Last Words and New Hope - Snapshot Six - Alyssa

Early one morning, I came into the family room. This was a long time ago. Before I began to use my room as the only room in the house. The family room is a dirty green carpeted spacious add on room. When my mom moved in, that room wasn't even there, nor was the garage. My grandfather helped build it with my dad. I remember them telling me stories about how my brother was little and he would steal some of the supplies they were using and hid them in various other parts of the ground. Every time I'm in that room now, I don't think of it as something that was built by my family. I think of it as the place I lost my best friend.

It seemed like two days, but it was two months before that day. He called me at about ten-thirty on a school night. I remember my mom telling me I needed to go to bed. Of course, my logic is; being in my bed but being up is still being in bed. I closed my door, way back when my door still functioned like a door and actually closed. We talked for longer than we ever have before, he seemed happy. I told him I missed him. "I miss you too, but don't worry I'll be coming back soon." He told me I couldn't contain my excitement; "How soon?" I screamed into the phone. Of course, my mom heard this and began making her way into my room. "In the summer sometime. Cole is coming back to live with his grandparents for a while and I plan to come with him," I told him how excited I was, and how I couldn't wait to see him again. Knowing my luck, that would be exactly when my mom walks in and decides to play the one-hundred question game. I waved her off, which didn't work to well because we are both extremely stubborn in all the wrong ways. “I love you, I will talk to you again soon," Skylar said. I would have never guessed that that day would be the last time I would ever hear his voice.

The day that Cole called and told me Skylar died, was the literal worst day I have ever experienced. I was sitting on our torn up ten-year-old couch (which thankfully would be replaced three years later). I hung up almost immediately after he told me. My heart felt like it was burning. It felt like a candle was sitting in the pit of my stomach. I felt like flames stretched across my chest and held my heart in place. My heart slowly burned until I could feel nothing except for the bones in my jaw tightening. Aching.

            “That’s what Alyssa’s going to be.” My grandpa said pointing out the window at a psychic building.

            “Right, because they are even remotely the same thing,” I said, rolling my eyes.

            “Well, you’re going to be a psychiatrist, right? They said similar so that’s something.” My dad said.

            “No, I want to be a psychologist. Totally different thing.” I said.

            “They’re the same thing. They doth don’t know what they’re doing.” My grandpa said, giving off one of his deep throated laughs.

“Why do you want to be a counselor?” Jon asked me.

“So I can get paid to tell people they’re crazy,” I said joking. He rolled his eyes in that way he always does. When he wants more information and he’s tired of me giving him the same old safe answers.

“Bullshit.” He said.

“I want to help people the way I wanted to help my best friend before he killed himself. I sat helplessly as he drowned himself in his own sorrow. I’ve watched too many close friends destroy themselves.”

             “That’s awesome, I just hope it works out exactly how you imagine it to,” Jon said.

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