Free Taking Flight by Sarah Solmonson Page A

I could convince myself I wasn’t tired anymore; adrenaline coursed through me on a constant drip. I started to stay awake for days on end.
    As summer ended and the first day of school approached I knew I needed to get back into a routine, including sleep. I found a bottle of Tylenol P.M. and started taking them, one after another. I wanted only to sleep, but I wouldn’t have put up much of a fight against death. I spent the next two days with a sick stomach and a wicked headache, my ears ringing constantly. Mom never knew. How could she notice that I was weak and sick? Mom couldn’t stand to be around me for any length of time, looking at me hurt her too much. 
    When my junior year of high school began it wasn’t too long before I began sleeping in class. Only I wasn’t really sleeping. I would be listening to the teacher and then everything around me would fade in and out, the chalkboard replaced with a field I had never seen. Your plane was going up in front of me, and I would reach out to stop you. The sounds of my own screams brought me back to the present.
    Flashbacks took over the less I slept, and the idea of sleeping at night became terrifying. I knew if I started to dream at night what I was seeing during the day the thread I was clinging to would snap. I could feel myself going crazy, and I fought less and less to keep it together. I almost wish I had seen you die, because my imagination created a fiery, bloody, mangled death more powerful than the crash that had actually killed you.
    I stopped eating. It wasn’t an intentional choice; I simply stopped being hungry. I weighed ninety-seven pounds at the end of my junior year, my ribs and collarbone stuck out from under my skin. I was unhealthy in every way a person could be, intensified by the fact that I kept pretending to be fine. Or doing my best to pretend, to fit into who I was before. I cared about nothing but went through the daily motions of school, homework, and hanging out with friends as though these were still the most important parts of my life. I felt like I was outside of my own body most of the time, watching from the sidelines as Sarah smiled or cheered at a school soccer game.  
    I would barely get through a month and then the first would roll back around and I would relive the day you had died, distracted as the ten o’clock hour struck. I wore black pants and a black shirt on the first of every month, making things uncomfortable for my very normal friends. I thought I was doing everyone a favor. I saved my differentness, my pain, for one day out of thirty. But as the time passed my behavior just struck them as annoying, as a burden they couldn’t handle.
    I’m much older now, and on days when I am being mature I can say neither they or I were at fault in the disintegration of our friendships. They were kids and so was I. Within a year I had lost them all.
    But thanks to Facebook I am somewhat connected to a few of the people I was once such good friends with. Sometimes, against my wishes, I see their faces on my computer screen. Many of those in my group remained friends. They go to each other’s weddings, they stop in for visits when they pass through town. Yet I am never invited, which leads me to believe they never miss me. Then I get angry that I miss them, or maybe I just miss the idea of them. I think your death stunted my growth in a big way. My ten-year high school reunion was held in August 2012, but I didn’t go. I may never be able to go. I don’t want to risk the pain, so I will live with the disappointment.
    N was the first to go. He went to a church retreat the summer after your crash and was supposed to come over the day he got home. Mom was gone, and I was waiting for him at the kitchen table with Wendy’s for dinner when the phone rang.
    Just like I knew by Mom’s voice that you were dead, I knew in his voice that he was leaving me.
    I had known for some time that he was too pure and too good for my