Chapter 1
He had to tell her the words that no parent ever wanted to hear.
River walked to the other side of the hospital bed and held her hand. His eyes avoided hers for fear that she would somehow read his mind. When he finally managed to look into her eyes, he saw sadness there. Then, suddenly he began to feel ashamed of all of the heartache that he had caused her. He didn’t want to break up with her in person, so he cowardly sent a text that said: IT’S OVER; he had broken her heart by dumping her for his ex-girlfriend, Adriana; he avoided her when she’d needed him the most. Now he was about to break her heart again.
He began to think that maybe he deserved to lose their baby. Maybe this was his payback for everything bad that he had ever done. No, that couldn’t be it—could it? No, of course not. He had done some pretty messed up things in his life time, but no one—not even him—deserved to lose a child.
“The baby’s dead. You…you had a miscarriage,” he told her, in a low voice that was loud enough for her to hear. Sixteen-year-old Camila “Cami” Alderson didn’t want to believe what she’d just been told by her ex-boyfriend. He had to be lying. He just had to be, but the sad, solemn look on his face told her otherwise.
Once she realized that he was telling that the truth, she let out the most terrifying, bloodcurdling scream that he had ever heard. He tried to comfort her, but she pushed him away and told everyone to leave the room.
“Baby! I want my baby!” she screamed repeatedly.
Cami quickly brought herself to a seated position in bed. It was just a dream—a dream that she had been having nearly every night since the miscarriage.
The now seventeen-year-old had been through a lot in the past year—probably more than the average teenager. One of the things she had yet to let go of was her anguish over losing Natalie. She wanted to hold her daughter so badly, and the pain of losing her was almost too much to bear that Cami almost died. She had tried to commit suicide by drowning herself in the Caldarelli’s swimming pool, but she hadn’t planned on surviving. Skylar’s father, Vincent, had performed CPR and saved her life.
Her younger sister, Kaci was so overwhelmed with joy when she saw her big sister open her eyes. She threw her arms around Cami’s neck and began to cry harder than she ever had before. Kaci later questioned her as to why she had gotten into the swimming pool, and the only excuse that she could muster was that she wanted to teach herself how to swim. Kaci didn’t believe her but didn’t vocalize it in front of the Caldarellis’. She was just happy that her big sister was alive.
Following her suicide attempt, she had to attend weekly therapy sessions and had been prescribed anti-depressant medication by her psychiatrist, Dr. Elizabeth Frances. Although she felt more relaxed and at ease after taking the medication, the truth was, she actually hated taking it. All of the horror stories that she’d heard in group therapy from young women who had become addicted to anti-depressants was enough to scare her into not wanting to take the pills. She wanted to get better, but she wanted to do it without the medication. She just didn’t want to risk becoming addicted to them.
A few weeks after she began taking them, she stopped and would discard the pills in a zip lock bag that she kept hidden in her bedroom closet. Then, when it was time for the trash to be disposed of, she would put the zip lock bag inside a department store’s bag and tie it up before putting it inside the trash bag. So far her mother, Diane, and Kaci hadn’t detected anything, and that’s the way she wanted to keep it.
She flipped on her lamp and checked the time on her clock: 4:50 a.m. Although she loved her pink alarm clock, the red numbers reminded her of the blood she saw trickling down her leg when she had the miscarriage so she unplugged it.
She sighed to herself and laid her head down on her soft, plush, decorative, pink pillow.
Her summer vacation would be over soon, and she felt as if she’d let it pass her by. She would usually do something fun and exciting each summer, but this summer she only left the house when she had to attend a scheduled meeting with Dr. Frances. When she didn’t have to meet up with her, she’d eat breakfast, fake taking her medication, and sleep for the rest of the day.
At times she found herself feeling lonely because there was hardly anyone home for her to talk to. Although she and Kaci lived in the same house, they hadn’t been spending much time together because Kaci had been working as a waitress at Caldarelli’s Cuisine. Her mother would drop by the house between jobs to check on her, but they usually didn’t talk because Cami would be asleep by the time she arrived home from work. Surprisingly enough (especially since they’re best friends) Cami and Marissa hadn’t spent any time with each other all summer. Marissa had texted her a few times but she never responded.
After the miscarriage, Marissa convinced her to hang out with her at the mall. Then, she confessed to her that she use to party with the school bully, Leena Davidson, and this hurt Cami because she considered Leena to be the reason why her daughter, Natalie, was no longer alive.
She just couldn’t, for the life of her, figure out why Marissa would’ve partied with Leena and never tell her about it. She knew that Marissa use to attend parties, but she never would’ve guessed that she was attending Leena’s parties. On the other hand, she really missed her, but she still felt as if she had deceived her by partying with Leena—even though this happened before the miscarriage.
She reached over her bed to something that was sitting on top of her nightstand. It was the journal that her mother had given her. She’d only had the journal for a few weeks and hadn’t written anything inside but she somehow felt drawn to it. She opened it to the first page, grabbed a pen, and began to write:
July 25, 2013
Dear Marissa,
I miss you so much. You and I don’t talk anymore, but I guess it’s partly my fault for not calling or texting you much this summer. I just can’t wrap my head around the fact that you partied with Leena and never told me about it. I know that this happened before I lost Natalie but it still hurts.
I’ve been seeing a psychiatrist. I’m supposed to be taking my medication but I stopped because I don’t want to become dependent on them. I want to get over what Leena did to me but I feel like I…just can’t let go of the past. It’s all I think about.
It would be really great if I could talk to you, but I don’t know if this is the right time for us to talk. As you already know, my timing is never right for anything.