Obviously I’d known it was coming. I even realized when I said no to going to the dance with Grayson that I was starting to feel it, but suddenly I was so deep in it I didn’t know which way was up anymore. In fact it was so bad I wondered if maybe I hadn’t been feeling a bit depressed all along.
It was mid-March now. Over a month had already slipped by since my birthday. I’d barely noticed. I’d been too busy being sad to realize exactly how depressed I was until my mom woke me up one Saturday morning and forced me to go see someone.
After my counseling session—and after my mom filled the prescription of anti-depressants the doctor had prescribed for me—I wasn’t in the mood to talk to my mother anymore. I went straight to my room and stayed there.
It was two in the afternoon when the weight of someone sitting down on my bed woke me.
“Avery?”
His quiet voice was so timid, but it was still one of my favorite sounds in the whole world. It was a voice I knew as well as my own.
“Aiden?” I sat up and almost screamed when I saw his face. “What happened to you?”
Aiden shrugged like it was no big deal. “I pissed off Grayson.”
“Grayson did that to you? You’re disfigured!”
Aiden winced. “I really pissed him off.”
I hated to be so startled, but Aiden looked awful. Half his face was black and blue and his nose was swollen to twice its normal size. I couldn’t believe Grayson had hit him.
“Is your nose broken?”
“Not badly. Doctor said it would heal on its own.”
Once the subject of his bruises was out of the way, I wasn’t sure what else to say. I didn’t know what he was doing in my room, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted him there. Things got awkward, fast.
Outside, a dog barked, snapping us both from the thick silence that had settled between us. Aiden pulled his thoughts together and said, “Come with me to the Natural History Museum. My parents got me an annual pass for my birthday. I haven’t used it yet.”
It figured. “My mom got me a pass too.”
“I know. They thought we’d like to be able to go together.”
I couldn’t make sense of my emotions. I was feeling a whole spectrum of them. In that moment bitterness won out. “Must have bought them a long time ago.”
Aiden stood up and started pacing my small bedroom at the foot of my bed. “Actually, I suggested them for both of us a week before our birthdays,” he explained. “When my parents gave me mine that afternoon, I was going to come see if you would go with me, just the two of us.”
I’m not sure why that was so painful to know, but I had to close my eyes and push back tears. Then I figured something out. “That’s when your parents told you I’d gone up to the condo with Grayson.”
Aiden obviously didn’t want to go there. He stopped pacing and caught my eyes in an unyielding stare. “Come to the museum with me.”
I wanted to go with him. As much as I was mad at him, I could never hate him. He must have known that, or he wouldn’t be here. I missed him so much, but I was scared of him now, so I chickened out. “I don’t feel like going to the museum today.”
“I know you don’t feel like it. You haven’t felt like doing anything for weeks. I’m asking you to come anyway. I’ll beg if I have to.”
“No.”
“Why?” Aiden demanded. “Because you’re depressed? Because you hate me? Because you want to get back at me?”
All of his reasons probably applied, but they weren’t what was stopping me. I shook my head, but his eyes demanded an answer.
“Because I’m scared of you. I don’t trust you not to hurt me again.”
Aiden stopped pacing, devastated by my confession. He walked over to the window and stared out of it. I could barely hear him when he said, “I deserve that.”
We lapsed into another long silence.
Aiden noticed my new diary on my desk and, after reading the front cover, held it up to me with a questioning look.
I felt myself blush. “He gave me that for my birthday,” I muttered. “It’s a long story.”
Aiden set the book back down without saying anything and then looked at the large corkboard collage that now hung on the wall above my desk. It was the only thing that had changed about my room since the last time Aiden had been in here. It started out as an outline for the experiment, but then as Grayson and I began to go places and do things, it became more of a collection of souvenirs.
It had everything from a printout of our bowling scores to the tabs from our Red Bull cans glued onto an index card in the shape of a heart. And there were endless pictures. Pictures taken during science club and from Grayson’s basketball games. There were tons from the party and my birthday and a few of my favorite random ones of Grayson and me together.
Aiden had his back to me, so I couldn’t study his face as he looked at the collage, but watching him examine it made me feel bad. I’d done so much without him. Looking at that board, he probably thought I was a completely different person.
“I was planning to use it as a visual aid at the science fair. Just kind of a fun backdrop to all of the actual pieces of the display, but now it looks like I won’t need it. The Avery Shaw Experiment had been put on hold, most likely indefinitely.”
Aiden finally turned around and looked at me. He sounded cautious as he said, “Why?”
I shrugged. “The science fair is next weekend. I don’t think there’s any way to finish in time. I don’t know how to reach the last stage of grief, and I think my partner has given up on me.”
Aiden reached up to touch his bruised face and muttered, “My nose would have to disagree.”
Before I could ask him why Grayson hit him—I suspected I was the cause of their fight—he asked, “What is the final stage of grief?”
I felt myself blush again. “Acceptance,” I whispered, looking down at my lap. “Hope.”
Aiden didn’t say anything.
When I finally looked up, he was watching me. He was chewing on his top lip as if debating whether or not to say what was on his mind. He always did that when he was nervous.
“What?” I asked.
He pushed his hand through his hair and then sat down on my bed again. “Maybe you’ve just been looking for the answer to this one in the wrong place.”
I didn’t want to tell him I hadn’t been looking for the answer at all. I’d given up weeks ago. But right now he had me interested.
Aiden knew me too well. He knew that playing to my analytical nature would work better than graveling or bribing or anything else he could come up with. He was “playing the science card” as Grayson called it, because he knew I wouldn’t be able to resist that.
“What do you mean?” I asked slowly.
Aiden smiled at his victory.
“People who lose their loved ones often visit gravesites,” he said. “They talk to the dead. They get all their feelings off their chest in order to make peace. You haven’t done that.”
Hadn’t I? Was he forgetting what happened on our birthday? I think I unloaded quite a bit of my feelings that day.
Aiden knew exactly what I was thinking. “You yelled at me,” he said. When I opened my mouth he quickly cut me off. “You had every right to do that. I don’t blame you for it, but maybe you have things you want to say now that you’re not so mad.”
“I don’t know what there is to say, but I am still confused,” I admitted.
“Then give me the chance to explain. Ask me whatever you need to. I promise I’ll answer anything you can throw at me as best I can. Let me try to apologize too. I can’t ever erase what happened, but I can definitely try to make it up to you. Come to the museum with me today. Let me stand in for Grayson on this one. Let me help you find your acceptance.”
My heart pounded at its first glimpse of hope in months. Was there really a chance I could find acceptance? Aiden’s theory made sense. Facing the cause of your grief is necessary in order to obtain acceptance. How could I ever get closure without ever trying to make sense of what had happened?