1 Lost Breaths and Moving Clouds

Lost Breaths and Moving Clouds

Savannah

Age seventeen

Blossom Grove, Georgia

T HERE WERE PRECISELY FORTY-TWO CRACKS ON THE LINOLEUM FLOOR. Rob, the therapy leader, was talking, but all I heard was the tinny drone from the heating system whirring above us. My gaze was unfocused, catching only spears of daylight slicing through the high windows and the blurred outlines of the others in the circle around me.

"Savannah?" I blinked my eyes into focus, glancing up at Rob. He was smiling at me, body language open and an encouraging smile on his face. I shifted nervously on my seat. I wasn't blessed with the skill of talking out loud. I struggled to put words to the turbulent feelings stirring inside me. I was better on my own. Being around people for too long drained me; too many of them made me close in on myself. I was nothing like my sister, Ida, whose personality was infectious and gregarious.

Just like Poppy …

I swallowed the instant lump that sprouted in my throat. It had been almost four years. Four long, excruciating years without her, and I still couldn't think of her name or picture her pretty face without feeling my heart collapse on me like a mountain caving in. Without feeling the shadow of death's unyielding fingers wrap around my lungs and starve them of air.

The knowing pangs of anxiety immediately began clawing their way up from the depths of where they slumbered. Sinking their teeth into my veins and sending their poison flooding through my body until it had captured me as its unwilling hostage.

My palms grew damp and my breathing became heavy. "Savannah." Rob's voice had changed; even though it echoed in my ears as everything around me tunneled into a narrow void, I heard its worried inflection. Feeling the weight of everyone's stares on me, I jumped up from my seat and bolted for the door. My footsteps were an arrhythmic drumbeat as I followed the stream of light in the hallway toward the open air. I burst through the door to the outside and sucked in the wintery Georgia air.

Dancing spotlights invaded my vision, and I stumbled to the tree that sat in the grounds of the therapy center. I leaned on the heavy trunk, but my legs gave way and I dropped to the hard soil. I closed my eyes and laid my head against the wood, the rough bark scratching the back of my scalp. I focused on breathing, on trying to remember every lesson I had ever been taught about coping with an anxiety attack. But it never seemed to help. The attacks always held me hostage until they were finally willing to release me.

I was utterly exhausted.

My body trembled for what felt like an age, heart sputtering and lurching until I felt my lungs begin to loosen, my windpipe finally granting my body the oxygen it so badly craved. I inhaled through my nose and out through my mouth until I sagged farther into the tree, the smell of grass and earth breaking through anxiety's sensory-blocking fog.

I opened my eyes and looked up at the bright blue sky, watched the white clouds traveling up ahead, trying to find shapes in their structures. I watched them appear, then leave, and wondered what it looked like from up there, what they saw when they looked down upon us all, loving and losing and falling apart.

A droplet of water landed on the back of my hand. I glanced down, only to catch another drop fall on my ring finger's knuckle—they were coming from my cheeks. Exhaustion rippled over me, consuming all my strength. I couldn't even lift my hands to wipe away the tears. So I focused on watching the journeying clouds again, wishing I could be like them, constantly moving, never having time to stop to process and think.

Thinking gave me space to break.

I didn't even realize someone had sat down beside me until I felt a subtle shift in the air around me. The clouds still held my attention.

"Anxiety attack again?" Rob said. I nodded, my hair rubbing against the loose bark that was scarcely holding on to its home. Rob was only in his thirties. He was kind and was exceptional at what he did. He helped so many people. Over the past four years I'd seen a myriad of teenagers come through the therapy center's door and leave, changed, empowered, and able to function once more in the world.

I was simply broken.

I didn't know how to heal, how to put myself back together again. The truth was, when Poppy died, all light vanished from my world, and I'd been stumbling around in the dark ever since.

Rob didn't speak for a while but finally said, "We have to change tactics, Savannah." The edge of my lips lifted as I saw what looked like a daisy form in a cloud. Ida loved daisies. They were her favorite flower. Rob leaned back against the tree beside me, sharing the wide trunk. "We've received some funding." His words trickled into my ears one syllable at a time as the world, painstakingly slowly, began to stitch itself back together. "There's a trip," he said, letting that hang in the air between us. I blinked, the sun's afterimage dancing in the darkness when I squeezed my eyes shut to banish its blinding glow.

"I want you to go on it," Rob said. I froze and eventually turned my head to face him. Rob had short red hair, freckles, and piercing green eyes. He was a walking autumnal color palette. He was also a survivor. To say I admired him was an understatement. Punished as a teen for his sexuality by those who were meant to love him, he had fought his way through hell to reach freedom and happiness, now helping others who struggled in their own ways too.

"There's a trip … I want you to go on it …"

Those delayed words filtered into my brain and my old friend anxiety began to reemerge.

"A small group from all over the States is going on a five-country journey. One of healing." He rolled his head to look up at the clouds that had previously captured my attention. "Teens dealing with grief."

I shook my head, every second making it more and more pronounced.

"I can't," I whispered, instant fear wrapping around my voice.

Rob's smile was sympathetic, but he said, "I've already spoken to your parents, Savannah. They've agreed it would be good for you. We've already secured your place."

"No!"

"You've already finished high school. And you've gotten into Harvard. Harvard , Savannah. That's incredible." Rob briefly paused to think but then added, "That's Boston. Far, far away from here."

I understood the subtext. I couldn't function at home, so how on earth would I function in another state at college?

When Poppy died, I threw myself into my studies. I had to occupy my mind at all times. It was how I stayed above water. I had always been studious. I had always been the smart one. The bookworm. The one who talked of physics and equations and molecular structures. Ida was the loud one, the dramatic sister, the funny one, capturing all the attention—in all the best ways. And Poppy … Poppy had been the dreamer. She had been the believer, the creative one, the one with music and never-ending happiness and hope in her heart.

The one who would have changed the world.

When Pops died, I couldn't face school anymore—people's stares, the sorrowful glances, the spotlight that followed me around, broadcasting me as the girl who had watched her older sister die. So I homeschooled, and I graduated early. Harvard accepted me; I'd done enough to get in. But with all my schoolwork complete, my newly found time became my enemy. Idle hours spent reliving Poppy fading, her slowly dying before us. Endless minutes that gave my anxiety breathing room to strike, to draw out its advances like mercenaries toying with an easy target. I felt Poppy's absence like a noose pulling tighter around my neck day by day.

"I know it might seem frightening. I know it's something you might not believe you can do," Rob said, his voice gentle and encouraging. "But you can , Savannah. I believe in you." I felt my bottom lip tremble as I met his eyes. "I'm not giving up." A gentle smile. "We're going to get you through this. We're going to get you to Harvard this fall. And you're going to thrive."

I wanted to smile back, to show my appreciation for him even thinking of me, for never quitting on me, but nerves held me back. New people. New places. Unknown lands—it was utterly terrifying. But I had no fight left in me to contest it. And Lord, nothing else had worked for me. Four long years of individual and group therapy hadn't been able to lift me back up or put me back together again. I was too tired to argue. So I turned my head again and stared back up at the sky. A large cloud rolled in, and I stilled.

It looked exactly like a cello.

I entered Blossom Grove to the symphonic soundtrack of singing birds. No matter the time of year, there was always something unearthly about this place. A slice of heaven placed down on Earth, a glimpse of the celestial, of peace. Or maybe it was just whose spirit rested here that made it so special. Protecting the place that she adored so much.

The trees were bare, the buds of the blossoms not yet ready to show us their beauty, winter keeping them at bay for just a little while longer. But it didn't make the grove any less beautiful. I breathed in the fresh air that whistled through the brown branches until my feet led me to the tree that protected my best friend.

The white marble headstone shone like an angel in the lowering sun, dusk blanketing the grave in idyllic golden hues. P OPPY L ITCHFIELD stood out in golden writing, F OREVER A LWAYS etched underneath.

I wiped some fallen leaves from the top of the headstone and sat down before it. "Hello, Poppy," I said, already feeling my throat grow tight. I knew that for many, four years after the death of a loved one was enough for them to find their way back to some kind of life. To move on in whatever way they could. Yet for me, four years may have well been four minutes. It felt like only yesterday that Poppy left us—left Ida and me. Left Mama and Daddy and Aunt DeeDee. Left Rune. The fractures that splintered through my heart were still open and unhealed.

Those four years had not changed a thing. A pause button had been pressed that day. And I hadn't been able to press play since.

I pressed a kiss to my fingers, then placed them on the headstone. It was warm under my hand from the sun that always spotlighted in this grove, letting the world know that someone truly beautiful resided here.

I peered down and saw a photograph stuck to the bottom of the headstone. Tears pricked my eyes as I stared in awe at the stunning scene it boasted. The northern lights were captured perfectly in the picture, greens and blues soaring across a star-spattered black sky.

Rune.

Rune had been here. He always did this. Every time he came home, he would spend hours at Poppy's grave, under their favorite tree. Spend the day talking to his only love, his soulmate, telling her about his life at NYU. About the apprenticeship he had secured with a Pulitzer Prize–winning photographer. About his travels around the world, visiting far off countries and sights—like the northern lights—that he would always capture on film and then bring home for Poppy to see.

"So she won't miss out on new adventures," he would tell me.

Then there were the days when he would visit Poppy, and I would sit behind a nearby tree, unnoticed and hidden, and listen to him speak to her. When tears would cascade from my eyes at the unfairness of the world. At us losing the brightest star in our skies, at Rune losing half of his heart. As far as I knew, he had never dated anyone else. He told me once that he would never feel about anyone else the way he felt about Poppy and that although their time together was short, it had been enough to last him a lifetime.

I had never experienced a love like theirs. I wasn't sure many did. Where Ida searched and prayed for a Rune-and-Poppy-type love, I feared it would only cause me more pain. What if I lost them too? How would I ever cope? I didn't know how Rune survived each day. I didn't know how he opened his eyes every sunrise and simply breathed . I'd never asked him. I'd never found the courage.

"I had another attack today," I told Poppy, leaning against her headstone. I rested my head against the warm marble. Drank in the soothing birdsong that always kept her company. After several silent minutes, I pulled out the notebook from my bag. The one I had never dared open. I traced the words For Savannah written on the cover in Poppy's handwritten script.

The notebook she had left to me. The one I had never read or even opened. I didn't know why. Perhaps it was because I was too scared to read what Poppy had to say, or perhaps it was because it was the final piece I had left of her, and once it was opened, once I'd finished the very last word, then she was truly gone.

I hugged the notebook to my chest. "They're sending me away, Pops," I said, my quiet voice carrying around the near-silent grove. "To try to make me better." I sighed, the heaviness in my chest almost bruising my ribs. "I just don't know how to let you go."

The truth was, if Poppy could talk to me, I knew she'd be heartbroken at how her death had paralyzed me, wounded me irreparably. Yet, I couldn't shake it. Rob told me that grief never left us. Instead we adapted, like it was a new appendage we had to learn to use. That at any moment, pain and heartache could strike and break us. But eventually we would develop the tools to cope with it and find a way to move on.

I was still waiting for that day.

I watched the setting sun disappear through the trees, the waxing crescent moon rising to take its place. The golden blanket adorning us turned to a silvery blue as night arrived and I stood to leave. "I love you, Pops," I said and reluctantly walked through the grove to our home. Our home, that these days, missed its heartbeat.

Because she was buried in the ground behind me. Eternally seventeen. The age I was now. Never to grow old. Never to shine her light. Never to share her music.

A travesty the world would forever be deprived of.