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The morning comes and the sun rises. The day passes and then the sun sets. The stars come out and the sky fills with moonlight. And day after day after day, it’s the same dance, the same rhythm, the same cycle, the same.
I know my life isn’t special. I know I don’t matter. I’m less than a speck to the cosmos, less than meaningless at my school.
But as she lies crumpled in my arms, my insignificance does nothing to dull the agony in my heart. To the cosmos, I’m nothing, but in this moment, my soul-shattering pain is stronger than anything in the universe. The pain is my universe.
“Why?” I whisper into her hair. My voice breaks. “Why didn’t you let me do it? Jane was my sister… this was my decision… I should’ve been the one to take her place.”
But she doesn’t answer. She never will. Because she’s gone.
The world will continue. The sun will still rise and still set. But the one person who made my life livable will never move again.
I’ll never see her eyes again. Never see her smile again. I’ll never again hear the metal music spilling from her earbuds because she turned the volume up too high, never again hear the lilt in her voice as she called out my name: “Noah!”
I thought it was bad enough, losing someone the first time. Thought I could never hurt more than I did when Jane died.
I was wrong.
Because at least then, I had some sort of solace knowing that I wasn’t alone, and that it wasn’t completely my fault. But this time… I am alone. It is my fault. I can never, ever forgive myself.
I don’t know how long I sit with her body draped across my lap. The tears don’t stop coming. I wouldn’t be surprised if they never stop. But I hear voices nearing, shouting her name—a search party. If they find me here like this, they’ll think I was the one who killed her.
Part of me wants to turn myself in and take whatever punishment they give me. But a bigger part screams at me to run away and survive. So I wipe the tears from my eyes and slip from the ruins into the cover of the trees.
I’ll never forget her or her sacrifice. I’ll never forget this despair I feel at losing her.
And I’ll live. Not because I think I deserve it, or because I even want to, but because she sacrificed herself so I could.