“Jasey Rae, you have to come out of your room today. I let you get away with you not going to the visitation, now you have to go to the funeral,” my mom said through the door, she and my father had taken the day off to be with my because they knew I was a mess. You see, Alexander William Leigh, my best friend and the person who I just happened to be madly in love with, had died in a drunk driving accident, but he had been the drunk driver. No other cars were involved, just a tree and an overpass, but it had been enough to kill him.

“Okay…” I replied as I crawled out of my bed and slouched towards the dresser. My hair was greasy and I looked simply disgusting. I needed a shower so badly and I still didn’t know what I was going to wear. Not that I cared, because I knew Alex wouldn’t care, either. However, I knew my mom would throw a fit if I didn’t go all out for him, just because he was dead now.

I began to rummage through my drawers; there was nothing decent in there so I turned to my closet. I found a red blouse that Alex had always liked to see me wear and a pair of black dress pants that barely fit me anymore. I pulled my red ballet flats out from the bottom of my closet and set them at the foot of my bed. I made my way towards the bathroom, which was attached off the back of my room.
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I locked myself inside and slid down the door onto the floor. I began thinking about poor Alex and everything he had been through since we met when he was thirteen. First it was losing his mother, he put on a strong façade and acted like the death of his mother hadn’t bothered him, but I could see through it. Inside he was hurting, but we wouldn’t tell a soul. Then two years later, when he was fifteen, his brother Brandon Leigh, committed suicide at the tender age of seventeen. Alex worshiped the ground Brandon walked on until he killed himself and began to hate him. He claimed he hated Brandon because he was selfish and didn’t think about abandoning him when he took his life. Then when Alex was he himself was seventeen, he met Alyssa Marie Russo. She had ripped him right out of the depression he settled so comfortably into, it amazed me how her pretty olive skin and gleaming brown eyes could change him so quickly. I still didn’t quiet understand why he had started drinking, he had always seemed so in love with her, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe I just wasn’t meant to know.

After almost fifteen minutes of silently thinking, I started to run the bath water. Briefly I thought about how easy it is to drown yourself, but then I realize I was too sick for suicide. To sick to die, to sad to even care. As I thought about this, I slowly peeled off my pajamas I’d been wearing for quite sometime now and climbed into the already running shower. I just stood there, not bothering to move and the water poured over me, just thinking about every good time Alex and I had.

I fell in love with Alex on the 22nd of August in 2001. Ian, my brother, had invited me because I had cried when he told me I couldn’t go. Alex came down the street with a certain confident swagger about him and I fell in love. I fell in love with his shaggy brown eyes and eyes that match perfectly with his hair. That day I laughed until I cried, I hadn’t had that nice of a time ever.

I snapped from my thoughts and began to wash my hair I just couldn’t think about Alex all the time that was all I had done for the past four days. When I was awake I thought about him, when I was asleep I dreamt about him. Both were driving me out of my mind, slowly towards insanity.

Eventually I clambered out of the tub and picked up my clothes that I had placed, without a care, on the floor. I put them on slowly over my moist body. As I did so I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I hadn’t seen myself in days. I looked awful; my eyes were rimmed with red and framed with bluish circles. I looked sick, with pale skin and dark, wet hair plastered to the sides of my face. Alex wouldn’t want me to be like this; he would want me to be the beautiful girl I use to me.


I was honestly trying my hardest to not think about Alex, I had the choice to think about Alex when he was a live or Alex while he had died. I didn’t want to think of either, both upset me to an extreme. The funeral would be the last time I’d ever see Alex and he wouldn’t even be breathing, but despite this, something inside me told me I had to see him one last time. Something told me that even though he hadn’t loved my the way I wanted him to, I still had to see his face. A real face, not a photographed one.