I knelt down and pressed my face to the glass and I saw what I had done to you then. It was a stark realization that no matter how much you love someone, you can still do despicable things to them.
It was like a wave of the most intense pain you could ever imagine rolled right over me. My body rolled with it. It started at my head and I curled in on myself, all the way to my toes. I groaned, and I sobbed, and when I went back around the car to touch your hand again, there was nothing. No pulse in your wrist. No heartbeat in your palm. No warmth in your fingertips.
I screamed. I screamed so much, I stopped being able to make sounds.
And then I panicked. It’s the only way to describe what happened to me.
I couldn’t find either of our phones, so I started running toward the highway. The further I got, the more confused I grew. I couldn’t imagine that what happened was real, or that what was happening was real. I was running down a highway with one shoe. I could see myself, like I was ahead of me, running toward me, like I was in a nightmare, not making any progress.
It wasn’t the memories of the wreck that took time to come back to me. It was that moment. The part of the night that was drowned out by the adrenaline rush and hysteria that bowled through me. I started making noises I didn’t know I could make.
I couldn’t breathe because you were dead, and how was I supposed to breathe when you had no air? It was the worst realization I ever had, and I fell to my knees and screamed into the darkness.
I don’t know how long I was on the side of the road. Cars were passing me, and I still had your blood on my hands, and I was scared and angry and couldn’t stop seeing your mother’s face. I had killed you and everyone was going to miss you, and you wouldn’t be around to make anyone feel appreciated or important anymore, and it was my fault, and I just wanted to die.
I didn’t care about anything else.
I just wanted to die.
I walked out into the street at what I’m guessing was around eleven at night, and a car had to swerve to miss me. I tried three times, with three different cars, but none of them hit me, and all of them were angry that I was in the road at dark. I got honked at and cussed at, but no one put me out of my misery, and no one helped me. I had already walked over a mile, and I didn’t know how far away I was from my apartment, but I knew if I could just get there, I could step off my fourth-floor apartment balcony, because that was the only thing I could think to do in that moment. I wanted to be with you, but in my mind, you were no longer trapped under your car in that wreck. You were somewhere else, floating around in the dark, and I was determined to join you because what was the point? You were my whole point.
I began to shrink with every second that passed, until I felt invisible.
And that’s the last thing I remember. There’s a long stretch of nothing between me leaving you and me even realizing I left you.
Hours.
Your family was told I walked home and fell asleep, but that’s not exactly what happened. I’m almost positive I fainted from shock, because when the cops beat on my bedroom door the next morning and I opened my eyes, I was on the floor. I noticed a small puddle of blood on the floor next to my head. I must have hit my head going down, but I didn’t have time to inspect it because police were in my bedroom and one of them had his hand on my arm and he was lifting me to my feet.
That’s the last time I ever saw my bedroom.
I remember my roommate Clarissa looked horrified. It wasn’t because she was horrified for me. She was horrified for herself. It was as if she had been living with a murderer all this time and had no idea. Her boyfriend, we could never remember his name—Jason or Jackson or Justin—was comforting her like I had ruined her day.
I almost apologized to her, but I couldn’t get my thoughts to connect with my voice. I had questions, I was confused, I was weak, I was hurting. But the most powerful of all the feelings flooding me in that moment was my loneliness.
Little did I know, that feeling would become perpetual. Permanent. I knew when they put me in the back seat of the police car that my life had reached its peak with you, and nothing that came after you would ever matter.