Devils Roses 01 - Cursed

amount at the funeral on Saturday and shopped with friends on Monday. I had stayed in bed for two weeks. Well, until my father threatened calling my grandma to come help me through it. I resented his wanting to be the only one suffering.
    I slumped into the seat of my sister's car. I turned away from her, watching the road blur by the window like an impressionist painting left out in the rain. Alise talked in a steady and unyielding stream on her Bluetooth. The whole ride was a series of 'OMG' and 'seriously' on both their parts. I often wondered if it was a modern-day Morse code.
    Where I was shy and withdrawn, Alise had always been outgoing, or slutty as the truly brave referred to her.
    Our father, like myself, mourned alone in the quiet of his mind. He preferred to withdraw to his office, where he pretended to work. We knew he sat there surrounded by a million reminders of her. I tried not to judge him too harshly. I too, had my own reminders of my mom, like the stolen nightgown and a few other key items. I had locked them away in Ziploc bags and smelled them like a serial killer. I had kept them under the bed for eight months without anyone seeing. I couldn’t explain my need to smell them, even to myself. So I tried not to think about how creepy it was.
    Alise blathered on with her friend Giselle, while I watched out the window waiting for it to start feeling like a regular day again. In eight months, I hadn’t been able to get that feeling back.
    “ Ok girl, peace out.” Alise looked at me as she clicked the phone off. “Can you believe that? Jaime's going to freak, when she hears that shit.”
    "I don’t like wasting the brain cells I have on Giselle or Jaime." I shrugged. I had no idea what she was talking about and I didn’t care to know.
    Alise groaned as we pulled into the school parking lot. “Aimee, if you don’t try to be normal again, well, your nerdy normal anyway, they’re going to lock you away for depression. It's going to be in one of those places where the girls don’t shower and all become lesbians.”
    I stifled a laugh as she ranted.
    “ Like a week ago, I heard Mrs. Sinclair talking to the guidance counselor about you. She said some shit about how they are noticing your inability to find happiness again or something like that. Dude, no one said you have to forget Mom, but you need to try to still be alive. Besides, it's embarrassing having the Emo-angst queen as my sister.”
    I ignored her, and instead, focused on the asylums full of unkempt lesbians around the country. It made me smile, even if it was just a tiny bit.
    I crossed the courtyard from her car, to my first class, knowing my body rejected her reasoning from head to toe. My greatest fear was becoming a happy kid again and forgetting how badly it hurt to lose my mom. Some days when I didn’t fight it hard enough, I would catch myself distracted by something that made me smile. I knew it would be the end of my depression, sooner than later.
    I coasted through my classes doodling, thinking about the dream I’d had. It had been a repeat, I was certain. I remembered seeing the look on my father's face—it had been fear.
    I knew my dad was worried about me, but he wasn’t one to be pointing fingers. He had been in a rough patch and hadn’t come out of his office, except to ground Alise every other day. She swore up and down, she had caught him sitting in his walk-in closet under Mom's dresses and clothes. He sat there crying and touching the bottoms of them.
    The bell rang for lunch, before I realized I had even gone to a second period class. I looked down at the homework assignment I had written, amazed it was a coherent sentence. I picked up my books and slipped from the class, not making eye contact with anyone.
    “ Aimes, wait up.” A voice called me from down the hall. It was a sound that warmed my heart. I turned to see Blake coming towards me. He was the only person who seemed to be able to see me past my sadness. I knew one day I would snap out of it and resurface because Blake still saw me. I was confident that if I ever got too lost in my pool of despair, he would reach his hand in and pull me out of it.
    I almost laughed, as he stumbled up the stairs near my locker. He was not handsome in a traditional way. He was tall and thin, but not skinny. His blue eyes stood out against his dark hair. However, thick glasses and constant looking down muted the color of his eyes. He was always stuck in a book, iPhone,