I Wrote This While You Slept - 2. Chapter 2

NOELLE

I don’t like it; death. It’s nothing like what you think it is. There’s something numbing and…lifeless about it. Ha! Lifeless, get it? I don’t like it one bit. I want to go back and feel again. All of it, even the bad parts. The smell of the freshly shaved grass on the pitch, the scalding hot tea from the cafeteria on my tongue, the freezing morning air on my skin, the taste of metallic blood in my mouth when I’m struck by the ball in the middle of the game. Funny how I used to loathe some of those things. What I wouldn’t give now to just play one more game. To drink one more hot tea. To feel…

It’s quite boring here in this limbo that I’m in. Somewhere between life and death. Most people move on right away. But I decided to stick around. Well, I think I decided. It’s difficult to explain the way things happen around here. But after my soul left my body, I simply made up my mind to stay. Why? For you, of course. I told you that I’d love you in this life and the next, and I meant it. Therefore, I can’t leave. Not without you.

The only good part of this not-feeling thing is that I can’t feel the pain of losing you. I can only imagine it. If I was still on Earth and I had lost you, I would be on the floor sobbing my eyes out in front of Sophie and India. I would be beyond heartbroken. But here, there’s no such thing as crying. There’s just…being. I wonder whether I would have preferred to be given a chance to at least say goodbye to you first. To at least look at your face one last time. Oh, how I used to obsess over every single speck of you. How I’d stare at you in class, draw you in my notebooks, and then dream of you in my sleep. You were with me at all times, whether you knew it or not.

The times we spent together were the best moments of my short life. And I don’t regret them. Not the way you do. It’s unfortunate, the way things had to end between us. All because of my letter.

I sound wiser now, don’t I? Almost as if the girl that wrote that letter did it in another lifetime altogether. That’s another perk of this place I suppose; you gain knowledge you didn’t have before.

You’ve made many mistakes. Loving me was just the first one. And now that you’ve caused my death, my love, how are you going to cover it up?