Samantha stands before a tall tree. It is a maple tree. Several of its leaves have already grown back as spring passes, and now it is highlighted in a vibrant green once again. She stands looking at the tree for a few seconds. She notices the bark of the tree, several shallow fissures running up the trunk.
Quite an old tree, probably past 100 years of age. She sees a brown-furred squirrel on a branch looking at her.
However it soon ignores her, climbing out of sight to look for anything edible. For breakfast, Samantha herself had an omelet she made for herself along with some toasted English muffins. Ever since her parents had died, she had to do her own shopping. She hadn’t learned how to drive yet, and considering how her parents had died, she didn’t want to learn anytime soon.
She takes trips, either by public transit or taxi, to supermarkets on the weekends and she had to get used to handling the shopping that her father would normally take care of. He was always looking through store flyers and coupon websites for good deals.
There’s a sale on eggs tomorrow actually at MarketMax. Should I…
Samantha shakes her head. No time on weekdays for grocery shopping. If she was going to keep her grades up and reach her first semester at Hawthorne, then she had to be prudent. She has such idle thoughts as she stands looking at the tall maple tree. All of a sudden, a leaf falls from a branch, floating gently to the ground.
It falls a few feet in front of Samantha. It is a small, green maple leaf, not fully grown into the three prominent lobes it normally would have. Out of curiosity and slight boredom, she walks up to the leaf and stares at it for a few seconds. This leaf makes her think about… her parents. It isn’t like everything makes Samantha think about her parents, rather it was the leaf specifically.
The leaf fell to the ground and the tree itself was fine. Nothing at all happened to the massive old tree when the leaf prematurely fell, just like nothing happened to the world, the country, or the city, when her parents died before their natural time.
The leaf would eventually decompose and be absorbed by the roots of the tree again; everyone would accept Samantha’s parents’ passing and move on, though a “2” would be added to the year’s tally of car accident victims.
Samantha’s eyes water. However, she holds back the tears. She has cried enough, hasn't she? Crying more won’t do anything for her mother and father right now. They’re waiting for her to join them, but only after she lives a full and successful life, the life that they had always wanted for her.
This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.
Rather than dallying any longer, she continues her morning walk to her high school.
It was two days after she had spoken to Ava about her parents’ lives. Samantha heads to her classes while looking forward to talking to Ava once again, hoping she hadn’t scared her off while rambling about her family back then.
Samantha didn’t see Ava in the morning nor while she was doing her morning classes. She didn't share any morning classes with Ava after all. Samantha is able to meet her at the school cafeteria today. After she sat down and took out her lunch, Ava came over to sit right next to her, a bright smile on her face.
“Hey, Sam! How’s it going?”
“Yeah, it’s going alright. How about you?”
“Yeah, good enough, good enough. Morning classes were really annoying though, there was a really weird sub who wanted the class to…”
While Ava discussed the details of her morning with Samantha, four others joined the two of them, all of them popular girls of their senior year of highschool, the queen bees of Anne Bond High.
The four girls seamlessly embedded themselves into their conversation and Ava eventually introduced the four of them to Samantha. Samantha had heard their names before so it wasn’t a big reveal, though she didn’t know that Ava was friends with all of these popular girls.
She watches how Ava interacts with her friends and is impressed by how socially savvy Ava has become since middle school. She was good at making friends even back then and all her charisma seems to be more than enough to attract her current it-crowd. These girls in Ava’s clique were all beautiful and well-liked, even by the few people Samantha normally spoke to.
They weren’t school bullies or even diva types either, they were all the kind, helpful, interesting and witty type of person that only seems to exist in fiction. One of them was even accepted to Hawthorne just like Samantha was. Samantha found herself doing well among this group of girls today. It was certainly a welcome change of pace from her normal lunchtime study sessions.
However even after school, Ava continues to walk home with Samantha every single school day. She even added her on all of her social media. Social media felt like less of a big deal back in middle school to Samantha, but she could tell that, at least to Ava and her group of friends, it was extremely important now, almost to the point of codependency.
Samantha didn’t really care to post details about herself online, but she didn’t fault others for doing so. To her, it seemed like a harmless hobby, a way to pass the time outside of watching tv and movies, with a strong social component to it as well.
Over the next few days and weeks, Samantha and Ava’s group became closer and closer. As a result, Samantha started to feel less burdened by the knowledge that she would never see her parents again. Even her suicidal ideation started to become more infrequent than earlier.
The harshness by which her daily life greeted her started to become softer. It started to get to the point where it almost felt like what she had lost was akin to living through a bad dream. She felt like it was ok to believe that even nightmares end eventually.