Boy, was I excited! For Mom’s birthday, we were going to grab a pizza from one of our favorite restaurants downtown! In honor of her birthday, they gave her a free coupon. Hurricane Henri did clip us yesterday, soon after we got off the phone with Matthew, but the worst we had were just some downed limbs that trashed my family’s steep driveway. It was not enough to stop us from jumping into the car.

The second we stepped outside, Mom’s Fitbit buzzed. The day was warm. It felt more like a spring day, rather than a summer one.

I skipped over to Mom’s car, which rested in the middle of the driveway, and reached for the handle, but Mom’s excited voice stopped me:

“Hey, Vika, I need to go inside and take a quick call.” With that, she opened the polished front door and slipped back into the house.

I waited for ten minutes, but she never came out. “What on Earth—?” I asked myself. My fingers stopped tapping the Acura’s hood. “What’s taking her so long?”

I went into the house and heard sobbing from the laundry room. My feet took me down the long hallway. I turned left at the end of it and poked my head into the laundry room.

Mom was on the landline, with a fountain of tears streaming down her red-tinged cheeks.

“Oh no!” I whimpered, when I briefly heard the other person on the line:

“The heart stopped instantly…”

Oh no! Oh no! Oh no! Like what happened at the movie theater a few days prior, my insides squeezed together. My feet acted like rockets. They pushed me into the clean kitchen and back into the laundry room. I needed to confirm this!

“What happened?” I asked Mom, as soon as she got off the phone.

These were the only three words she gave me: “Matthew… He died.”

“No!” Why, time bomb? We just talked to him yesterday! I had a book to give him! He was going to move in with me in a few weeks!

“What happened?” I cried out. By accident, I spit in Mom’s face, but she ignored it.

In a choked voice, she explained, “He took a pill that he thought would keep him awake, but it turned out to be Fentanyl!”

No! Not my own brother! Why would my own brother make a mistake like that?

“Why? Why?” I asked, falling to my knees on the carpeted floor.

“I can’t breathe.” Mom smacked her hand against her breast. She nearly fell out of the chair, but I caught her before she could.

I had to be strong. This was her child she lost; it wasn’t mine. “If you need to go to the hospital, I’ll take you,” I gently told Mom.

***

“Oh, why does the world take young people? Why doesn’t it take me?” My grandmother blew her nose into a cotton tissue. We called her the second we got the news, because Dad was still hiking the Appalachian Trail. “I’ve lived my life,” my grandmother added. She took my mother’s shaky hand. It rested on the armrest of one of the living room’s patterned chairs.

That chair was my mother’s favorite. She read there, drank her coffee, and cried when it was necessary. I believe she felt safe, since she refused to move from her spot.

I had not cried anymore. Amanda was still coming over in an hour, and I was still scheduled to start back college in less than a week.

But then Mom told me, “You need to skip the first week of classes.”

***

Amanda made it at 3:00pm, right when I finished my last email to my professors. Who knew that instead of a story, I would be writing a tragedy? Each message was the same:

Hi, my name is Catherine Victoria Christie, and I’m in your class for the Fall 2021 semester. My family received a call today that my older brother died unexpectedly, and I will not be able to make it to the first week of class.

“Victoria, are you okay?” Amanda’s voice pulled me off my island of personality. There she was, standing in the doorway of my room, with her black glasses over dark eyes, her baggy clothes looking stylish as ever, and her poofy, brown hair held up in a ponytail.

Just seeing her, I felt like my normal self. Mom’s dreaded words haunted me, but I managed to find my way around them, because I was a strong-willed girl and a good writer. With a weak smile, I told my friend, “I’m fine.”

To block out all the phone calls we got that day, Amanda and I played Horizon Zero Dawn in the chilly basement.

Mr. Van Vic watched over us. The cold presence down there told us so.

I always wanted to play Horizon Zero Dawn. Badass Aloy inspired Anecka in Shadows of Renial Kingdom. I was thrilled to finally play her amazing story. Why was it so satisfying to sneak around an artificial, dystopian world and shoot dinosaur-like robots?

“Isn’t this cool?” Amanda asked, glancing at me. She propped her back up against the wooden table in front of the TV and moved her controller to her right hand.

I forced a smile. “It sure is.”

It was strange, you know? My brother just died, and I was sitting there playing video games with my best friend. Did I even love him? Why did I not feel any more grief?

The phone rang for the 100th time. “That may be Dad,” I said, putting my own controller down. Mom and I expected a call from him, after the rangers got off the trail. Rising to my feet, I stumbled to the landline in the wall and picked it. “Dad?” I asked.

Amanda watched me carefully, sipping her cup of ice water.

“The rangers got me off the trail,” Dad explained in a somber voice. “I’m flying out tonight, and I’ll be there early afternoon.”

My legs seized up. “Oh, Dad, why did this have to happen?”

This was Dad’s answer: “Matthew made a bad decision.”

Bile left my empty tummy, since I refused to eat that day. It made its way up my trachea. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Daddy,” I whimpered, hanging up the phone.

My face must have paled, because Amanda asked me, “Are you all right, Victoria?”

“I don’t feel so good,” I said, my face burning.

My rocket legs took me to the bathroom. Like a woman in her first trimester, I hung my head over the toilet bowl and threw up. Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe. My world became nothing more than golden stars floating in space. Through the Wormhole’s wormhole sucked me down, not daring to free me from my own emotions.

Was this what death felt like?