I force my eyes upward and look at Mia for the first time. She's still beautiful. Not in an obvious Vanessa LeGrande or Bryn Shraeder kind of way. In a quiet way that's always been devastating to me. Her hair, long and dark, is down now, swimming damply against her bare shoulders, which are still milky white and covered with the constellation of freckles that I used to kiss. The scar on her left shoulder, the one that used to be an angry red weld is silvery pink now. Almost like the latest rage in tattoo accessories. Almost pretty.

It's a good thing Kerry's dead, because that funeral would've sent him over the edge," Henry said.

In that twisted incestuous way of fate, Mia's a part of our history, and we're among the shards of her legacy.

Sometimes you can only feel something by its absence. By the empty spaces it leaves behind.

I get it now. I have to make good on my promise. To let her go. To really let her go. To let us both go.

And now I am here, as alone as I've ever been. I am seventeen years old. This is not how it's suppose to be. This is not how my life is suppose to turn out.

I want to make her cry and then lick up the tears.