It's A Shame I'm A Dream

“Last year,” Kristina began, so quietly Aiden nearly missed her words. After he’d finished his story, she’d sat silently for long enough that he started wondering if she was going to say anything helpful at all. Right now, her face was averted from his; her eyes were downcast, staring determinedly at the glossed tabletop, her hands out of sight underneath.

“Last year,” she said again. “Um –” Her eyes flickered up to meet his, and she looked thoroughly confused. In the same moment, they swept on by and rested on something over his shoulder. He waited patiently. When she spoke once more, her voice was low. “My boyfriend – I mean, I used to have a boyfriend named Caedyn.” Her eyes, almost imperceptibly, glassed over. “He was amazing. We had everything to talk about, and he made me laugh all the time. I was…fifteen? He was only a few months older than I was, so my parents couldn’t complain, either. Everything was great.

“But near the end of sophomore year, his parents divorced. There was a giant shouting match and then his dad moved away to Michigan. Caedyn stayed here, with his mom and me, but one day he told me he was going to look for his dad. I asked him why. He said it didn’t feel right – that he needed to fix things, and that he needed to get everything straightened out. I understood, or I thought I did. Sophomore year ended, and I let him go. He promised he’d be back soon.” Here, Kristina’s voice faltered, but she pressed on. “In Michigan, he found his dad. It took him a week, but he found him. He tried to talk to him, but they had another fight. His dad…said some things he shouldn’t have said. Caedyn killed himself.”

Aiden couldn’t speak. He couldn’t find his voice anywhere, didn’t expect this at all. Beautiful Kristina, with these stains in her past? All he could think of to say was: “I’m sorry,” which still sounded much too feeble, too general for every other thing he wanted to tell her.

As if reading his mind, she said, “He walked out onto train tracks.” Her eyes were hidden in the shadows as she stared down at the tabletop.

“That’s terrible,” Aiden whispered. “You shouldn’t have to go through this. It wasn’t your fault.”

“But it was.” She looked up then and he saw her eyes shining with crystal tears, and as she blinked they spilled over onto her cheeks, leaving a rainy trail. “I let him leave. I thought it would all be okay and that he’d come back to me. It was my fault.”

“Don’t think like that. You couldn’t have known this was going to happen.”

“But I should have thought of it.” He opened his mouth to retort, but she cut him off, her voice sharper, stronger this time. “It’s not about me, this time. It’s not. I’m telling you this so you know that I know exactly what you’re going through. Even if you didn’t know Taylor as well as I knew Caedyn, lost is lost. No person should have to die. Suicide is the worst. It hurts so many people, leaves them wondering where they stood when the person was alive.” He knew she was slipping back now, saying the things she thought of herself.

“We forgive and forget,” he said quietly, yet his mind backtracked, tracing the path of Taylor’s suicide. He realized he didn’t even know how she’d died, was so absorbed by this stupid mistake that he nearly missed what she murmured next.

“How can we forgive and forget when there’s nothing to forgive, but everything to forget?”