I knew I was being ridiculous.

This kind of thing happened all the time and people generally moved on…

But most of the time they're not seventeen.

And most of the time, death was all an accident

I had been trying to tell myself that it wasn't my fault. But how could it not have been? There are warning signs for this kind of thing, and I missed them. I should have looked, listened. What kind of friend, let alone girlfriend, had I been to let this happen?

But now, here I was, dressed in black, mourning the loss of the only guy that I had ever loved: my childhood sweetheart, Jacob, who I had been dating for a year.

Jacob had taken his own life, and I had done nothing to stop him.

Even if I hadn't seen the warnings, if I was of any importance to him, he would have at least spoken to me about it, right? Why did he wait until he was gone to break the silence? Didn't he know that I loved him with everything I had? Didn't he realize that even if the rest of the world meant nothing to him, I would still be there? Was I not enough for him to stay alive? Didn't he know how far I would go for him? That no matter what he lost, he would never lose me?

And now I had lost him.

I had always loved Phoenix. It had been my home for sixteen and a half of my seventeen years. I had lived in the Pacific North West the first six months of my life, but when my parents got divorced, my mother, Renee, escaped with me. Phoenix had been my sanctuary. Here, there was no rain to dampen your spirits. No one ever said "the sun'll come out tomorrow" because it was already out today. Phoenix was our pocket full of sunshine.

Now, despite the fact that there wasn't a single cloud in sight, my world was damp and rainy for the first time. The only person, other than Renee and her new husband, Phil, that I was ever able to connect with, was gone. I couldn't depend on my mommy forever. But there was no way I could face the people that I went to school with. The people who probably wouldn't have paid attention to me if they didn't know that my boyfriend was dead.

I have no other choice, I told myself as my mind pondered my only escape, an escape I dreaded.

The only way that I was going to get out of here was to go back to live with my dad in the pretty much flooded little town of Forks, Washington.

The downside: I wasn't kidding when I said that it was pretty much flooded. Though Hawaii has more rain than any other state, Forks probably has more rain that any other town...and that's remarkable considering how small of an area it is to rain on. The town was only 3.1 square miles, 100 inches of rain a year, and nobody that I knew other than my father, Charlie.

The upside: There's not very a large population. Jacob had really been the only one other than my family that I had connected with. I wasn't much of a social person. Where there's not very many people, there's less people to talk to. I wouldn't have as many possibilities for someone to possibly pester me.

The people in Forks probably knew who I was, with my father being the chief of police there, but no one had to know what had happened. My mother and I hadn't even called my father about Jacob, yet. The word could not have possibly spread if my dad didn't know. As long as he just knew that we weren't seeing each other any more, my father didn't need to know any more. Word wouldn't spread, and no one would be sorry for me.

My mind was, unfortunately, made up.

As I packed, Renee tried to persuade me not to go. I only saw Charlie for two weeks every year, and she assured me it was bound to be awkward. Like it wasn't awkward now? She tried to sell me on the points that I had made to myself earlier, like the rain. But anything was better than being stuck with all these memories. Seeing Jacob in my mind everywhere I went.

Before I got on the plane, I asked my mother, as politely as I could, not to tell my father about Jacob. I told her that I would tell him when I felt ready. She agreed.

The entire flight I did nothing but think. I should have watched the movie they were playing, but I was dumb enough not to distract myself. I wondered if I was being weak. People really did get over this kind of stuff. Or at least they moved on. That's why people got remarried after their spouses died. Granted, most remarriages were due to divorce nowadays, it still happened.

Why did I think this was the end of the world? I knew I would never completely get over Jacob's absence, but surely I was something without him. Wouldn't he want me to move on? I would understand that he might be a little jealous if I had found someone else, but it would be better than watching me suffer, right? If he would rather me be miserable in my determination not to live normally than at least make something of my life was he worth anything to me at all?

One thing was for sure: I would never stop loving him. No matter who I met, no matter what I did or didn't tell anybody, no matter what I did or didn't do. He had been too big of a part of my life that there was no replacing him.

I made a resolution. Technically I had never broken up with him, so any dating could be considered cheating. But I didn't have to live in lonliness if I didn't want to. If somehow, I found a way to be social despite my current pessimism, I would allow myself to be happy without him. It was a less corny, less depressing way of saying "I'll never love again."

I couldn't help but wonder, however, if I really would have ended up with Jacob, had he lived. Not that I ever doubted him, but there was this thing that my mother said to me when she remarried. I had questioned her about why she was marrying Phil. It wasn't like she hadn't loved my father, but yet that marriage didn't work out. She told me that you may end up with the wrong person, because you stop looking when you only think that you've found the right one. She said that she didn't even know if Phil was the perfect match for her. That there was no way to ever know if there was someone better than who you settle for.

That's why she always encouraged me not to get married until I was older. It meant I had longer to look, more people to try out. She thought that if I just married the first guy I dated, I would cheat myself out of the perfect person.

Well, she didn't have to worry about that anymore, with Jacob impossible to marry now. But it made me think. Jacob hadn't told me anything about his plans for suicide. Wouldn't someone consider ones they loved, thinking about how hurt others would be if they left?

I still loved him. No matter what he did to me, no matter what he did that could make me hate him for only moments at a time. Even if he thought that I wasn't enough to keep him living. There was still that sense of companionship that I had never felt with anyone else.

I sighed when I saw my father waiting for me at the airport. He did, in fact, ask about Jacob, and I told him that we weren't together anymore. He welcomed me into an awkward, one-armed hug, surprised me with the news that he had bought me a truck, and led me outside, where his police cruiser waited for us.

It didn't take me long to unpack. I wasn't much of a pack-rat, so I didn't have many things. I knew that my father would not go through my room, but I still felt the need to hide all of my pictures of Jacob that I didn't have the heart to throw out. In a matter of 45 minutes, all of my things were organized and easy to find.

As I climbed into bed that night, I could only wonder what was going to happen tomorrow. It would be the first time that I would ever go to school without Jacob by my side, holding my hand. I would be the odd one. Everyone else grew up together here. I would be stared at, and maybe someone might initiate a conversation. Maybe I could be social, if only I let myself.

There was only one way to know...and in a matter of hours, I would find out.