Free Nova and Quinton: No Regrets by Jessica Sorensen Page A

always want to go back to that every time you have to deal with the hard stuff.”
    “The hard stuff.” I give him a cold, hard stare as I scratch my arm where the tattoos mark my skin:
Lexi, Ryder, No One
. All the people who died that night,
No One
being myself. I remember that when I got it, the tattoo artist looked at me like I was a nut job, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything but making sure I hurt myself more and more because it was the only way I could distract myself from the pain and the guilt. “Do you know how much talking about the hard stuff hurts and makes me feel like shit? How hard it is to breathe whenever I have to talk about the hard stuff… about the accident… about the deaths… dying.” My voice is sharp because he’s digging up memories I don’t want to deal with. “Jesus, it’s not like anyone else would act differently. Causing people’s deaths… I’m sure no one else would want to talk about it.”
    He considers what I said and then reaches for his pen again. Then he scribbles something down on the corner of a piece of paper and tears it off. “I want you to attend a group meeting,” he says, stretching his arm across the desk to hand me the piece of paper.
    “I already do that every Tuesday and Thursday night.” My tone is clipped as I snatch the piece of paper from his fingers.
    “Yeah, but this is a different kind of support group. It’s not a sobriety group like the one you’ve been going to. This is one that’ll help you deal with your guilt over the accident,” he explains. “Many of the people who go have been through similar experiences. Both with the accident and with the drugs afterward.”
    I glance down at the piece of paper, which has a phone number and an address on it. “People go to this because they’ve caused car accidents and caused people to… die?”
    He wavers contemplatively. “Well, not all of the instances were driving accidents, but I think it’d be good for you to talk to people who’ve gone through something similar to you and have experienced your form of guilt.”
    My fingers wrap around the piece of paper in my hand. “What stuff have they gone through, then?”
    “Well, the founder of the group, Wilson Ferrison, ran a red light while he was on the phone,” he says sadly. “It killed an older couple. He got into drugs for a lot of years… he’s actually a friend of mine, so I saw firsthand how bad it got for him. But he does a lot of community service now and spends time talking to people about what happened, trying to not only prevent things like it from happening, but to help people who’ve experienced similar things and are left trying to cope with the guilt.”
    I put the piece of paper into my pocket, taking what he said in, but it’s hard to process. “Should I call first or just go?” I ask, getting to my feet.
    “Call first and tell them who you are. I’ll give Wilson a call and let him know,” he says, putting the notes he took throughout today’s session into my folder. “Just please make sure you do call. I really think it’s important for you to know that you’re not alone.”
    Not alone. Such a foreign concept to me, and I’m not even sure how to respond. When I died and came back, I felt sort of like a ghost that no one wanted to talk to, because I was the reminder to everyone of the horrible thing that happened. So I did the world a favor and did everything I could not to exist. Over the last few years the world has felt really big and empty, but now he’s saying that’s not the case and that there are people out there who will understand what I’m going through, understand what it’s like to live life with a void in your heart, put there by pain.
    “Fine, I’ll call,” I finally say, and a tiny bit of the weight on my shoulders chips off and falls to the ground.
    “Good,” he says, and then he shakes my hand, something he does after every meeting. “And work on taking down those