Achieving Unbroken

-Chapter 41-

Achieving Unbroken
Chapter Forty One

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"Bed bugs only bite the lonely
Baby I've got scares from
wishing you could hold me"
Another Summer Night Without You | Alexander 23

—

Lilla
[Friday, July 30th, 2018 - 11:48 PM]

"It was all over the news in the next week," Jason continues. "'Teenage son of owners of Oakland Law dead of a drug overdose.' Friends and distant relatives kept calling and thinking that it was me who died. My parents told them it was Joey. They said 'oh, that was the younger one'. It really only made things worse."

"Oh my God," is close to all that I can think of saying right now. We had all gotten the "key words" at school and on the news: Joey, death, overdose.

But the details, the play-by-play, were more horrific than I could have ever imagined.

I feel the sudden need to go punch Charlie Felds, too.

"Like I've told you before, a lot of changes were made in my family that affected him in a disastrous way. After that night, I slowly trailed through the stages of grief: refusing to believe he was gone, angrily blaming myself for not seeing signs and my parents for making such huge decisions, wondering if I turned to alcohol or drugs the pain would go away. This whole time, I was simultaneously experiencing the depression stage, which I was heavy in when junior year started. The school year dragged on, I got better, and then... You."

I turn my head away from the rolling waves to face him.

"Me?"

I'm the reason he's on the track to being at peace with himself and Joey?

His eyes shift, and tear into mine, grabbing on so strong that I can't look away unless he does first. The idea of blinking is nonexistent.

"Yes, you. Everyone at school was too scared to be bothered with me. And maybe it's because you knew Joey, unlike everybody else, but you showed me that I deserve to be able to start moving on. No one had done that. No one had shown to me that I needed to be heard, and that I could get out of the hole that I had dug for myself. No one had shown me that... God... I don't know how to really say it."

I bring my hand up to lightly clutch his arm, rubbing my thumb against the soft fabric of his sweatshirt.

"Just try, its only me."

A few strangled breaths later, he figures out a way to put it.

"No one had showed me that how I continued to go about life mattered. My parents have made a habit of tendencies that they developed after his death. Loraine won't eat, Mom doesn't sleep and spends most nights at the firm, and Dad has just become so skeptical and such an asshole. Kinda like me, I guess."

At this realization, Jason pulls his body away, and faces back towards the ocean. I keep my hold on his arm.

"Hey," I tug on his arm, "you are not an asshole. You went through something that the majority of kids at Bringham won't ever experience. They all heard about what happened and had made their own poor judgement calls. I wouldn't want to talk to anybody, either."