Finally free from his small hometown, Hero felt like he could finally breathe again. The pain was still there, but it had lessened considerably into a dull ache that only made itself known in the dark of night when he was laying in bed, wishing that he could go back. Back to simpler times when it was just him and Kel, and Aubrey and Basil and Sunny and Mari, and they were all happy together, and the world still made sense. He liked being alone, but he hated how the loneliness still left him feeling cold and empty.
Hero had already come to terms with the fact that he’d probably feel this way the rest of his life. Forever stuck in the past, isolated and alone.
He never expected to come back home, to stumble into their secret spot by the lake where they used to lay in the sunshine and have picnics, where he now found Kel standing there with a look of terror on his face as he shouted something about Basil being pushed into the water and Sunny jumping in after him.
As Hero sprinted towards the edge of the lake, adrenaline rushing through his veins, time seemed to slow, and the world shifted. His mind was replaying an old scene, one from many years ago when everything was still bright and happy. A sense of déjà vu so strong that he could see it. Sunny falling into the same lake where they were now. Mari diving in to save him.
Hero wasn’t alone anymore. Mari was right there beside him, a memory, her ghost. And when he dove into the water, her dark brown hair was illuminated by the brilliant rays of the sun reflected off the water’s surface. He grabbed Basil and Sunny and pulled them to shore, the hem of her favorite dress fluttering at the edge of his vision. And as he let out a sigh of relief once he’d made sure both boys were still breathing, Hero couldn’t help but think that he’d finally, finally done something right.
Maybe this was how he would start to heal.