Chapter 66

Scottie

My face feels swollen and my mind groggy as I sit up in bed and look around my room. My hair is still damp, my towel wrapped haphazardly around me, but from the fading light of dusk outside, I can tell quite a bit of time has passed.

My stomach growls, and I rub at the thinning part of my waist in an attempt to quell it. I don’t recommend the fucked-up parent diet, but it’s pretty goddamn effective.

Still, if I have any shot at keeping up my ability to function at a high level for cheerleading, I’m going to have to stop skipping meals at some point.

Newly determined, I drag myself off my bed to my dresser for clothes and pull on the first thing I touch. A silver lining of total emotional devastation, perhaps—I’m not really concerned with my outfits.

I slide on my comfiest pair of Uggs and head for the door, key and wallet in hand. A small breeze blows in as I open the door to the hall, and a ruffling stack of papers on the floor catches my attention. There’s also a cup of hot chocolate from the coffee cart outside of Brower and a brown bag of goodies, the steaming dragon logo on the side of both unmistakable.

I reach for the papers first, flipping through quickly. There are notes for all the classes I missed today and a white piece of paper at the back with a single quote printed across it.

What’s gone and what’s past help, should be past grief.

It’s from The Winter’s Tale, and I can’t think of a single person in our friend group whom I didn’t spam with it while reading it. I resonated with the powerful nature of how it reflects on how we encounter circumstances in life that are beyond our control and believed its notion that it’s more productive to acknowledge what’s happened and accept it so that we can heal and free ourselves from the burden of grief.

But the girl who loved that quote doesn’t even exist anymore.

She was naïve and hopeful and endlessly romantic in the worst way. She thought she knew hardship and grit, but she had no freaking clue.