V.

by Emily N. Kay

  Karen seems taken aback.

  “Sorry,” Violet mumbles.

  “Oh, it’s fine,” Karen says, brushing it off. “No judgement, remember?”

  Violet allows a tiny smile. “Yeah, well. I was saying, I hadn’t been very nice to him as much as I could have been. I mean, in the past year or so, I’ve been… focusing less and less on him and more on myself.”

  Just as she said it, she realises it’s true. She hasn’t paid him enough attention when he needed it the most. Even when she knew how unstable he was…

  Karen cuts in through her thoughts. “Can you elaborate on that?”

  “Well, I met my best friend Stacey. At the time anyway. And… I met Kyle. He was like, my boyfriend or something. Although he wouldn’t let me call him that. Ever.” Violet scoffs thinking about that loser of a guy.

  “Are you still friends with them?”

  “No.”

  “Why is that?” Karen asks with narrowed eyes, like she’s getting interested in the story, which surprisingly, makes Violet want to vent more.

  “Because they weren’t there for me when I needed them. They never were. And I just realised it,” says Violet sourly. “I realised that Josh was the only one who truly cared about me.”

  Karen frowns. “May I ask, how were they not there for you?”

  Violet wants so badly to just tell her everything. How that night went down. How horrible of her to throw him that damn party he never wanted. How Kyle was just standing there when Josh confessed his feelings for her.

  But she only told Karen about Stacey—that she was there for Violet when Josh died, and she was there at the funeral. But that’s about it. After the funeral was over, she stopped replying to Violet’s messages, ignored her calls and when school started, she acted like Violet was a stranger, only passing polite smiles when they walked past each other. As if they were never friends at all.

  “And how does that make you feel?” Karen asks sympathetically.

  “Hurt,” she replies flatly. “But I’m over it.”

  Karen nods. And Violet just realises that Karen never jots down any notes at all.

  “Do you think there’s something wrong with me?” Violet asks.

  Karen’s eyes widen, taken by surprise. But she answers, “I believe everyone has something wrong with them, Violet. It only depends on how you see it. Do you think there is something wrong with you?”

  Violet almost rolls her eyes. That’s just the way therapists are—they deflect patients’ questions and turns them into their own.

  “I don’t know,” Violet answers. “That’s why I asked you!” Violet blinks, biting her tongue back. Just now, Violet realises that when she’s with Karen, she feels like she can be rude and speak her mind without feeling judged. And she kind of likes it. Because most of the times she just wants to snap at someone without facing any consequences. Maybe this is the best place to do that.

  Karen lets out an amused chuckle. Then she looks at the clock on her plain wall and says, “Too bad our time today is up. Maybe we can explore that the next time we see each other. Together.”

  Together.

  Violet likes the sound of that.

  **********

  Surprisingly, Violet has been looking forward to the sessions with Karen. It’s been a few months after their first session and they have made a lot of progress. Violet now admittedly “opens up” to her much more than they first started. She likes having someone to talk to again—specifically, someone that’s not her parents, or people at school who are shooting her pitying looks but are too afraid to actually befriend her.

  Violet had been telling Karen generally about how things are going with her life, how the new school year is going for her. But most importantly, she talked about the memories she had with Josh. It made her felt like she had escaped reality and went back to when Josh was here with her—to the time he loved her and when they were happy. And Violet doesn’t feel like these sessions are a waste of time and money any more.

  Over time, Violet finds it less painful to talk about Josh.

  Today, she decides, is the day. She is finally ready to fully open up and tell her therapist the truth. She trusts that Karen will help her find a way out of guilt. It’s exhausting to feel guilty all the time. And she wants it to stop now.

  Karen doesn’t say anything for a while after Violet finishes. Instead of looking horrified by what she just heard, she looks relieved…

  “I appreciate you telling me all this, Violet. I really do,” Karen finally says, looking almost proud. “It just goes to show how much you’ve grown, and that’s a really good thing.”

  “That’s not all.” Violet takes a deep breath before handing her therapist the letter. “This is the letter he left for me. I want you to read it.”

  Karen looks at her once before taking the letter. When she’s done, she folds the letter and gives it back to Violet, her face solemn. “This is why you’ve been blaming yourself,” she says matter-of-factly, not expecting an answer.

  “It’s obvious, isn’t it. This is proof.” She holds up the letter, wrinkled and frail from having been touched so many times.

  “How many times have you looked at that letter, Violet?”

  She swallows before answering, “Let’s just say I can recite every word.”

  There is a pause.

  “Okay.” Karen puts her hands together. “How do you feel when you read it?”

  Violet swallows a lump in her throat. “Guilty,” she utters quietly, feeling ashamed. “I feel guilty because it’s all my fault. And the letter confirms it.”

  “Say, if this letter never exists… Would you still think it’s your fault?”

  Violet thinks back to the time when she found Josh trying to hurt himself the first time that night. “Yes. I’d say I’m to blame.” She bites her lip. “I’m tired of feeling guilty all the time. And no one thinks it’s my fault, and I’m too much of a coward to tell them about this because they’ll blame me and they’ll hate me.”

  Karen just looks at her, not saying anything.

  So Violet continues, “You know, lately my life has been a series of could’ves and what-ifs. I could have gotten him help the minute I saw him hurting himself. If I did that… maybe Josh would still be here, going to uni. And what if I loved him the way he loved me? Maybe we’d be happy together and things wouldn’t have turned out this way.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not,” Karen says nonchalantly. She leans back into her chair with a faint smile on her face. “I need you to understand that we are affected by so many factors in our lives, Violet. You may have been one of them. But who is to say that you are the only one?”

  “The letter!” she says exasperatedly. “It is addressed to me.”

  Karen gives her a pointed look, suddenly looking more like a professional therapist. “We’re human. We are irrational beings. That’s why we make irrational decisions—lots of ‘em. And it’s even more so when we’re in stressful situations.”

  “Are you saying Josh didn’t mean it when he wrote that letter?” Violet raises her brow. “Well, that’s easy for you to say.”

  “I can’t tell you what Josh was thinking when he wrote that letter. I’m just asking you to take it into consideration,” Karen says, her voice calm. “Like you said, Violet, people respond to the same situation differently. Some people just… find it easier to fixate on someone—to blame everything on that person because it’s easy, and because they’re in so much pain and they need to let it out somehow.”

  Violet can’t help but see Josh writing that letter in her mind. He was angry with her that night, it was obvious. So is it possible that he’s writing to her just because he’s so angry that he has to let it out? Not because he meant what he wrote?

  “I’ve been listening to you, Violet,” she says, smiling a little. “And if it’s any consolation, I can tell that your time with Josh was very precious, and I want you to hold on to that.”

  Violet’s eyes start to stin
g.

  “Violet?”

  She looks up. “Yes?”

  Karen gives her an encouraging smile. “If you could say something—anything—to Josh, what would you say?”

  Violet tenses up. “There’s a lot of things I want to say to him.”

  “Try one.”

  She takes a shaky breath and exhales before she begins, “I’d love to tell him that he’s an amazing human being. A genius.” She cracks a smile, and so does Karen. “I’d remind him that he should be in Sydney right now if he didn’t, you know… But I won’t force him any more. I won’t. He can do whatever, study wherever, and I’d still love him.” Her voice cracks, and she starts to let herself cry, not caring that Karen is seeing this. Karen has already seen her—she’s the only one who has seen all of her. “I’d tell him that he deserved the world. He deserved someone who will love him as much as he did me. It’s just… too bad that he’ll never get to meet that person.” She breaks down into sobbing fit.

  Karen lets her cry for a long while, without interrupting. And Violet can’t tell if this is really happening or if she’s just seeing things, but Karen is quickly wiping her cheeks with the back of her hand.

  Several minutes pass and finally Karen says, “All right. Before we end the session, I have one last question for you.” Karen looks at Violet expectantly.

  She meets Karen’s gaze.

  “Can you think of a way that will help you let go? Forgive yourself?”

  Violet pauses before she nods.

  “And what do you think that first step is?” she prompts. It’s what Karen has been telling her to do—coming up with steps in order to achieve a goal.

  “I have to burn that letter.”

  Karen lets out relieved smile, almost beaming, and it’s back to the elementary-school-teacher Karen that Violet first met in their first session.

  “Do it, Violet” says Karen. “You burn that letter.”

  Chapter 21

  To Violet,

  This is not a suicide note. I am writing this to you not because I want to say good-bye. No, not to you. Because I know this will haunt you for the rest of your life, and I’m okay with that. In fact, it comforts me now… knowing that you will suffer.

  You should’ve let me go that night.

  I was grateful, I was. And I loved you so much. You were everything to me. The only thing that mattered. But clearly I wasn’t enough.

  Now, I’m done, V… I’m fucking done.

  I hope that you are the first person to find this letter. Because that would mean you’ll be the one to find me, and I want it to be you.

  Funny, isn’t it? Everything has come back full-circle. You saved me, and now you’ve killed me. I’ll be gone, and there’s nothing you can do about it. You can’t save me again. It’s out of your control now.

  When I’m gone forever, my last favour is for you to take care of my mum. She’ll blame herself, but I need you to make sure that she won’t. You owe it to me, V. Don’t fail her like you’ve failed me.

  Goodbye,

  Your “Brother” Josh

  Epilogue

  Josh

  I’m not a believer of God but now I’m praying.

  Please, God. Please get rid of that letter for me. I’m slipping away and I can’t reach it.

  I can’t… My eyelids are heavy and I can’t see. The water is weighing on me, and I’m feeling like I’m under a wall of ice. I’m so cold. But I can feel my body slowly melting into nothingness.

  This is it. The moment I have been waiting and dreading for. I’m finally dying.

  But the letter…

  I need to take it back.

  If there is any strength in me, I want to use it all just to get to that letter and flush it down the toilet. I need it gone.

  I can hear her footsteps now, coming closer and closer, while I’m drifting away.

  Please, God… I won’t ask for anything else. I won’t even ask to go to heaven. Because I know I won’t. Not after all the things I wrote in that letter. What’s on there will remain forever, unlike me.

  There’s no turning back. She is coming, and she will see it. She will see me and she will see the letter and she will never forgive herself.

  I have ruined her for life and there’s no way to take it back.

  But I want to take it back. I need to take it all back.

  God is not answering. The letter is still there and I can only pray now that she won’t read it.

  And in my last moment I wish I can let her know that I didn’t mean it—any of it. I want to tell her that I’m sorry for everything. I don’t regret slitting my wrist but I’ll regret that letter for the rest of my eternity in the afterlife—wherever that might be. And I want her to know that I will always love her. It’s clear in my mind now—on the brink of death—that I don’t want to leave her. I will damn myself for thinking that I hated you for even a second. But it’s too late now.

  I’m sorry, V. I’m so so sorry.

  She’s calling my name, and all I can think before everything goes dark and my life slips away is that it’s too late…

  She screams.

  It’s too late.