Moving On Sophia Abrego De La Garza

PARANORMAL/GOTHIC SOPHIA ABREGO DE LA GARZA

MOVING ON

Sophia Abrego De La Garza is a rising junior for the Writing, Literature, and Publishing major at Emerson College. She is an avid reader, movie watcher, and lover of the dark and mysterious. You can often find her roaming the local cemeteries, with her nose in a book, and music in her ears.

Inever thought I’d die so young.

Throughout my life, I’d been constantly fed the “don’t drink and drive” lectures and the “don’t get in a car with someone who's been drinking” conversations. I never thought I would regret brushing off all the videos, presentations, and speakers whose lives were also ruined. But I do now. I regret that entire day, the entire night, the entire decision.

It’s Dad’s 40th birthday, and there’s another drink in his hand. He’s on his fifth glass of the night, and Mom is not so subtly attempting to tell the waiter that Dad has reached his limit. I don’t understand why adults decide that drinking excessively is a better idea than attempting to figure out how to solve the issues at hand. I guess the drinking could have been prevented if I hadn’t started the fight about having my curfew extended, although Mom didn’t help either by bringing up Dad’s demotion and asking how they would pay the incoming bills. It wasn’t the first time Dad drank too much; however, it was rare that he made it a public affair.

It may have been my guilt from arguing earlier or my assumption that he could handle his alcohol. I should have said something, anything, everything. Yet, I kept quiet and said nothing. Remembering how Mom would always tell me to stay quiet and

Moving On 51 go to my room whenever her and Dad would fight at home. Those fights always ended with a smashed bottle on the floor, and the slam of the front door as Dad left for the night.

Mom tried to stop him, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Yelling at the top of his lungs in an almost empty parking lot, his voice going hoarse as he snatched the keys from Mom, and that was that. If she had kept arguing, then maybe things would have been different. But she never argued for long. We all get into the car, Dad stumbling slightly as he slides in behind the driver’s wheel. My hands begin to shake as he speeds down the road, our car never staying in a straight line. Driving down the winding, neverending road to get home from the restaurant in the dark is difficult when sober.

Dad doesn’t make it around the notorious turn.

Mom’s screams rip through the car as her seatbelt slams her against the seat. Dad attempts to turn the wheel to get the car back on the road. And me? I just close my eyes. No screams, no tears, just closed eyes, a pulsing heartbeat, and a body tense with fear. The sensation of the car as it spirals out of control is all I can feel. The burning sensation of bile rises to the back of my throat.

“Cassidy!” Dad yells, panic lacing throughout his voice. His panic causes me to snap into action as I pull against the seatbelt, adrenaline causing the tremble in my hands to grow stronger. My seatbelt snaps open, I reach out to take Dad’s hand. The crunch of metal against rock rings throughout the night.

I didn’t make it to the front seat.

The doctors said it was a miracle Mom and Dad survived, but they didn’t see it as such. I never wondered how I could see them, I just could. There’s no scientific explanation, at least none I had known about before the crash. I knew I was dead, but it didn’t make the pain of my parents' grief any less real. So, I watched them for a while. I saw that Dad threw out all his liquor bottles, and claimed he wasn’t going to drink again. It wasn’t the first time he had made this claim. Yet, mom seemed to believe him. I didn’t.

He lied.

“Please, just put the bottle down!” Mom pleads, her hands gripping the neck of a bottle. Dad’s hands are also wrapped around the bottle, the sloshing liquid rising up the sides.

“Leave me alone. I don’t need another lecture.” He snatches the bottle from Mom’s grip, and she relents. Tears flow down her face.

“She’s dead. Our daughter is dead because you couldn’t go one

52 Sophia Abrego De La Garza night sober. She was fifteen, Michael! She had her whole life ahead of her, and you helped take it away.” She screams and more tears flow. Dad sits numbly as he brings the bottle to his lips, gulping down the copper liquid.

“You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t hate myself for what I did?” He looks at her, eyes void of emotion. “I know what I did, and I can’t fix it. So, get out of my face because I’m not having this argument again.” He takes another swig.

Mom walks to the counter, picking up a manila folder she tosses at Dad. She wipes her tears as she tells him, “I’m done. I lost my daughter and I didn’t want to lose you, but I can’t keep going on like this. You promised the drinking would stop after Cassidy. I should have known it was a lie.”

She walks away and Dad flips through the folder. They are divorce papers. Picking up a pen, he takes another swig and signs the dotted lines.

The night of their argument, I made a decision. I was going to keep a close track of my mom, not wanting her to be fully alone. My dad kept drinking; I stopped wanting to see him.

It became harder to keep track of them both after the divorce, anyway. ••

There’s no white light after death. I think that people want to believe there’s a light because people plaster everything in darkness whenever someone passes away. People want to believe that when someone dies, they move on to a better place than the one they were in before. That’s not the case. Death has always reminded me of a kid afraid of the dark—they want to have a light on in the room but feel if they do so they aren’t as tough as they believed themselves to be.

My death was surrounded by darkness: the night of my death lit only by headlights and the red and blue flashing of cop cars, the dark imprint placed on my parents, now divorced, and my funeral a stark black against the midday sun. Darkness consumed the chapel that day. Every person who showed up wore black fabric, on top of black fabric, on top of black fabric. You don’t realize how many different shades of black there are until you are surrounded in a room with only that color. The table was covered in a midnight black tablecloth; my coffin was shiny obsidian. Even the flowers,

Moving On 53 which were supposed to be bright and vibrant, that day seemed to be a dull, soulless grey. I remember I watched everyone pass by and thought to myself that I just wanted one person to show up in neon pink—anything to liven up the room. The next person who came in was clothed in black fabric.

Being dead is the loneliest experience of my life. Living people constantly surround you; they talk, walk, and live around you. At first, I pretended that I was still alive and a part of their world. That lasted about two hours—and then a passing woman, frantically ranting on her phone while speeding down the empty sidewalk, went straight through me. It hit me hard—not the woman, but the realization I was dead. Full on, body-in-a-bag dead.

When you’re alive, you can get caught up in the big picture and forget to appreciate the little things. I never expected that one day I would miss the sound of an alarm clock, or the weight of my backpack thumping against me as I had made my way to class. You just get hit with the fact that no one can see or hear you, but you can see and hear them.

A few weeks following my death, I had been walking down a crowded street, everyone’s hair whipped around as the wind flowed through the air, and the scent of warm cookies filled the space as I followed a family into a local bakery. I stared at the thick, gooey chocolate chip cookies and memories of coming home from school on Fridays, cookies waiting for me in the kitchen filled my mind.

Walking through the door, I shout “I’m home,” dropping my bag onto the ottoman in the main hallway.

“In the kitchen.” Mom hollers back.

Weaving my way through the house, I swipe my hand across the freshly washed fur of our orange tabby cat, Simba. He stretches out, long and lanky, before trotting back to his nook of cat litter. The aroma of chocolate and freshly baked goods fills the house, and the sound of Mom humming “Africa” by Toto floats down the hall. I join in with the song as I snag a cookie from the tray, quickly bouncing it between my hands in an effort to cool the heat.

“You’ll ruin dinner, Cassidy.”

I shrug before hugging my mom, stealing another cookie, and going to settle in on the couch.

I miss her and Dad. I don’t think I’ll ever stop missing them,

54 Sophia Abrego De La Garza but I guess there’s a sick upside to death—eventually, your loved ones will join you. The hard part is being there when I do check up on them; seeing them and not being able to talk to them, to tell them I’m there and having to watch them move on. I wish I could communicate with them. Haunting wouldn’t be the exact term for it—although on second thought, maybe communicating would cause more damage than good. I don’t know if they will join me, but if they do, the loneliness will decrease, and I’ll go back to pretending that everything is okay, and we aren’t all dead. But then I realize that by that point, they’d have other people they would miss too, and the loneliness would creep back in.

As I walk along the gravel pathway, golden leaves spiraling towards the ground, I mumble out each name etched into the various stones buried in the dirt. I haven’t seen anyone like me since I died. No other wandering spirit searching for answers, no angry ghost seeking revenge. Just me, a girl wandering her graveyard. When I arrived at my own name, there was a figure blocking the rounded cement marking the location of my body. Gasping, I stop, my heart aching as the face of my best friend came into view.

“Cassidy Marie, you did not just shove me off this couch!” Beth shouts at me as I jump over the couch back, sinking into the plush cushions. Beth sits back onto the couch, our attention turning to whatever true crime show she decided to turn on.

“I hear there’s a party happening Saturday. I think it could be fun. We haven’t gone to one yet.” I look over at Beth, raising an eyebrow at her mention of a party. Neither of us are exactly the party scene type, preferring movie nights and midnight Walmart runs to standing around a house with bass pounding through the air and being shoved in a room with a group of people who didn’t want to be there but didn’t want to be at home either.

“A party? Does this happen to be the party I heard the love of your life, Ashley, talking about?” I bump my shoulder against hers as a pink tint rises up her face.

“Oh, shush, she’s not into me!”

“Uhm, she totally is into you! Hello, y’all sat next to each other at lunch almost every day last week. You gotta ask her out, like, officially.” A plan creeps into my head as I play out the potential romance between Beth and her crush.

Moving On 55 “Dude, no.”

“Dude, yes! This party would be a perfect place to ask her. You and her and the fifty other sweaty bodies crammed in the room. Oh my gosh, this is totally happening. I also better be a bridesmaid at y’all’s wedding, just saying.” I bounce excitedly on the couch, the motion moving Beth along with me.

“You are impossible!” She exclaims with a smile growing on her face.

“I know.”

Tears stream down her face as she gazes down at my grave. I sit down on the patch of grass in front of the stone and pretend she can somehow see that I’m here and that I’m not going to leave her.

“Hey, Cassidy. I’m—I’m sorry I haven’t visited you before now but I didn’t …” She sniffs, her hand brushing across her cheeks in an attempt to wipe away her tears. “I didn’t want to admit that you’re not here. Well, maybe you are, who knows. Um, I guess I could give an update on things. Ashley and I had our six-month anniversary two weeks ago,” a rough chuckle breaks through her words. “She’s the one who convinced me to finally come visit. She’s in the car right now; she said she didn’t want to impose, but I think she knew that I had to do this on my own.”

Beth slowly slid to the ground, head resting on her knees as her hands interlock around her legs. I scoot closer to her until our knees would have touched. I feel the sensation of tears sliding down my face, and my hands shake uncontrollably, though my gaze never wavers from Beth’s.

“You’re still my best friend, Cassidy. And I’m scared. Scared that I’ll somehow forget you or feel guilty when I make new friends.” I shake my head; she doesn’t need to feel guilty. I understand that she will need to move on, and that’s okay. Just because my life ended doesn’t mean hers needs to stop.

“If you could hear me, you’d probably tell me I have no reason to feel this way.” I smile, though my heart sinks lower as I face the fact that my best friend must move on. She starts to stand, shakes her head, and lowers back down to the ground. “I don’t know what to say. I tried writing you a letter, like in that one Jukebox the Ghost song. But I couldn’t do it. I got as far as ‘Dear Cassidy’ and next thing I knew my mom was shaking my shoulders, and I had sobbed all over the page. I miss you, Cassidy. I miss you so much, but...”

I knew what she was going to say before the words left her mouth. I think I knew as soon as I saw her here.

56 Sophia Abrego De La Garza

I don’t want her to say what she’s about to, but I know she needs to let go.

“...this is the only time I’m going to come see you. Just know, you’re still my best friend, and that’s never going to change. I love you, Cassidy, and I will never, ever forget you.” She stands, brushes off her jeans, and makes her way back to the car idling in the street. I watch her walk away, calm darkness starts settling over me as her figure gets in the car and drives away, never to return.

“Bye, Beth.”

It’s been about two days of me sitting in front of my tombstone, gazing at the people who come and go, saying ‘Hi’ and ‘Bye’ to the loved ones they have lost. Tears adorn most of the cheeks of the faces passing by. Occasionally a laugh will echo in the distance, and I wince as I wonder who can laugh in a place enveloped by darkness. Yet, I also understand the need to laugh, to smile, to feel a hint of something that isn’t grief.

“Dad?”

“What now, Cassidy?” My father sits at the kitchen table, a halfempty bottle of Jack Daniel’s cradled in his hands. I look at his face, his mouth drooping downwards, the bags under his eyes deeper than they had been earlier this week.

“Are you okay?” I sit on the stool next to him and tug my sleeves over my hands, fiddling with a loose string.

“Yeah, kiddo. I’ll be okay, just a tough week at work. But hey, I heard you laughing in your room earlier. Were you watching a movie?” He lets go of the bottle, pushing it aside as he turns to look at me.

“No, not a movie. It was this YouTuber, Shane Dawson. He released this video of him and his group of friends getting on firstclass flights, and it has some funny parts in it. You wanna watch the rest of it with me?” I start bouncing my leg, a smile forming on my face. Maybe he’ll say yes this time. Maybe he’ll laugh and the sadness will go away, even just for a little while.

“Sure, why not. Feels like I haven’t laughed in forever; I think it’s time for that to change.”

And, so, we sat watching YouTube for a few hours, laughing and smiling the entire time at the antics on the screen.

And for a little while, my dad was happy again.

Moving On 57

Happiness is a weird concept. People want to be happy all the time, and yet they’re aware that that’s almost impossible. But even short bursts of happiness can have a long-time impact on those who aren’t used to it.

Am I happy? No. I don’t think I can be happy, not stuck in this state of being here but not truly here—not having a place where I belong. But I’m not sad either. I used to be when I thought about how the last thing my parents and I did was argue over a dumb curfew. I was sad when my parents got divorced, but the sadness didn’t stay. Nothing ever really stays. I can be happy one moment, sad the next, and numb the rest of the time, my emotions just floating around not really being seen, just like me.

I’m here, and I’m waiting; patiently waiting for when my family will hopefully join me. Just waiting to not be alone. I don’t want to be alone anymore.

I lay down, my head almost grazing the base of the tombstone. I cross my arms across my chest as I gaze up into the overcast sky. I take note of the cloud shaped like a bunny, and the sun breaks through the clouds, casting a light on the grim cemetery. I breathe it in, my body relaxing against the grass, taking in the light and warmth.

No longer completely covered in darkness, I close my eyes.