Jennifer Brown

I sat back and looked at it. It was ugly, dark, uncontrolled. Like a monster's face. Or maybe what I saw there was my own face. I couldn't quite tell. Was the face the image of something evil or the image of myself?"Both," Bea muttered, as if I'd spoken my question out loud. "Of course, it's both. But it shouldn't be. Goodness, no.

I'd spend about an hour, my room darkening around me, wondering what the hell happened to make me so unsure of who I even was. Because who you are is supposed to be the easiest question in the world to answer, right? Only for me it hadn't been easy for a very long time.

But now the other half of "us" was gone and, lying there in my shadowy room, I'd be struck with this realization that I had no clue how to be just me again.

Because the truth was, and we both knew it, he'd gone long, long ago. I'd just made him stick around when he really wanted to be somewhere else. In his own weird way, he was another victim of the shooting, One of the ones who couldn't get away. "Are you mad?" he asked, which I thought was a really strange question. "Yes," I said. And I was. It's just that I wasn't so sure I was mad at him. But I don't think he needed to hear that part. I don't think he wanted to hear that part. I think it was important to him to hear that I cared enough to be angry."Will you ever forgive me?" he asked."Will you ever forgive me?" I shot back, leveling my gaze directly into his eyes.He stared into them for a few moments then got up silently and headed for the door. He didn't turn around when he reached it. Just grabbed the doorknob and held it. "No," he said without facing me. "Maybe that makes me a bad parent, but I don't know if I can. No matter what the police found, you were involved in that shooting, Valerie. You wrote those names on that list. You wrote my name on that list. You had a good life here. You might not have pulled the trigger, but you helped cause the tragedy."He opened the door."I'm sorry. I really am." He stepped out into the hallway. "I'll leave my new address and phone number with your mother," he said before walking slowly out of my sight.

I didn't answer. Just shook my head and let the tears roll. "I just want it to go away. I just want all the drama to stop. Nobody would believe me anyway," I whispered. "Nobody would care.

At Garvin High we were dealt a hard dose of reality this year. People hate. That's our reality. People hate and are hated and carry grudges and want punishments ... I don't know if it's possible to take hate away from people. Not even people like us, who've seen firsthand what hate can do. We're all hurting. We're all going to be hurting for a long time. And we, probably more than anyone else out there, will be searching for a new reality every day. A better one ... But in order to change reality you have to be willing to listen and to learn. And to hear. To actually hear.

...But would that be enough? Because at the moment it felt like it could never be enough. People needed more than a place to stay, more than a porch to sleep on. They needed a home, right? They needed love.

Time's never up", she whispered, not looking at me, but at my canvas. "Just like there's always time for pain, there's always time for healing. Of course there is.

Just like there's always time for pain, there's always time for healing.

Some days making it to the end of the day is quite the victory. -- Bea

It'd felt good to be part of an "us," with the same thoughts, the same feelings, the same miseries.

you can get past a mistake, but it's much harder to get past being a cruel person.

At one time it really felt like forever might happen for us.

I couldn't make myself imagine Dad holding some creamy-faced baby, cooing at it, telling it he loved it. Taking it to baseball games. Living some life he'd probably consider his 'real life,' the one he deserved rather than the one he got.

Why shouldn't Mom trust me, Dad" Why are you so determined to make me out to be the bad guy all the time?" I stared at the side of his face, willing him to make eye contact. He didn't. "I've been doing really good late and you don't even care.""Yet you still managed to get into trouble tonight," he said."You have no idea what happened tonight," I said, my voice ratcheting up a notch. "All you know is that, because I was involved, I'm somehow guilty of something. You could at least pretend to care, you know. You could at least try to understand."Dad gave a sardonic little laugh. "I'll tell you what I understand," he said. "I understand that when you're left to your own devices you get into trouble, that's what I understand. I understand I was trying to have a happy, restful evening with Briley and once again you screwed it up.

Life isn't fair. A fair's a place where you eat corn dogs and ride the ferris wheel.

Because I love you. And I hurt you. I hurt the person I love most in the world, and i will never forgive myself.

Sometimes even stuff you expect to happen can still hurt