The Truths we Burn (The Hollow Boys Book 2)

by Monty Jay

  My mother was buried in my father’s family cemetery, but Rose was buried at the Ponderosa Springs’ local one. Where they leave all the bodies of this town to decay.

  Everything is wet.

  The ground is dense beneath my shoes, and the air feels moist when I inhale, all the fog that seems to stick to my clothes leaving water residue. The fog rolls with the hills, weaving in and out of the unremembered graves like a wool blanket.

  Visitors are sparse during this time of the day, right before nightfall when the sun is starting to set. Personally, I think that’s the best time to go.

  It feels almost like the land of the living is retreating and those far passed are waking up.

  Silas’s back is towards me, resting against her tombstone, a bouquet of peonies on the ground next to him.

  The worry falls off my shoulders because I know he’s breathing. He’s alive.

  But the ache doesn’t leave because I know he is hurting.

  “You are here some days,” I hear him whisper, his voice cracked from sorrow. “I can feel you, smell you in the air. I hear your laugh in my ears and turn around expecting you to be there, but you aren’t. Not the way I want you to be. Sometimes at night, I see you and we talk, but I know it’s not really you. It’s my mind playing tricks.”

  I swallow nervously, knowing this isn’t the time to grill him about his medication, but I won’t let this disease take him. Not when I know with the right treatment he can live a long life.

  “They like to see me in pain. So they send me visions of you. They feed off my pain, baby. And they get stronger every single day I’m here without you. They are trying to get out.” He presses his hands into the sides of his head. “And I don’t know how to stop them anymore. So, I need you to come back, okay? Please, I just need you to come back. Baby, I need you to save me.”

  His head drops down, and his shoulders shake, vibrating with the weight of his sadness.

  It’s then I step up next to him, falling onto the wet ground and letting it soak through my jeans. He doesn’t have to look up to know I’m here. He feels my presence.

  I look over at her tombstone, my eyes burning with emotion.

  Rosemary Paige Donahue

  Beloved daughter, sister, and friend.

  It’s been cleaned recently, the white marble bright compared to the more weather-eroded markers. A little glimpse at just how much light she put into the world when she was in it.

  How had it been a year without her?

  I think we’d filled our lives with so much chaos to prevent the ache of her loss, and today, we were forced to stop, to reflect on the person we’d lost.

  Right now, I’m compelled to pull back the bandages I’d slapped over that emotional wound, only to find it still raw and nasty. There is no healing, still just a dirty gash across my soul.

  It’s hard to think of anything other than the pain. I can’t think about Frank or Sage, only this melancholy feeling that suffocates me.

  Death is inevitable, and I always knew that. It’s a rite of passage, but you think of it happening when you’re older. Death when you are this young, it’s nothing but a sick, sick tragedy. It’s an entirely different form of mourning.

  Silas lifts his head, looking up at the sky, and I see the tears tracking his face.

  “Rose, come back!” He screams a scream that makes chill bumps rise on my skin. It’s his heart begging for her. Pleading for her. “Why didn’t you take me with you?” he cries. “I would’ve gone with you.”

  I lay my arm around his shoulder, tugging him closer to my side and wrapping him up in my arms.

  I feel his body shaking from the screams, the shouts that ricochet off my body over and over again. And I absorb every single one of them.

  That’s all I can do. All I can do is hold him as he sits there reliving the nightmare from a year ago. One we are all still waiting to wake up from.

  I recall the agony I felt when I helped Alistair pull him away from her body, watching him carry her one last time to the ambulance.

  How after it only got worse. So much fucking worse.

  I sat outside his door, feeling useless, just listening desperately for the sound of his breath. Anything that would tell me he was alive. I couldn’t take it anymore. I was standing out there waiting on him to die.

  When I broke the door down, splintering the hinges, I found him lying on his back.

  Nothing in his room had been touched; he’d just walked inside and laid on the floor. That’s where he had been, on the floor with one of her jackets balled up to his chest. He hadn’t even changed out of the clothes he’d worn when we found her.

  And he was just mumbling, about everything and anything. Muttering to himself, like he was having a conversation with his own mind.

  I forced him into the shower. I made him eat and shoved his meds down his throat. I did that for weeks, until he was able to do it on his own again.

  I would do it again, I would do it all over again for him because I’m not losing him too.

  I’m keeping him. I’m keeping all of the boys.

  I had lost too many people that I cared about, and I’m not losing any more.

  “How long have you been out here?” I ask, speaking for the first time once his shoulders stop shaking.

  “Since you left for class. I wanted to watch the sunrise with her, but I was late.” He swallows. “I’m always too fucking late.”

  “Silas, you know I’d never lie to you, so I’m not going to say it gets easier from here. But I know over time, you will heal. It won’t be so sharp like it is right now.”

  “I think that might be worse.” He lifts his head, staring at me. “Time doesn’t heal. It helps you forget, and she doesn’t deserve to be forgotten. Ten years from now, am I going to remember how she smelled? Or what she looked like when she smiled? No. She’ll become a memory, and she was more than a memory, Rook.”

  That’s what grief is. It’s a double-edged sword.

  “I know she was. And she’ll always be more to us. We’ll get through it, together. We always get through it.”

  Silence passes through, a breeze sweeping around us, and I watch as one of the petals from the peonies gets picked up by the wind.

  It floats in the air, flowing with the current.

  Free and with wings.

  And I think that’s Rosie’s way of telling us we will get through it and that she’s okay.

  Sage

  Every day out of the year is a bad day for someone.

  June twenty-fourth could be your birthday, the best day of your life, and somewhere across the world, someone is being murdered.

  October tenth could be the day you got married or engaged. A day you couldn’t dream up any better. Yet, three houses down, there is a little girl who lost her parents to a car crash.

  Your best day will always equal someone’s worst.

  I’d never really thought of that before. I don’t think a lot of people do until they experience it for themselves.

  April twenty-ninth went from a normal day, usually sunny, mostly spent in school, a day that I would fly past and move forward from without a second thought, to being one I’ll never forget.

  Today, the split in my soul aches a little harder. The nerves that had been severed throb for connection. My brain reminds me a little more persistently that the person I came into this world with is gone.

  I went to her grave this morning and saw someone had already left peonies, her favorite flower, but I decided to leave the ones I’d bought as well. She deserves all the flowers. I wanted to sit, to stay and talk. To update her on my life, but everything felt so negative, and I didn’t wanna burden her with that.

  How silly. I didn’t want to burden a tombstone with my problems.

  I wanted to stay there, close my eyes, and feel as if we were under the covers in her bed. Chatting about our lives, laughing, dreaming of our futures. I wanted to feel that connection I had when she was alive.

  But I
just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t feel her there.

  It was just a headstone with her name on it. There was no Rose.

  I thought, maybe I’m broken? You’re supposed to feel something at the graveyard, right? So if I couldn’t feel her there, where was I going to? Was I ever going to feel that bond again?

  That’s what today felt like. Constantly searching for her and knowing that I was never going to find her.

  I push the door to my dorm open, thankful that my roommate is in class. It means I’ll be able to curl up in my bed and cry with no one asking any questions. Flipping my shoes off carelessly, I walk to my bed and crawl under my blankets.

  I turn my body towards the wall and let out a shaky breath I didn’t notice I’d been holding in. The tears fall slowly, dripping onto the white sheets. I’m a bundle of different emotions, all of them swirling around inside of me like a child finger painting.

  Guilt. Sadness. Anger.

  But the one that hit the heaviest was unworthy.

  I’d been the shitty twin. I was the one with the baggage, the one that was jaded and mean. I didn’t deserve life, and Rose did. She would have done so much more with her future than I was going to. Her dreams were brighter, more achievable than mine.

  The world stopped when she died. And if it had been me, it would’ve continued to spin.

  It should’ve been me.

  That’s what I’d screamed to my father after I watched that video. When I saw him pick Rosemary so easily over me.

  It should’ve been me.

  And because he chose wrong, I decided he didn’t get to keep his meal ticket. He took her from me, so I was going to take his money from him.

  I’d originally planned on killing him after I saw it, but I wanted him to suffer. I wanted him to know this pain, to live out his days broke, hungry, and empty.

  So I confronted him in our living room and did the thing that got me sent away. It was convenient for him, the perfect excuse to lock me up and keep me quiet. But I hadn’t expected to live. I’d read that if you did it a certain way, there would be no way to survive it.

  The vertical scars down both of my wrists pulsed.

  Apparently, I hadn’t done enough because the doctors were able to stitch me up just before sending me off strapped to a stretcher. I wanted to die because Rose wasn’t here, because it felt unfair for us to not be here together, because my father had no right to choose something like that.

  Now, I’m left with these scars as a reminder that I couldn’t even die correctly. I spent a lot of time in the psych ward planning on getting out and paying my father back for what he had done, conjuring up ways to destroy him, because I realized he would do anything for money.

  Even if I had succeeded in killing myself, he would have still continued to do gruesome things to stay at the top of the Ponderosa Springs’ food chain.

  The only way to stop him was to kill him, and I couldn’t wait for that day.

  A sob erupts from my chest, pouring from me like venom. It burns and rips my throat as it builds up. I place my hand over my mouth, shaking as I cry, and the tears leak a little faster.

  This harsh reality I never wanted to accept hit like a train today.

  It’s this realization that you’re older than your twin. This monumental stab in the gut because it’s been 365 days without her. That’s a birthday, a Christmas, all of these memories she never got to create. Another reminder that when she died, I did too. I just happened to keep existing.

  “Sage?”

  I roll over in my bed, looking at the door.

  Lyra and Briar are standing in the archway, holding a bag of candies and movies in their hands.

  “You said you liked Sixteen Candles, right? We couldn’t remember if you said sour Skittles or regular, so we just got both,” Lyra says, wiggling the bag in the air.

  “How did you get in here?”

  Briar lifts a bobby pin from her pocket. “These locks are a breeze and…”

  Reaching inside her the front of her plaid button-up, she pulls out a blunt. “I nabbed this from Rook the other day.”

  Even though I really don’t want to, I smile a little.

  “Little thief is starting to make sense now,” I tell her.

  She shrugs. “My thievery has started to become pretty handy around here.”

  I run my hand beneath my nose, wiping the snot and tears that had fallen there. They both look so hopeful, coming in here intent on cheering me up, or at the very least giving me a break from the sorrow.

  They know what today is.

  “Thank you, guys, but I’m not really in the mood. I figured you all would be with the guys.”

  “They’re spending the weekend at Silas’s parents’ cabin in Portland. They needed some time, needed a space to be somewhere with Silas. And we thought…” Briar looks at Lyra for help.

  “We thought we could do the same for you,” she finishes for her.

  “I just—” I hum, trying not to cry anymore, hating this feeling of being too vulnerable. “I just think I need to be alone today. There isn’t much that I think will make this better, not today.”

  I think that’s why I enjoy acting. Being on the stage, I can release my emotions freely through a character, and no one questions it because they think it’s just a part of the script. I can be vulnerable, soft, gentle.

  Not this constantly snarky, bitter person.

  “We know we can’t make it better. That’s not the point.” Lyra steps farther into my room. “It’s about not letting you be sad, alone. About making it more bearable. I don’t know what it feels like to lose a twin, but I did lose my mom.”

  I look over at her, at the understanding in her eyes. Not pity or sympathy, but a mutual knowledge of similar pain.

  “No one can bring them back. No matter how badly we want it. But you don’t have to feel that alone. We don’t have to talk about her, or we can. We will do whatever you want today, even if you just want us to sit here with you in silence. I went through the death of my mother all alone, with no one to be there for me, and I refuse to let you do that to yourself. Not when you have us here.”

  Friendship.

  It had always been a foreign concept to someone like me.

  A girl who was taught that the relationships you keep close to you are only to push you further in life. It’s never about the actual connection. I was always just a pawn in people’s lives, used for what I could bring them.

  No one was ever with me because I was Sage.

  No one was ever friends with me because I was Sage.

  They were involved with me for my status, for my name, my money.

  And here I am, with none of those things, and these two girls are choosing to be my friends anyway. Despite what being close to me will cause people to say about them.

  Someone is choosing me for me.

  They see me the same way Rosemary always did—as the girl who was more than her reputation.

  “You said you brought Sixteen Candles?” I ask gently.

  Briar smiles. “And Can’t Buy Me Love!”

  We decide that moving down the hall to their room would be better, considering my roommate could walk in at any time and try to kick us out. But I do something I don’t ever do—I let them in.

  I let them be there for me in their own way.

  Together, we move Briar and Lyra’s beds together, shift the TV to the middle of the room, and crack a window. All of us pile up on the mattresses, turn the first movie on, and light Rook’s stolen blunt.

  I haven’t smoked since the last time I hung out with Rook, which was more than a year ago. The effects of the weed hit me strongly. I eat more food than I have in months, and God, I laugh.

  Real laughter that I haven’t experienced since I was very little.

  We laugh because Lyra is that philosophical person when she is stoned. She talks about bugs, of course, about how their lives affect our day-to-day existence, which turns into the creation of human life and religi
on.

  I find out so much about both of them in these moments.

  The way they see the world, how they feel about certain issues, their passions.

  It feels odd having a day like this. How amongst all this darkness and chaos, we’re able to create something good and light.

  There are times when the guilt would attack me, trying to rear its ugly head.

  How could you enjoy this day? When you know everything it represents?

  But I try to think of Rosemary, how she wouldn’t want me to be depressed in my room alone. I think about what she wanted for me in life, that she would want me to be happy even if it’s without her.

  I think about how I would feel if the roles were reversed.

  I wouldn’t want her to suffer. I would want her to experience joy, laughter, love, even on the day I died.

  “So listen,” Briar announces, rolling onto her stomach and popping a piece of chocolate into her mouth. “You don’t have to tell me, but I really gotta know. What’s up with you and Van Doren?”

  I’m high, and the last person in the world I want to think of right now is him.

  I swallow the mouthful of Skittles I have, glancing over at her nonchalantly. “What do you mean?”

  She raises both eyebrows at me. “I was born at night, but not last night, Sage.”

  “That little pep talk he gave you in the backseat after the Gauntlet seemed pretty heated from what I could tell,” Lyra adds, twirling the stem of her cherry around in the air.

  “He was just—” I pause. “He was just getting me away from Silas. I said some fucked-up things to him. If it hadn’t been Rook to do it, it would’ve been Alistair or Thatcher.”

  I don’t want to lie to them about him, but what would I tell them? I have no words to describe what Rook and I were. I’ve never spoken about us out loud to anyone, and I wouldn’t even know how to start.

  They look at each other for a moment before Briar speaks up.

  “He looks at you like he’s in physical pain. I don’t think he notices that he does it, but it hurts him to look at you.”

  I’m sure to her, it looks like pain. Like twisted-up hurt.