Nocturnal Read Free

rest my hand on the little iron gate before I vault over it. Fourteen years of ballet comes in handy sometimes. I'd quit last year, but I knew my mother wanted me to go back. Now... I don't know. 
    Using my cell phone as a flashlight, I decide where I'm going to go. The ground is uneven, which creeps me out, but I try not to think about the effect of erosion on cemeteries. I go up one row, pausing to read some of the names. Many are so worn that you couldn't make them out, even in the daytime.
    I run my hand over a small stone for a child who had only lived seven years. Life is so fragile, taken away so easily. I move from one stone to another, touching each one as if saying hello to a friend. They have been my friends this past year. I find more comfort in the dead than I do in the living. The dead don't ask me if I'm fine, tell me that they are there for me and then never call. The dead don't make horrible tuna casseroles and drop them off, even though I've told them I'm a vegetarian and my mother is allergic to fish. The dead don't look at you like they were scared and pitied you at the same time. 
    I sit down in front of one large stone that was so old, it nearly topples over when I brushed it with my hand. Nothing lasts.
    I have to go to school on Monday. I have to text my best friend and smile and take a geometry quiz and figure out where I want to go to college. But those things are so unimportant in the face of losing my mother. No, that's not right.
    I wasn't losing her, like an earring or a set of keys. She was going away and never coming back. I'm still on the fence about the whole afterlife thing. I haven't thought about it much, because I always assumed she would get better. Everyone said so. 
    The sobs come up, consuming my entire body, making me shake as strange sounds escape from my mouth. There aren't tears, not yet. I'd have to let it go on for longer, and I'm not going to do that. The sounds I make are loud in the quiet night. 
    It takes me a while to get control of myself again. I hate it when I lose it. Like some animal part of me takes over and I'm not human anymore. I can't see or feel anything. I am my grief. It consumes me, owns me. Because I let it, if only for a little while. I always come out of it in the end. Exhausted, but back in control. So I can put on a smile and continue pretending I'm fine. At last I'm able to inhale normally, and my legs support me when I stand. My jeans are wet and covered in dirt and my face is swollen and sticky from my tears. I'm going to look so awesome tomorrow morning.
    I stare up at the stars, breathing in the night air. I read somewhere that people used to think that night air was bad for you. The vapors, they'd called it. They thought it brought disease. I can't understand why. I pull in a lungfull of it. 
    I walk around a bit after my episode is over. My crouched sobbing-position had made my legs stiff. My muscles also have a tendency to seize up on me when I really let the grief take over. 
    I stop to trace some of the names on the stones. Some sharp and fresh, as if a knife carved them yesterday. Others smudged with time, worn away by water and wind and snow. The flowers and candles are long gone. Near the back, at the oldest part of the cemetery are several mausoleums. Built, no doubt, by people who wanted to show how important they were with stone angels and iron doors to protect their dead. But no one cares. Nobody cares about you after you die. 
    Okay, so my thoughts were super-morbid, but that's what happens when one of your parents gets a life-threatening disease when you're a teenager. Still, I refuse to make the jump to full-on emo. There will be no completely black outfits with chain belts and combat boots. There will be no thick black eyeliner and random facial piercings. Yurgh. 
    Wandering a little more to compose myself, I go near the back of the cemetery, farthest from the road. It's older here, more wild. The ground is so uneven nobody can