It was difficult to stay angry at a dead person. Correction, it was difficult to stay so actively mad at a dead person. Ivy Robinson had a struggle. A huge, impossible struggle. Most days she laid in a bed that wasn't hers and stared at a ceiling that kept her from seeing the sun or the stars and just wrestled with her own emotions. It felt like a prison. It felt like a casket.
She hated and loved Jason simultaneously, the emotions sometimes took shifts, rolling around in her head and gut until eventually crossed paths and she screamed into the pillow. Sometimes she imagined that the pillow still smelt like him. She wasn't even sure if she had ever really known him. It had felt like it.
Sometimes she got angry and hated Peter instead. Hated that she was in this position, in this version of the world and that someone else could claim more grief than her. Then she hates herself because, like grief is even a fucking contest.
Ivy hadn't unpacked. Like this was a temporary state in life, or it was a dream and she didn't want to get too comfortable for when she woke up. Of course, if this was a dream than she would hate to find out what her nightmares were like.
Nadia didn't come in and visit. She couldn't bring herself to step into the room. Sometimes she'd sit outside the door and talk to her, and Ivy would sit on the other side and talk back.
Nadia couldn't come in the room, and Ivy couldn't bring herself to leave it. She was afraid to move or change anything, because everything was still so fresh and new and if she altered anything then it wouldn't be his anymore.
After the funeral, after all that mess, several things had occurred. First, everyone's parents arrived, or some version of them. It was concerning when a student not only fell over and died in the middle of a school play, but even more so when he had done so willfully.
An outrage was raised, certain things were looked into. The church was a place of comfort, not a place where an all American boy took his own life. Nadia's parents decided to take her out of school, as they no longer felt they could trust the school. This pushed Ivy to have to come clean to her own mother the current situation she had gotten herself into (coming on the heels of her other mess just a few months prior, her mother was unimpressed), and to come clean to Jason's parents.
Jason's parents had remained aloof and stoic throughout the time they had spent at the school, with the memorial and collecting their remaining child. Nadia said they were probably having a hard to rationalizing what they had heard about the cause of Jason's suicide, and were most likely processing it into denial. Ivy could see it when Nadia introduced them to her, and Mr. McConnell recognized her name from Jason mentioning it to him. Mrs. McConnell cried when Ivy confessed to being pregnant, and not in the same way that Ivy's mother had.
It was weird, it was awkward. It was kind of uncomfortable. They referred to her as Jason's girlfriend, which wasn't entirely untrue but she felt more like an experiment now than an actual person in his life. They wouldn't hear of anything else, and Nadia eventually told her to let it be because they lived in their own version of reality, and not even the very real death of their son could stop that.
They had invited her to come stay with them, as she was now carrying the only physical part left of Jason. It was something, again, that was weird, awkward and uncomfortable but also something her and her parents had agreed to. It was for the best, she wasn't sure what her parents would do with a pregnant teenager who managed to fuck up so badly in two schools in less than a year.
And here she was now. Alternating between so many mixed emotions and living in a room that belonged to a ghost. The McConnells had other rooms, but they had given her this one. They said it would comfort her, but she felt more like they couldn't stand to have it empty.
Ivy needed a plan. Ivy was a mess. Ivy had plans, but they no longer fit the current shape of her life. Ivy always had been a mess, this was nothing new.
She wasn't sure what sort of plans she could even make when it felt like so many things had been taken out of her hands. She couldn't make the choice whether or not to have a full family because the father of her child had died. She couldn't make a choice of whether or not to even keep the baby, because who got rid of a dead person's baby? She had planned on keeping it before, of course, but that's when she thought there was still a chance Jason would be there, at her side. Now Jason was all around her, but not in a physical or supportive way. She felt owned, but unsure of what she could do as a pregnant teenager whose parents were done with her fuck ups.
So she stayed in bed. She ate the food was brought to her. And she sat by the closed door and talked to Nadia.
Nadia was her anchor, who could have ever imagined?
"I think it's creepy," Nadia told her one day, while Ivy sipped tea and rested her head against the door.
"You think everything's creepy," Ivy responded. She didn't ever initiate these conversations but Nadia always said things that she couldn't help but respond to. So that hadn't changed.
"That's because everything is creepy," was the response. "But, Jason hardly ever came home and used that room and now they can't handle having it empty? Maybe they should've never, I don't know, sent him to boarding school then?"
Ivy was quiet. She wasn't contemplative, because she didn't like to dwell too much on these things. It would just bring on the mash of emotions she hadn't quite figured out how to process yet.
Nadia never let the silence last for too long. For someone that had been friendless for so long, she talked an awfully lot. Ivy wondered if perhaps Nadia had spent hours talking into the mirror before the two of them had made their peace. Or maybe that's what had driven her last roommate away.
"I'd say it's creepy that you never leave," this was said more quietly and softly than her previous words. "But then you'd have to deal with them, so I get it."
The McConnells were only the tip of the iceberg. Ivy enjoyed wallowing in her misery. If she left, if she moved on with her life, if she enjoyed herself, then...what did it mean? As it were, her body was a ticking time bomb set to bring her back to reality in a matter of months, so she was taking advantage of the privilege while she could.
She wondered if Peter wallowed in his room, too. Or if he had stayed at school. And if so, was he tortured or pitied? Sometimes, thinking of Peter made her feel closer to Jason. Like the two of them had become nearly one entity in her mind. Maybe that was why sometimes she hated Peter, too.
Ivy didn't respond to that, either. She had no real problem with the McConnells, and she felt uneasy about saying anything unkind about people who had taken her in.
Neither did she want to stay there forever. When she could think of her pregnancy as an actual child in the world, it was still blurry. But if it was a boy, then she didn't want it to feel the same crushing pressure that Jason had felt in this family. If it was a girl...well, she didn't want it to end up like Nadia.
"Does it feel creepy?" Nadia spoke up again, when she got stuck on a theme...well, she got stuck on a theme. "Knowing you're carrying the second coming of Jesus?"
Ivy made a face. The McConnells had given her some space while she settled in, but she didn't want to think about their projecting their attachment from their ideal of Jason to their grandchild. Their grandchild. She didn't think about it like that, either. It was weird to think of it belonging to anyone else but her.
"What are you going to do?" Ivy spoke up, finally. She didn't want to talk about Jason, or her future, or her past.
"I don't know," Nadia responded. She was tapping the floor, or maybe the door. "RIght now I am being home-cooled!" The inflection went up as she said the last word, in a perfect imitation of Diane. "By tutors, naturally. And then...I don't know."
"We should leave," she said suddenly, sitting up. She wasn't even aware what she was saying, but it was the first burst of genuine energy she had felt in days. "Not now, because they would only come get us. But when we've graduated from...whatever we're graduating from, we should leave."
"That was, literally, always my plan," was the deadpanned response. "I thought you were faster than that, Ivy."
"Funny," she said, relaxing back against the door. She was losing her enthusiasm at the prospect. Maybe she should just stay here. It had been comfortable, and it was filled with Jason's things. How else would she be able to expose it to Jason?
She was thinking too much about this again.
"But really," Nadia told her. "I'm glad you're showing some initiative of leaving that room."
"I'm not ready to move on." It seemed safe in that room. But then, Jason had always had that comforting effect on her. When she felt bitter, she had wondered if that had even been real. It was so hard to connect who Jason had been with her, to her, with the boy in that photo.
Had she ever known him? Or was it just this one thing, this one thing he had kept from everyone. He had certainly been careful not to claim to love her. Ivy just...had all these questions with no one there to give her an actual answer.
Nadia was quiet, because she had her own demons and doubts when it came to Jason.
"Do you think I"m being stupid?" Ivy asked, suddenly before the question settled in her.
"No," was the response. "Well, I'm trying not to. I honestly don't know what I'd be doing in your position."
That was the problem. Neither did Ivy.
She wanted to believe that everything would be okay, if only Jason were here. But it was going to have to be, without him here.
Ivy moved away slightly, reaching up to open the door. It was ridiculous to talk through a door, and she was stronger than that. Or at least, she had enough skills to pretend to be.
Nadia looked away when the door was opened. Right. Nadia, like Ivy, had chosen the more casual forever in pajamas look. Anything to stop from being a real person, at the moment.
"Nadia," she said, resting her cheek against the doorframe. "I don't want to do this alone."
"You're not," was the response. "Listen, you have me." Ivy did some sort of version of a snort and a laugh, and she choked on it. "I know, it's a surprising source of comfort." Nadia drew her knees up towards her chin. "And, they are completely misguided and in denial, but you have my parents. And you have to stay strong, because otherwise they'll steamroll right over you." Nadia made motions with her hands to imitate the steam rolling. "And...I'm sure your parents will come around."
"Maybe," the word came out more as a sigh. "I just...wish Jason was here."
"Me too."
"I mean even if he was..." Ivy said, letting the sentence complete itself. "I just want him here, here."
It was a redundant thought, maybe. And unnecessary, because Nadia obviously felt the same, though for her own reasons.
Nadia looked up at the ceiling, and was silent for a few moments. "Eventually you're going to have to reenter the world without him."
"I am," she agreed. She had always been on the lonely side, but she hadn't truly felt alone until Jason died.
It wasn't because she had been in love with him, because she had. But now she had this overwhelming responsibility that she had to handle alone. There was Nadia, and parents but it wasn't the same.
"I always think about how I should've talked to Jason," Nadia said suddenly, looking over at her for the first time since Ivy had opened the door. She looked beyond her, into the room. "Like, about anything. But we never talked about anything real, and so when something real came up...I didn't know how. So I kept quiet, because he had. But we should've talked." She brought her gaze down as she dragged her hand along the floor. "That's why I come here every day, because we need to talk and people should talk. And no one in this house ever has."
"It helps," she admitted. It was true. If Nadia didn't come and talk to her through the door, she wasn't sure where she'd be. Lonely and stir crazy. Ivy drew a deep breath. She was strong. "When you tutor comes on Monday, maybe I'll join."
Nadia laughed. "Of all the things to get you out of your room, school?"
Ivy shrugged, "I should probably avoid as many cliches as I can and get a diploma or something."
She had plans, she couldn't just stay hidden inside the closest thing to a comfort zone she could find. She owed it to herself, and to...this baby.
"That's the spirit," Nadia said, raising her fist in the air with mock cheer. "I am going to go get food before my parents get the idea we should all eat together."
Ivy nodded, scooting back into the room.
She could absolutely do this.