Why: A Short Story

Those first few moments when you wake up in the morning are ones to be treasured. Those few moments when you feel vaguely satisfied after a good nights sleep and don't quite know why, before you remember. Remember why it is that you cried yourself to sleep last night and why nothing will ever be right in your world again.

Somewhere in between slumber and reality he registers that someone is knocking on his door. He ignores it and in a bid to escape the world burrows deeper under the doona. Maybe if he stays here in his dark cocoon he can pretend that it never happened.

The door opens. Of course, to his mother, knocking is a mere formality.

'Jeremy, sweetheart, I've made some breakfast for you.'

He answers by rolling to the wall and hitching the doona further over his head.

'Honey, I know it's hard, but you have to get up.'

'Why,' he grunts. 'It won't change anything.'

He hears her sigh, and feels the mattress cave as she sits next to him.

'I know it won't, nothing will, but it doesn't mean you have to give up too.' He stiffens at this, at this reminder.

'Please get up.'

An hour later he's sitting at the kitchen table. His mother is hovering around him. His sister comes into the room and stares at him. He wonders if she thinks it's contagious, as she grabs an apple and hurries out again.

He sits in the passenger seat in the car, working his finger around the small hole in the fabric, making it bigger and bigger. He tries to ignore the buildings and people rushing by outside the car, knowing what's ahead. He tries to ignore it, to concentrate on the flowerbeds on the other side of the street, but like a magnet his gaze is drawn to the church. He wrenches his eyes away from it and they land on his mother. She stares at him, the worried frown that is becoming so familiar fills her face. She sighs. His mother is becoming very good at sighing.

He looks out the window again as she pulls up in front of the supermarket.

'You don't have to come in if you don't want to,' she says, smiling at him in what he assumes is meant to be an understanding way.

He shrugs.

She leans over and hugs him before she gets out of the car.

'I love you. Don't forget that.'

He turns up the radio and closes his eyes, blocking out the everyday bustle that is occurring a few metres away from him, people going on with their lives as if nothing has happened.

He is distracted by an unfamiliar sound. It takes him a few seconds to realise it's his mother's mobile phone.

Without thinking he picks it up and gets out of the car, meaning to take it to his mother. He freezes as he enters the supermarket. How can he have been so stupid? It's after school and the girls at the checkout whisper and stare at him. This is when she would have been here, and all he can see is her. One of the girls has her back to him, and for a moment he fools himself into thinking it is her, but then she turns around and the illusion shatters. One of them comes up to him. She's in his year at school he remembers as he focuses on her. Rachel. She is, was, friends with her.

'Hi Jeremy,' she pauses, looking uncomfortable at his blank stare. 'I-I'm sorry about Josie...I miss her too...' He blinks at her, dazed.

'Have you seen my Mum?'

She stares at him for a moment before pointing to aisle 4.

He stops when he can hear his mothers' voice. She's talking to someone. He recognises the voice. It's one of his teachers. Rachel was wrong. She's in aisle 5, not 4.

'How's Jeremy holding up?'

There's that sigh again. 'I don't know to be honest.'

He looks around him. The room is sparse. There is the mandatory wilting pot plant in the corner, surrounded by magazines that look at least five years out of date. There's a young mother with her daughter waiting as well. He wonders who made them come.

He studies the door, to avoid thinking about anything, to avoid thinking about her. It hurts too much. Dr Janine Fitzgerald.

It swings open as he watches, and she beckons him inside.

Janine suggested that he write her a letter. 'It will help,' she said. Fine then, he'll write her a letter, but he wonders how it will help. She'll never read it.

Dear Josie, he pauses here, wondering how to proceed. How are you, is just bizarre when he thinks about it.

I miss you. I miss you so fucking much Jose. I miss waking up to my phone flashing at me with a good morning message from you, I miss your smile, I miss being able to kiss you, to hold you, to fucking well being able to talk to you!

Why did you do it!? Why didn't you tell me that things were that bad for you that you saw no way out? I had no idea, and this kills me. I thought you, I thought we were happy, but I was wrong and I can never forgive myself for this.

He stops. He doesn't know what else to write. His Josie is gone, and she's never going to read this, or do anything again. And it was her own choice. He can't get over that.

He slumps over his desk, willing sleep to take him into its hazy forgetful arms. In his dreams she's still alive.