At first I felt hope. Jonathan suddenly came back and I thought Red would be with him, she should have been with him. I was so happy to see him anyways but he ignored me, acted like we had never even been friends. Then our professor made the announcement. Red had been found dead in the park, you know that one that she really cared about. I felt so dumb for never looking there. I was sad that Jonathan, my only other friend was ignoring me. I was mad at him, almost blamed him like her death was somehow his fault and I felt this weird pain in my chest that I didn't know I was capable of feeling.
It was a strange feeling like I swallowed a big rock or something and I couldn't really get it to go down right. It was different to my constant numbness and happened almost immediately when I found out Red was gone for good. It hurt. Bad. Even worse than when I found out I couldn't do gymnastics any more. Even more than I had been feeling the past couple of weeks they had been gone and no matter how much I tried to ignore that rock it wouldn't go away.
I started slipping even more than. Little things like forgetting extra pencils, not hearing that I was called on, leaving a textbook at home. Stuff that I never did. I would frantically search my bag like it was the end of the world like for some dumb reason that stuff actually mattered. But it didn't. And the more I started to realize that the more everything seemed pointless.
I never went to her funeral, actually I'm not even sure if she ever had one. Jonathan acted like nothing ever happened, just went back to the way he had always been, studying like everything was normal and I never met her parents or any family. But I guess I didn't really want to go anyways even if she did have one. I wouldn't have been able to handle it I think.
You see I never cried when I found out because that was just something I never did. Ever. Jack was the first person to see me cry and I think I might have been the first person to see him cry, maybe even the only one.
