The Prelude of Ella and Micha (The Secret 0.5)

This is all your fault.

I push away from Micha and stumble to my dad. I need to tell him I’m sorry for leaving, for not coming home, for not doing better. For being selfish. But when he looks at me, I already know that no amount of sorrys is ever going to cut it.

“This is all your fault,” he says, sounding more sober than he ever has before.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, my voice getting lost in the wind.

“Just get in the car,” he snaps with tears in his eyes. “We need to go to the hospital.”

Nodding, I follow him up the driveway with my head hung low, ignoring Micha when he calls out to me.

I can’t look at him.

Right now.

Never again.

Look anyone in the eye.

After what I did.

I slide into the driver’s seat, my dad not well enough to drive. Then I follow the ambulance through the neighborhood and toward the bridge that exits the town and leads to the closet hospital.

As we cross over the darkened water, I remember the last time I was here. With my mother.

She said she could fly.

She believed that she was invincible.

But she wasn’t.

All because of me.

Chapter 10

2 weeks later…

Ella

I wish I could go back to the sprinkler days, those afternoons when Micha and I would run around his front yard, getting wet. Life was so simple back then, so promising. Nothing is promising anymore.

The funeral is unbearable, yet I manage to get through it, even when my brother Dean informs me that he blames me also. After that, I spend most of my days cleaning the house. It’s the only thing I can focus on that doesn’t make my brain feel like it’s going to explode from the guilt. The only time I can fully breathe is when my father is gone; otherwise, he’s at the house and looking at me like I ruined everything.

Because I did.

As I pack up the clutter in my mother’s bedroom, I feel the truth weighing heavily inside me, like I did when they closed the lid of her coffin. Her death is my burden to carry. Forever.

With each of her belongings I put into the box, the weight grows heavier while repetitive questions replay in my head over and over again.

Is that what she wanted when she did it? To get rid of the burden? To leave this all behind? Her belongings? What was she thinking? Could I have stopped her if I was here? I did once before. That day she went down to the bridge. But I wasn’t here this time.

I’m pretty sure I can fly, Ella May. The last words she ever spoke to me flow through my head. She had to be in the same mindset. Why didn’t I see it? Why am I such a bad daughter?

Why?

Why?

Why?

“Why did you think you could fly, Mom?” I whisper as I clutch onto a necklace that once belonged to her. “What went on in that head of yours?”

Setting the necklace down, I place the box on the unmade bed and open the nightstand drawer to take out the pills she once almost overdosed on. She took a few before she slit her wrists the final night she was alive—at least that’s what the medical examiner said.

Not truly understanding why I do it, I pop two of her pills into my mouth and swallow them, feeling the strangest bit closer to her the moment they slip down my throat and settle into my body.

As the pills seep through my bloodstream, I wander down to the kitchen to do the dishes, feeling slightly dizzy. The way the water moves is odd. The air smells weird, too, like grease and smoke.

Is this how she saw the world?

“I’m headed out,” my dad slurs as he staggers into the kitchen.

Elbow deep in pan grease, all I do is nod.

“I might not be home tonight, just so you know.”

I peer over my shoulder at him. “Okay.”

He lingers by the back door while he clumsily slips his jacket on. He hasn’t been sober since the night my mom died, and he has been binge drinking every night at the bar since the funeral.

“Be safe,” I feel the need to say.

He blinks at me like I’ve slapped him. “God, you look so much like her,” he mutters as he reaches for the back door. “It hurts to even look at you anymore.” Then he storms out, slamming the door behind him.

It seems like I should cry, but I think my tear ducts broke the night I found her.

Everything broke.

After I finish up the dishes, I trudge up to my room with my father’s words echoing in my mind.

It hurts to even look at you anymore.

Hurts.

Everything hurts.

I stand in front of the mirror on my wall, wondering if maybe he’s right. I do look so much like her. Leaning forward, I squint at my own eyes that are squinting back at me. For the briefest moment, something painful flashes across my expression.

The truth.

Of who I am.

My reflection can see it.

What I did.

Panicking, I rip the sheet from the bed and throw it over the mirror, breathing heavily. Is this what everyone sees when they look at me? What I did? What I caused?

“I need to get out of here.” I hurry out of my bedroom, bolt down the stairs, and then outside. I start to jog down the driveway—run, run, run away—when I hear Micha call out my name.

“What are you doing?” he asks over the sound of his boots thudding against the concrete as he jogs after me.

I almost keep going, keep running to the end of the driveway. When I get there, I’ll turn right and go to the bus stop. Then I’ll buy a one-way ticket out of here. Leave everything behind, including myself.

“Baby, did you hear me?” The sadness in his voice stings at my heart and my guilt.

I want to scream at him not to call me baby. I don’t deserve such an endearing name, don’t deserve him. Yet he seems to think the opposite, refusing to leave my side unless I lock myself in the house. Micha knows I’m breaking, and he wants to stop it, but I don’t deserve to stop breaking.

I halt and stare down the driveway at the neighbor’s kids across the street who are running through the sprinklers. Happy. He should be happy. Not sad.

“I don’t know.”

The fence rattles as he hops over it and then hurries up behind me. “Is everything okay?”

“Yes.”

“I ...” When he reaches me, he lowers his face and puts his mouth beside my ear. “What do you need from me? Please, tell me what you need.”

I squeeze my eyes shut. His nearness is painful. His nearness reminds me of the night two weeks ago when everything was perfect.

And then it wasn’t.

“I just need …” I open my eyes and dare to look at him. The worry in his aqua gaze makes me instantly regret it, though. Micha sees everything inside me. He has to see the ugliness in me right now.