The Saddest Song - By Susie Kaye Lopez Page 0,8

onto my desk watching them spin and scatter and come to a stop. I left them like that and put the blue paper clip back on the bag.

I stood up slowly, feeling suddenly exhausted and wondered what to do with myself. I couldn’t come up with a thing so I lay down on my unmade bed and simply waited for the oblivion of sleep. Sleep was the only break I had from my pain and I thankfully did not have to wait long for it to rescue me.

I woke up forty five minutes later feeling groggy and confused until the memory of Garrett flooded my mind once again. Pain seared my chest and I didn’t know where to go to escape it. What could I do? I could only sleep so long in the daytime or I would become an insomniac in the night. I stood up and stretched and headed toward my bathroom when something on my desk caught my eye and froze me in my tracks. Shouting for my parents I waited wordlessly until I realized that neither of them were home yet. I was alone. I slowly moved closer to my desk and stared at the M&M’s I had scattered across it earlier. They were still there, only now they were arranged in the shape of a perfect heart.

I reacted on instinct, wanting to reach out and tell Max what I was seeing. I grabbed my cell phone, almost dropping it as it simultaneously vibrated alerting me that I had a new text message. Still staring at the M&M’s, my heart raced erratically and my hands shook as I looked down to read the text. Maybe it was from Max. I blinked several times and reread it over and over as my brain tried to process what was spelled out across the screen.

I could not comprehend what I was seeing. Not the candy, not the text. I was hallucinating. I had finally cracked and now I was insane. My grief had consumed me and taken me to the brink of madness. I began to shake everywhere and leaned toward the foot of the bed, falling on the pillow top mattress as I grew light headed and tiny grey specks clouded my vision. I closed my eyes tight and fought to breathe deep and even, struggling against the purest panic I had ever felt. In and out, in and out I breathed until I got a grip on my sanity and slowly opened my eyes. I glanced down at my cell phone again, hoping that what I saw earlier hadn’t been a sign I was going nuts. I had to have imagined it because I missed Garrett so much. But when I looked at the words and read them over nothing had changed.

Was someone playing a joke? I tried to respond to the message asking “Who is this?” but my phone said the number was out of service. I checked the number and recognized that yes it was Garrett’s number. Could someone else have accessed his cell phone number? Even if they had, how would they know that I thought I had killed him? How would they know about the candy I had brought home today? There had to be a reasonable explanation for what was happening here. It was impossible, but it was undeniable. I had a text message and it was from Garrett.

You are only guilty of making me fall in love with you. The accident was not your fault. Eat those M&M’s for me. I love you.

Max

Time has a way of passing no matter what crap you are dealing with, and every day I felt even farther from Garrett. But I was glad that the freshness of the shock was less and the acceptance of the unacceptable was more. I kept my emotions on a fairly even keel and it helped. There were only a few things that happened to rattle my composure. The first time I had felt a hand on my shoulder I chalked it up to grief and exhaustion, the second time I was just plain freaked out.

I had been playing my guitar. Nothing unusual there, it was basically the only thing I was doing these days. I thought I heard mom or dad in Garrett’s room so I went in to check on them and saw that his Xbox was on. His favorite game was on the TV screen. His bedroom door was still closed so I went out into the