The house is empty, and she's never believed in ghosts. But for her, it will always be haunted.
On the darkest days, time flickers and spins, and she's here again. Standing in front of an overgrown house looming white and still against the glowering forest. She can't stay away. It's not healthy, she knows that. She trails through the rooms, leaving smudges in the dust, brushing her hand against the naked walls. The piano draws her; she always ends up seated on the bench. She runs her fingers down the keys. Funny how the sound seems so lonely now, bouncing off sheet-coverd furniture and dusty walls. They left you behind, too, she whispers to the house. We are the same, you and I. They are everywhere, and nowhere, and even in her dreams she finds no peace.
For the rest of her life, no mattter where she goes, she knows she will always be looking for flashes of hope. Raindrops on golden hair. A gloved hand, shoved deeply into a coat pocket. A pixie-girl twirling in the street while her blonde partner looks on, bemused. A smile she knows like her own. In quiet corners, in crowded airports, searching always for familiarity in the faces of strangers.
Oh, she would know them anywhere.
In the end, she couldn't say what led her through the brewing storm to the cliffs. A thousand tiny things, like razor blades of memory. Cruel wounds, words - you will forget - like salt on blood.
She will never forget.
Wind whips her hair, grabbing at her shirt with warm, humid fingers, and she spreads her arms to the sky. So close but untouchable. She still hasn't learned.
Below her, the sea beats angrily against the rocks. On the days she saw the boys jumping, the sun had shone on tranquility, the water like glass.
Her feet edge closer to the chasm.
I don't love you anymore.
In the mind, the faces of his family flicker like snapshots in a storm, blurring together and crumpling in the wildness of her despair. We don't want you anymore.
What no one can understand, what she can't make them understand, is that she didn't just lose her first love - though God knows, that pain is with her every day. She lost a family, whole in ways her own had never been. She lost a place in their way of life, separate from a world she had never belonged to. She had always known the loneliness, but it hadn't hurt quite so much before she'd understood what she was missing.
She'd sent a thousand emails to Alice, her best friend, and Alice had not read a single one. She had nothing left. No one. If Alice couldn't love her, who can?
In the end it comes down to this: They've moved on, and she never will.
Bella closes her eyes and leaps forward into nothing.
The ocean embraces her violently, shoving itself down her throat and into her lungs, whispering in her drowning ears: Welcome home.
On her way to the bottom, she sighs in relief.