Nightfall ✓

Chapter 22

• chapter twenty-two •

She was a good friend to me. Almost like a sister. She sympathized with me after I told her my story, leaving out the paranormal part because there was no way she would believe that. Such things terrified her anyway; she hated horror movies. She hugged and comforted me at night, instead of letting me cry myself to sleep. She got me a casual job— her neighbors would come to me occasionally and ask me to paint murals on their walls or something. Sometimes they bought my paintings.

Sana stayed at home during daytime, and went away in the evening to whatever bar had offered her a gig, and returned late at night. When she was gone, I sat on the window seat and watched the sunset. The window was big and on good-weather-days I opened it and let the air come in. The view was great from here. There was a park behind our building, thankfully, so no tall towers blocked the sunset. It was mesmerizing: red, orange, then my favorite purple, then a dark blue, and black. And then I would close the window, eat dinner and wait for Sana till midnight, because I didn't like going to sleep before ensuring that she was safely home. And still I woke up in time for my morning jog. Then I painted, or spent time with Sana, and again sat by the window, for minutes, for hours. Days turned into weeks, weeks into months...and months into a year. Almost.

2010 had begun.

Sometimes I sat and looked at his pictures. Most of the pictures had been in my phone, but I didn't have it anymore, so I had to make do with the two or three hard copies that I had. I opened my locket and looked at our prom photo. I didn't cry anymore when I thought of him. I was getting used to the constantly wavering pain. My only regret was that I didn't give myself to him completely, that I didn't go all the way with him. 

And now I was never going to get the chance to do that.

I didn't know what was happening to me. It was scary. I didn't feel like doing anything. I helped Sana in the kitchen. I ate my food. Then I sat by the window again. I had stopped listening to music. I had stopped reading romance novels. Before I picked up a book I made sure that it had not a drop of romance in it, because of which I ended up reading novels full of zombies and guns and blood and fire, which again reminded me of the building and the burnt bodies, so after a while I stopped reading at all. I felt dead.

I had thought the 'hole in your heart' thing was just a metaphor for the pain. But it wasn't. It was real, the pain in your chest. Like something had dug its claws into my flesh. It was always there, whenever I thought of him.

But I had to live with that.

I had been saving the money that I got from painting on my neighbors' walls to buy a new phone.

Mary's ghost wasn't troubling me anymore, probably because she had got what she wanted. She must've taken Liam's soul and used that energy to fucking kill William and whatever. My blood boiled at the thought. Liam's soul. That beautiful, beautiful, loving soul.

One day in July, Sana accompanied me to a bookstore. She never would've done it, but recently I had done something for her and I think she was trying to pay me back as much as she could.

She had wanted to post videos online of her singing, hoping she could make it big someday. She went on and on about how great it would be if she got noticed by a record label. But she was camera shy and got nervous and messed up every time she tried to record herself. And that would put her in a bad mood for the rest of the day. So I hid a camera in her room while she practiced, went to a cyber café since we didn't have wi-fi, and uploaded the videos online. They became popular in just two weeks.

So now here we were at the bookstore. Sana found a chair and sat down, and put in her earbuds. I roamed between the aisles, pulling down harmless comic books, or non-fiction stuff, avoiding the romance section altogether. I found some psychology books by Dr. Brian Weiss.