Free Instead of You by Anie Michaels

left the coffee shop.  I collapsed back into my chair, hands coming instantly to run through my hair, breath leaving me in one long and exhausted exhalation. 
       “Shit,” I whispered harshly, my eyes on my shoes, elbows on knees, head in hands.  “Shit.”
       Somehow I was going to have to make it through the next five months as the teacher of my dead brother’s girlfriend. 
       The girl I’d known her whole life. 
       The girl I’d been in love with, in one way or another, since I understood the word and what it meant.
     
     

 
    Chapter Seven
    McKenzie
       Cory had driven me to school for the last year and half.  Even though it was, in the grand scheme of things, not the worst thing to happen, stepping up onto the school bus was a terrible way to start the day.
       Everyone’s eyes were on me; their sad eyes with concerned expressions.  I was so tired of everyone looking at me like I was going to burst into tears at any given moment.  It felt so displaced.  I hadn’t died.  I hadn’t lost a son, or a brother.  But then I remember what everyone thought I’d lost: my boyfriend, the love of my young life, my future, my other half.
       Do you know how hard it is to mourn when you’re not sure what it is exactly you lost?
       I felt Cory’s loss profoundly.  I missed his laugh, his jokes, his kindness, his friendship.  But I hated myself because I didn’t miss the other parts of him.  In fact, part of me, a part I was so scared to acknowledge or give a voice to, was glad the option of being with him forever was taken from me.  I never would have turned him down, would have spent my life hoping to love him in some way I wasn’t sure I was capable of, but the man with a gun made that decision for me.  And I hated myself for being even remotely grateful for such a fantastically horrible thing.
       So all those people who looked at me as though they felt sorry for me, well, it made me sick because I didn’t deserve any of it.  I was a horrible person.
       I found an empty seat, sat down, and curled my body toward the window, hoping it would give off the right message: I didn’t want to be bothered.
       Holly, Becca, and Todd were all waiting for me when I walked off the bus, all wearing identical pitying faces.
       “Hey, McKenzie.”  Holly greeted me first; she was the most outgoing of the group, the one most likely to talk at inappropriate intervals.
       “Hey, guys,” I said, adjusting my messenger-style bag on my shoulder.  Becca stepped forward and wrapped her arms around me.  I let myself take the comfort she offered and tried not to shrug out of her embrace too early.  I loved my friends dearly, and they’d been really great since Cory died, but I didn’t want that day to be about what I’d lost.  I wanted to focus on going back to normal, or building a new normal.  Something besides focusing on all the sadness.  I’d had hours and hours of sadness as I lay in bed at night, unable to sleep more than an hour or two.
       “Are you doing okay, Kenz?  Is it too hard to be here, you know, because it reminds you of Cory?”  Holly’s question was met with glares from Becca and Todd.  I tried not to let her question get to me; I knew she meant well.  Holly just lacked the part of her brain that evaluated the effect her words might have.  She was never purposefully inconsiderate, perhaps just too curious and just maybe lacking a little tact.
       I think my friends were expecting me to have some sort of nervous breakdown as soon as I stepped foot onto the asphalt.  Expected a new wave of devastation to roll through me.  As if just existing in the aftermath wasn’t devastation enough.
       “Holly,” I said, trying to mask a little of my irritation, fully aware I wasn’t doing a great job.  “Every single piece of my life was intertwined with Cory’s.  I can’t enter a room at my house that doesn’t have a piece of him in it.  My bed,