Free The Year of the Beasts by Cecil Castellucci

for still being alive.

 
     
    chapter
    eighteen
     

 
     
    chapter
    nineteen
     
    Tessa didn’t know that the most beautiful day of summer could be so dark. Even though the sun was out. Even though the sky was a shocking blue. Even though every flower had suddenly decided to bloom again. She wore black. Everyone wore black. Celina wasn’t there. She was in the hospital with a broken back. Her back broken. She would never walk again. And Lulu was laid out for all to see before she would be cremated and put in an urn.
    It didn’t help that there were so many dragonflies and that someone once told her that dragonflies were the souls of the newly departed. Tessa didn’t believe that anything magical existed. If there was, then why would Lulu be dead? Why would she be alive?
    Her mother was leaning against her father. He was holding her up. Tessa thought that she might sink to her knees and tear at the grass on the ground until it was all gone. She felt a rumbling inside her. Like there was the mouth of a monster in her belly waiting to swallow her up.
    She listened as people said things about Lulu. She spoke words she didn’t remember writing. She sang along with the others to a song that Lulu used to listen to on repeat. She watched as they all walked back to their cars. She watched as they went back home and ate food and talked in hushed voices. She watched as they all left, no one really knowing what to say. Her mother in the living room, trying to find some music that would get her through the night. Her father cooking, because that was all he could think of to do.
    Tessa had to let them know which outfit Lulu would have wanted to wear. Tessa knew. They wanted to dress her in the wrong dress. She made her mother buy Lulu a pair of shoes. She didn’t want her sister in the open casket wearing bedazzled flip flops.
    When they finally found Lulu she was bloated and blue. Her bathing suit was shredded. She was not recognizable.
    At night Tessa had to cover her ears and pretend that she did not hear her mother wailing. Her mother didn’t even sound human anymore. And despite how sad she was, Tessa couldn’t help but wonder if her mother would have wailed as loudly for her. Would it have been the same if she had died? Would it have been different?
    In the hospital, Celina’s face was swollen and her eyes black and blue. Her legs and back wrapped in plaster.
    “I’ll never walk again,” Celina said. “I’ll never walk. I just wish I had died.”
    Tessa ran out of the room.
    And where was Jasper?
    He had disappeared. Hadn’t come to the funeral. Didn’t come to hold Tessa’s hand. Didn’t come to make sure that she was OK.
    Charlie did. Charlie came and visited every day. He held her hand. He read to her from magazines and made her playlists and loaded them up for her. He paid her the kind of attention that she’d always craved and didn’t want anymore. After all of that, she realized that she didn’t like Charlie. He wasn’t for her. He was for Lulu. She wanted Jasper.
    Tessa hated the water. Didn’t want to shower. Didn’t want to drink it. She didn’t look out at the river anymore. She couldn’t stand the sight of it. She stifled out the sound with loud music and she blasted it upstairs in her room. Her mother was in the garage with her old guitar amp turned up to ten. Mournful fuzz and feedback was mimicking and covering up sobs.
    Tessa had lost so much weight in such a short time. She could see the bones of her skeleton pressing through her skin. Paper skin. Blue veins. She thought they might just burst through. She already felt like she had no skin on. She wondered if her bones could just walk away from her, leaving her a puddle of skin on the floor.
    That’s what she was. They all were puddles of skin.
    One night, the stars were out. There was no moon. The night was cruel when it had no moon. Tessa looked out her window. She’d been sitting in the sun nook for hours and had watched the sky go