“Yes.”
“That’s every day for me.”
I’d never told anyone that before. I’d never confessed how heavy my heart sat in my chest, how hard it was to breathe every single day, but she had opened up to me in the middle of the night, and I figured why the hell not open up to her, too. We were on an even playing field. She was sad, and I was hurting, too.
I was suffering partly from insomnia, partly from too much loneliness, and mostly from keeping it all to myself. I’d never thought Shay would be the one I’d be opening up to, yet there I was—unraveling before her and hoping she wouldn’t judge.
She didn’t judge me.
You could see when a person was judging you, could see their disapproving stares, but Shay was there with only honesty in her eyes. I didn’t know how much I craved her honesty until she gave it so willingly.
“What makes you feel down?” she asked me.
“I don’t know,” I confessed. The words echoed in my head. I sounded a lot more like my uncle than I wanted to. So often I thought some of his dark shadows had embedded themselves inside of me. Maybe it ran in my genes—the sad trait. Eitherway, I felt as if I was fighting a daily battle against depression, and I wasn’t winning.
Depression.
Why did that word feel so heavy?
Why did it make me feel like such a failure?
I was fighting to avoid being swallowed alive by my own mind, and it was an exhausting task to face. I wished they taught us about depression in school. I wished we were given tips and tricks to avoid falling too deep into the dark. Instead, we learned algebra equations. I couldn’t wait for that to come in handy in my life.
“Are you depressed?” she asked. She said the question as if it wasn’t a loaded gun pointing straight at my face.
“No,” I lied. I’d always lie about that. People looked at you differently if they thought you were depressed, especially when your life looked a certain way, when it seemed you didn’t have anything to be sad about at all. I knew after I found out about Lance’s depression, I looked at him differently. It wasn’t even on purpose, but when a person you love was broken, you saw the cracks every time they were around you, and you wished you had the tools to fix those breaks.
“You always lie about that?” she questioned.
“Never had to lie about it because no one ever asked.”
“You’re going to get sick of being around me. I ask a lot of straightforward questions. I don’t sugarcoat things.”
“I don’t sugarcoat anything either. I don’t have the energy to do so.”
She stared at me for a while, tilting her head, taking mental notes on me. Then she parted her lips. “I should get back to my cousin’s house before they notice I’m gone.”
“Yeah, of course.”
I wanted her to stay a little bit longer. We wouldn’t evenhave to talk. We could just sit in silence and it would be good enough for me. But she wasn’t mine to keep.
She was still sad, worrying about her dad, and she had every right to be sad, too. Lance had lied about his problems, and it was the ultimate cause of his death, so I knew how serious it could be.
On the drive, we passed a park, and Shay called out quickly, “Can we stop here real quick?”
I raised an eyebrow. “Why?”
“I want to see something.”
I pulled the car over and parked, and we both climbed out. Now it was my turn to trust where she led me. We walked through the woods, down the pathway, and it seemed like Shay was on a mission to find a certain thing.
When we came to an opening where two huge willow trees sat, she walked over to them, running her fingers along the bark. The two trees were connected, twisted into each other as if they were meant to be together as one. The closer I grew to the tree, the more I noticed the carvings in its bark.
“It’s called the lovers’ tree,” Shay said, still searching. “The story is that if a couple comes here and carves their names into the trunk of the tree, their love story will last forever. My family has been doing it for decades and decades.”
“That’s corny,” I muttered. But kind of cool, too.
“I love it,” she replied. “Well,lovedit.” She stopped when she found a set of initials.