12. "disobedient to parents"

"I don't think I can do this anymore. I'm starving, maybe, yeah, but I can't eat a bite. Ryan is dead. How could I possibly--," Nova murmured, head in her knees as she sat at the edge of the pavement. Ten feet to her left, Jayvee sat cross-legged, a plastic plate balanced on her lap, and she gobbled up the food she told me about with ease.

But two feet to her right, Jared debated on whether or not he should comfort the young woman. He seemed surprised she began to speak to him randomly, so he didn't say a word yet -- he allowed her to speak if she had anything more to say, like he knew that she wasn't finished, and somehow, he was right. She did have more to mention. "The smell of food alone is making me sick. I don't get how Jayvee can eat right now. How does she have an appetite? Is the image of the corpse not still lingering in her mind? It wasn't just her friend. It was her boyfriend and yet she doesn't care at all. She's already moved on and it hasn't even been a day."

Door open the slightest crack from my room, I could see Jayvee's shoulders tense up. They were going to fight about everything I was thinking during my conversation with this girl a minute ago, but what I didn't say to her. I could tell. It was blossoming in the air like the ugliest flower of all time -- the very thing that if you think a little bit longer about, you realize both people are stupid for causing a storm.

She always bit back at Nova, but she rarely got pissed with me. She considered us to be on the same team, or she thought I was too stupid to know her -- like truly know her, so she could take advantage of me and I saw that again here. One moment she's offering me food, checking on me, and the next, she's a fire burning anything in Nova's path.

She viewed Nova as a threat, but why? Why her? What was she capable of?

"I can hear you, you know?" She threw out there, in between her bites. "You're being insensitive, Nova."

The last remark motivated the younger one to stand up and make her way over to the source. "Oh, I'm being insensitive? Says the one eating every choice of food in the pantry. There is no dang way I could eat at a time like this. You're not disturbed, how? Explain that to me. Explain how you can be hungry when we're all living in a time so full of feelings? There's no room in our body for anything else and somehow, you have that?"

"I'm eating because I'm hungry. That's how human anatomy works. Eating takes your mind off things when it's too painful or it at least helps you to. Have you never been dumped by your boyfriend and were so thankful for that one friend that brought you ice cream in high school? Or do you not understand that because you're too fricking perfect and everything always goes your way? I lost my boyfriend. He's gone, and I'm thankful that there's food that I can eat so I can at least pretend that there's something else I can think about. So I can at least feel comforted while everything inside me is breaking. I do care, more than you ever would."

Nova scoffed. "Wow. So you refer to the corny coming-of-age films to defend yourself," she spit out. Out of irritation, she looked in every direction as long as it wasn't Jayvee, and being unready to conceal myself back behind my door, her eyes fell on me. I was too late to remove myself from the conversation. I was already part of it before I said a word. "Colby and -- Jared, you too," she called out. "Tell Jayvee that it's legit a sin to be eating right now."

Jared looked like he didn't know what to say, which was new for him. Usually he managed to at least pull something off. Seeing that, I stepped out from my room and shut the door behind me. So much for fresh air when you can't have a clear mind. I might just be the one who has to shut this down. While our leader acted like a child, I was going to have to step in as substitute.

"Since when was your level of grief measured by the amount of food you eat? If a person smiles, it doesn't even mean they're happy, and if they frown it doesn't necessarily mean they're sad, but food is what you use to measure grief? No -- you can rarely ever say which person is grieving more than another. Everyone is different," I shocked myself that I was able to voice my thoughts so quickly, but I was glad I could get it out smoothly. Usually thoughts and thoughts to words are like entirely different languages for me at least.

"You're both sad because subconsciously you're waiting for Ryan to show up in front of you, and over and over again you have to remind yourself that he can't -- that he's gone. You're both sad because you can't get the condition of his still body out of your head. You're both sad because you have to accept that the last word or moment you had with him is always going to be the last. You're both sad because you know that you can't stop hoping, even if it doesn't do you any good. Food has nothing to do with it. Eat or don't eat, you're both mourning. Support each other a little more while you do. Please. I'm begging you."

It nearly ripped me apart to say it. After the feeling of Jayvee's sudden hug, I didn't want to side with her in anything. If I was immature I would've sided with Nova entirely just because I couldn't control the wildfire in my emotions -- because Jayvee was tearing me to shreds.

I wanted to be as distant as I could from her as possible. She gave me a bad vibe -- a bad feeling, that made her seem like she genuinely was a little careless about the murder of her own boyfriend, and I hated the idea that a relationship that looked so real could be so fake, even if it wasn't proven, but I couldn't bring it up as much as it made my skin itch. We needed to at least put up with each other to get through this even if we weren't a tolerable people.

More than anything I wanted peace and quiet. I didn't have a goal to be proven right every step I walked. I just wanted to feel in control of something, and in their arguments, I didn't feel that way. I felt lost. I had to end the crazy. I just had to.

"I don't get it. Why do I feel like you didn't care about him, Jayvee? Why does it feel like you never cared about Ryan the way I cared about him?" Nova spoke up again, but the anger in her tone subsided and she was building herself up with bricks of blue and of black -- of sadness and of terror. She didn't know what to do with herself, and it scared me how the loss of a person can tell the world who everyone near to him really is -- everything they've been hiding, or everything they were capable of doing that no one would ever guess.

The vulnerability. The maze in their souls. The lost sheep. The loneliness.

"That's what it feels like when you love someone who loves someone else," Jayvee responded in an undertone, and then we saw the sadness in the air pour into her too, like water overflowing. "That was all. We weren't forced. We were real no matter what you might of thought, and I was ready to spend forever with him. You're the only one who thought different and that's because he didn't love you."

My body went numb. I hope she meant what she said. I genuinely hope she loved him, but I wish she could be kinder to another heart about it. Every heart is weak if you hit it just right, and she knew exactly how to get to Nova. It's as if she wanted to brag about what she got, and what Nova didn't.

"Guys, take a breather. Gather your thoughts," Jared chimed in, seeing the agony on the youngest's face. He attempted to look out for her when she broke down, though he didn't have much to say so far. Still, it seemed that his soothing voice had a good effect. The tension of the fight was still there, but neither of them said a word out loud. They didn't make an effort to prove stronger than the other, and while he had the chance, he took advantage of that, continuing.

"You have to stop acting like you're the only ones hurting. We all are, and we're doing that in different ways. Pain looks different on everyone. It's not one size fits all. We've hit rock bottom, and it sucks. It's painful. It's traumatizing, and what happened in the past can't be replayed and started over. We can't go back, but we can say that the light will get brighter if we continue and we get along with each other. We're a team, okay?"

We're a team until we find out the disgusting within us, I thought to myself, but I didn't think too long about it. I let myself lay back into Jared's peaceful words. It's been a while since I heard something positive without it seeming hypocritical and with that ray of sunlight Ryan's face lit up in my mind, brighter than ever.

He was just so good and so kind -- so calming. So real. Genuine, shy, but somehow bold at the same time and he was destined for such great things. Without him, it would never be the same and it was a lot to grasp -- that this wasn't a temporary normal. This was normal from here on out, and five years, ten years, twenty years from now, we will have to live with it.

I don't think anyone can truthfully understand another's pain. Not in its entirety. Me without him and me with him are entirely different people and nobody would understand a concept like that unless they went through it themselves. Even then it's not in the same way. There is no bond with another that can be considered a photocopy of a another one, and therefore, there is no pain of loss that can be the same either. I don't even think similar.

It makes me sore all over when people think that they can know. It's a long shot assumption, and I know that they mean well, but they don't understand. They can't comprehend it. It's way over their heads. It's too much for words to describe.

If I were to try to explain it, it would make only the most minor of scratches. I could only try to tell a person what it'd be like to have that longing from the base of your soul to see the smile of the one that you lost, and to hear the laughter that would come with it. I could only try to get it across that life no longer feels safe anymore, even when you're barricaded by strong walls from every danger in the universe, because the loss already seeped in and wore down your insides like a dull pencil that could no longer write. You begin to feel useless, because without them, what's the point? What's the purpose?

All of that is true, and still, it's more than that.

The good times are so blurry -- so hard to remember, because the trickle of blood down his face and the pool that spread beneath his shirt, are too fresh in the mind. I don't only want to forget that. I want to tell myself that it never happened, and be able to mean it, but I can't. I can't do that because it's a reality that can't be changed.

"D-do you think that we can really get to the bottom of this?" Nova whispered, this time not angry or disappointed, but simply exhausted, and her words struck me like an arrow from a bow. Not one of us could manage to answer her. In each of us there was the same question. We hoped we'd figure things out and that everything would make sense, but there was a part of us that knew that maybe we'd never know. Maybe everything was a mess, and maybe it was going to stay that way.

"We're gonna try to," A voice answered her. In the gravel, a familiar pair of shoes trudged their way nearer to us. Officer Dela Cruz. "I'm surprised the four of you are out here. Could you do me a favor and bring out Mister Jewee Choi too? I'd like to have a talk with all of you and I'd prefer to only have to do it once."

Nova flinched, her voice high and awkward. "Oh, yes, sir. One second," she answered the man, scurrying off to his door in search of him.