news they have a different story.

First it was a suspected terrorist attack, but that idea didn't last for very long.

Then they said that it was some kind of conspiracy, which I suppose is closer to the truth.

Now at least it seems they've figured out what really happened, and it is all that plays across the TV screen, the only conversation on the radio, the only words printed in the newspaper.

No one knows how they could have got the gun in.

Apparently, Caleb went to the police the day before the trial and told them about the threats against him, against all of us.

He managed to get an extra couple guards outside the courtroom, officers stationed at his house, people watching.

People watching because at the trial he was going to tell the truth, and he did, and then they shot him.

Stupid.

•§•

in that stages of grief crap until I had to go through it myself.

•§•

No no no.

He's not. He didn't.

Let me see him.

There is no way he's gone.

•§•

No no no.

Shit, Caleb...

Why the fuck would you put yourself at risk? Why did you have to be the good guy because I've been hiding the truth for almost a year and it's been killing me, except now it's you who's dead.

Red, red red red red. Like blood, but so much darker. It burns, and the only thing I can see through the tears is fire.

It should be me, not you.

•§•

Take me instead of him.

Bring him back and I promise I will be a perfect human being.

What if I had told? It would be me, not him.

I should have said something.

I should have been better.

I should have known.

If I had been there with him at court, maybe he wouldn't have done it.

It's because you're a liar and a cheater and a slut and you never deserved him and now he's gone just look what you've done you piece of shit

Why did I have to be so selfish?

Why him?

•§•

I spend a week after the funeral in my bed. The only colour that exists in the world is grey.

I don't shower, I barely eat, I deserve no better.

It is all my fault.

It is also Caleb, and Nero, and...

Fuck. Everything hurts.

My kitchen is full of flowers, but I let them all wilt.

Dishes of casserole cram my fridge, but I don't bother opening it.

I take a leave of absence from work.

Inconsolable.

It plays around and around and around in my head, but it's always the same.

Then there's his smile, his laugh, haunting my every waking moment, filling my dreams. I can actually feel the loss within me, like a hole, and there is nothing capable of filling it, there is no cure.

My phone dies from all the missed calls and hundreds and hundreds of messages, the notifications. I don't plug it in. I will lay here crying alone in this bed.

The universe has spoken; I deserve no love, no justice, no peace.

I deserve to rot here, between the sheets that still smelled like him when I got back home from the hospital after days of waiting, but of course the scent is now gone, like him, and it is never coming back.

That is not acceptance. I am not there yet.

I will never be.

•§•

only an entire month after his death when I manage to pull myself together and take a real shower, eat a full meal, walk out into the light of day.

But even then, I'm no better than I was the seconds after I found out, it's no easier.

It's a good thing I don't drink, I wouldn't even know how, because I would have drowned myself in alcohol, would probably be dead from it.

A part of me is dead, but only the important one.

I won't go through all the mess of it with you, the kind of white roses they had at the service or the sight of his pale corpse, open casket, or the way I haven't spoken to my parents since. Or Shauna, or Natalia. Daniel.

But on the 20th of April (nine days ago was the 10 month anniversary of when we had each other that first time, that Sunday night, and everything since only happened after that) I pull myself together and I go to work and I put a smile on my face and try to pretend that I'm not that girl with the dead boyfriend.

I hear them all whispering, but I'm past caring.

Tell me when I'm supposed to stop feeling like this.

One month?

Two?

Because it's only three months after the funeral that I find it in myself to go with my family (who I don't deserve because they pretend I didn't leave them to grieve alone) to visit Caleb's parents.

There are more tears.

Not over it.

But Mrs Dorn, — call me Laura she used to keep telling me — Laura, holds me in her arms and we dampen each other's shoulders, and it is only after she pours us all coffee that she looks at me, straight, with her glassy eyes, a sad smile.

His younger sister, Molly, is there too.

How have you been?

I smile back. A watery grimace.

She doesn't need me to explain, so I don't.

I can see she's working up to something, she and her husband are shifting in their seats and then another tear rolls down her face and my God they do not deserve to have lost a child.

She sniffles. "We were going through..." A croak, a tissue to the nose, because like me she can't say his name without an inconceivable amount of pain. "Caleb's things, after."

It takes a long, long time.

The one thing I can be is patient.

And as soon as she reaches into her sweater and pulls her hand out, I see it and it makes me choke, and the tears don't stop and it is not okay no no no.

My mom holds me and I let her.

Daniel grips my hand and even he has tears in his eyes and it is not fair because these people in this room all loved him but I'm the only one who never, ever deserved him.

And he never knew.

"He... he just loved you so much, Rosalyn," she sobs, gently.

I try not to sound so disgusting in my grief, my tears, but I am not only crying because I miss him, I'm crying because I am a no good piece of garbage liar liar liar and I. Do. Not. Deserve. This. Them. Him.

And I will never, ever be able to tell him that. The guilt is what is eating me alive.

It's Dad who speaks next, and his voice is just as raw. "I didn't know how to tell you, after, Rosalyn. He came to me a couple days before to ask me if I was okay with it, and of course I said yes. I never knew..."

She slides the little black velvet box across the table and I can't look at it, I just cannot.

Molly smiles at me, so genuinely, and my silent string of tears doesn't stop. "He told us he was planning to propose. We were so happy for him." Her lips quiver. She fights against it, closes her eyes, purses her mouth but she loses, crying just like the rest of us. She's only 19. "I told him how I always wanted a sister except now..."

I just want my brother back.

There are no words to explain the kind of hurt and pain and grief that existed in that room. It is indescribable.

Unless you've experienced it, you could never understand.

I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

That's a lie. The man who should be in prison, the one who shot the gun — I am a terrible human being, we know this, and I wish him dead.