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Prologue
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Applesauce is an excellent egg replacer. Puppies are a phenomenal man replacer.
Today’s Nature Walk for my Mental Health is sponsored by Heartbreak.
I inhale the fresh air and ignore the crushing need to cry that presses on my lungs. Noah wasn’t the love of my life—he was just some guy. I will not be hitting him with my car, as my sister, Alana, suggests, though. Because that’s wrong.
And, also, on an entirely unrelated note, I no longer know exactly where he lives.
I could find out.
But I won’t.
Sniffling, I turn up my Can’t Be Sad playlist and adjust my pink headphones as “Caramelldansen” drowns out the nature sounds. If a bear is coming for me, I will not hear it. I will also not hear the crack, crack, shatter of my innocent twenty-four-year-old heart.
Sometimes, people make mistakes.
Sometimes, people move six hours away from everything they know and love. Sometimes, people finally have the nerve to deny the advice of their well-meaning, but largely micromanaging, mother. And, sometimes, people wind up with three glorious months of…red flags.
Red flags that send a breakup text including an extensive list of my faults while they’re boarding a plane to move forty hours away and be with someone else.
Noah was cheating on me before I ever came.
He’s probably cheating on whoever he left to be with.
I’ve dodged a bullet.
Yeah.
Scrubbing my face with the back of my hand, I discover that my phone sound is completely up and I’ll likely be unable to hear by the time I’m thirty. Assuming I live that long. Assuming the I told you so from my mother doesn’t kill me when she finds out about this grave error I’ve made.
She never calls me. She always expects me to call her, so I could avoid talking to her until I have my life back “together.” But if I don’t call her enough, she’s upset whenever I finally do. It’s a lose, lose situation where I either avoid her and wind up brutalized for more than one reason, or I let her kick me while I’m down.
Long story short: I’m really hoping on that bear right about now.
Glancing behind me, I lift one muff off my ear and scour the woods.
“Caramelldansen” ends.
The song changes.
“Nyan Cat” shrieks into my skull, and I lurch, snapping my headphone back into place. I grapple for my phone and mash the volume down button.
Once the screeching siphons away, I exhale.
If I die in the woods, I won’t have to deal with any of my problems.
If the weeks drag on and on without contact, Mom will get upset. Then when some wanderer locates my decaying, bear-mauled body, she’ll regret all her anger. She’ll say we told her so at my memorial. All my parents’ friends will agree.
My tombstone will read: HERE LIES BRITTNY PAGE. WHY, OH WHY, DIDN’T SHE JUST LISTEN TO HER MOTHER?
My sister will lift a bottle of sake, dump it out on my grave, and recite some haiku about a butterfly finally escaping the cocoon.
My mother will yell at her about making me drink.
She’ll yell back that I can’t drink if I’m dead.
