First Impressions

I spent a week and a half in the hospital, suffering with a broken arm and four fractured ribs on my left side, opposite of my arm. They did surgery on my leg, my knee. They told me that I have to stay on crutches for two months and come in for check-ups every two weeks.

I was force fed when I heard about Mom. I didn't sleep at all and it showed from the bags under my eyes.

Brad visited me every day, his parents always having to drag him out. He tried talking to me but I never talked back. All I could think is about Mom lying over the steering wheel and all the blood I saw coming from her.

Now today is Tuesday. Her funeral day.

I didn't wear black like everyone else. I wore the plaid skirt that Mom bought me at the beginning of the year; the one that she thought was cute. The only thing black on me were my combat boots.

I have no family now. Both Mom and Dad were only children; my grandparents already deceased. I'm an orphan.

The only people who came to the funeral were my friends and a couple co-workers from Mom's previous job that still kept in touch with her.

I didn't speak to anyone when they came up to the casket and said their sorry's to me. All I did for those four hours was stare at my mother's face, trying to memorize every single detail because I know I'll never see it again. Ever. It's not the same in the photos because it can never capture her laughter or her cheerful voice.

The only person who helped me through my times is gone.

Dead.

When the doctors first told me about her dying, they said that it was quick and painless when the other vehicles hit. I knew they were lying, because I saw her. She was staring at me and said 'No' to me. I know the truth.

Ironically, it rains when they take her casket out to bury her in the local cemetery, a new place for a new name. I stand there as they bury her, not even crying.

What kind of daughter can't even cry at her own mother's funeral? Do I have a heart anymore, or is it getting dirt sprayed on it like her mother? Disappearing deeper and deeper until it is no longer viewable.

Brad wraps an arm around my waist, but I shift away from him once the grave diggers are done patting the mud down.

"Autum." He whispers, looking at me with concerned eyes. Eyes that are so watery that it just takes a matter of seconds before my tears spill over and run down my cheeks.

Look, there's a heart after all.

Mrs. Fletcher pulls an umbrella over our heads while I cry, completely breaking down in Brad's arms. After that, everything happens unseen. I don't know how I get to my house and sit on my couch. I don't know how Brad ends up beside me with Shale and Trev and Tash and Shelby. I don't know how all of my dogs ended up whimpering and staring at me.

It just happened.

"Autum." A whisper comes to my ear as Brad hugs me. I cringe a little from pain in my ribs but don't say anything.

"How is she gonna live?" Trev asks out of nowhere, earning an elbow-jab from Shale.

"Well, he does have a point. She's only seventeen. I'm only surprised the social services weren't there." Tash states quietly, looking down at his shoes.

"If they were then they would have taken her away from us." Shale argues with her brother.

"But she can't live by herself! Especially in this condition and under the current circumstances!" Tash snaps back. Their partners hold each of them back.

"Just shut up." The deep voiced boy beside me says. I look at Brad with blank eyes. "Everything will be fine. We can handle it."

Liar. Liar. Liar.

Everything will not be fine. You may handle it, but I can't.

I look forward again and keep silent, staring at Mac as she stares back. I'm not sure how long I sit there, but when I look around again, the sun is gone and everyone but Brad has left.

"Autum." Brad whispers, staring at me while he puts his arm around my shoulders. I shrug it off and slowly get up, walking towards the stairs to get to my room. "Autum?"

"Go home. I just need to be alone right now." My mouth moved on its own, my brain didn't even realize it until I saw the look on Brad's face. But even then it didn't have any sympathy for him, no mercy.

Almost dazed, I turn around and hop up the stairs slowly as I hear the front close softly. My crutches take me down the hallway, somehow managing to pause at Mom's room as I peered inside to see many, many pictures of her smiling.

An artery must have shortened somehow because a sudden pain struck my heart and stayed there. So many memories flooded back to me all at once that I fell backwards off of my crutches, landing on my butt and scooting back until I hit the wall. Still staring into her room of smiling faces.

My brain sorted through all of the memories and I started going through them, seeing them, in chronological order.

The time when we both went on a roadtrip to Arizona when I was four. I complained about it being to hot and dry so Mom poured water from a water bottle on my head teasingly. We came back with matching sombreros and maracas.

When Mom made me take ballet when I was six years old, saying something about women having to know how to dance. I finally quit when I was seven because I accidentally kicked a girl in the mouth while attempting to do a new complicated move that the advanced class was learning. I was still in beginners.

The time we had to remodel our house in California when I was nine because Mom was still learning how to cook and burnt the left wall of the kitchen to a crisp. We had to eat take-out for three and a half weeks, making us both gain at least twenty pounds each.

The day that Mom bought me my first guitar when I was eleven because I wouldn't shut up about how much I was going to become famous. The first note I played broke a string and whipped me in the eye, having to make Mom rush me to the emergency room. I had to wear a patch over my eye for two weeks.

My first day of high school, when I was fourteen years old, Mom insisted that I take an economics class. We remodeled our house for the second time because I burnt down the right wall of the kitchen, therefore making me gain another twenty pounds from take-out.

Then, the day Mom got offered her paperwork job in North Carolina. She was so excited. I wasn't. It could have been because California was the only place I've ever really known, but then there was a part of me that was shouting in excitement with my mother because it's like a new adventure. Out with the old and in with the new.

Ever since that day I had fallen through Brad's door, everything has been much more different from California. Everything. Mom's new sense in opening a flower shop and the fact that we spent a lot more time together.

My bottom lip starts trembling when I start thinking of the flower shop. The Time Capsule.

I breakdown there, right on the floor in front of a room with faces smiling back at me, completely unaware of what was going on through the house. Nothing will ever be the same. Nothing will ever be good, like it was. Everything is broken and shattered and unable to be glued or taped or nailed back together.

I cry myself to sleep on the floor, thinking over and over again about how she's gone for good and she'll never be back. I'll never be able to see her face again or feel her arms around me when she hugs me or hear her loud obnoxious laughter or smell her scent of too much foundation and eyeliner.

Everything of her basic existence will be erased and never brought back.

Ever.