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Anne sat there on the top of her bed, feet crossed and head bowed as tears streamed down her face. She’d cried enough that her head ached and her nose was both stuffy and wanted to run, but her grief was silent.
She refused to cry loud enough to alert her sisters to her distress. Beth would merely mock her grief, telling her to suck it up and deal with it. Mary wouldn’t understand, asking Anne if she could help her with some task that Mary could have handled on her own.
Every single time Anne thought she was done crying, she would feel the pain all over again, a clutching feeling in her chest, and the tears would start to cascade down her face once again. Dripping on her pajama pants and her bed sheets. Running into her mouth where she could taste the saltiness of her sadness.
It was painful, crying without making a sound, the sobs choking her as she forced her broken heart into silently breaking apart even further.
She wondered how everybody couldn’t hear the cracking as everything over the past couple of months was pushed aside and broken all because she wasn’t ready for the next step.
She wasn’t ready. She never wanted to give him up, but Derek was insistent that it was all or nothing and Anne couldn’t put aside of her dream of art school that easily.
“Anne!” one of her sisters called from downstairs.
Looking up, Anne caught her reflection in the mirror. She was surprised that nothing appeared puffy. That her eyes were not bloodshot with all of the crying she had been doing for most of the day.
“Anne!” another sister called.
“What?” she managed to reply, the choking sound in her voice only audible to herself.
“We’re leaving to go summer school shopping for Mary,” Beth – Elizabeth – shouted. “Are you coming?”
Closing her eyes, mostly to block out the image of her in the mirror, Anne swallowed down the choking sensation that threatened to close her throat. “I can’t go,” she answered. “I’m dealing with some serious cramps.”
“Fine!” Elizabeth called up. “There’s some pills in the bathroom that might help.” It was one of the few helpful things her sister had ever said to her.
Granted, the eldest sister suspected that Anne was lying. They had been in the house together enough that they were aware of each other’s cycles. If Anne was lying about cramps, then something was seriously wrong and Beth would rather not be in the house with a distraught sister.
She would rather cart her youngest, and annoying, sister around for school shopping. Shopping was always fun, even if it was for paper and pencils so that Mary could retake her English class, again.
Hearing the door close and the car leaving the driveway, Anne collapsed on her bed, curling up into a ball and allowing her sobbing to consume her.
It felt good to release the ugly crying. Letting out the choking sounds that made it difficult to breathe and releasing strangled sounds she had kept inside as her body struggled to breathe in and out. The pressure that built up behind the eyes and the pulsing headache that followed. Sitting back up, Anne felt the tears pouring down her face, mingling with the snot that had started to drip out of her nose at the change of positions. It was better than the additional pressure on her sinuses from when she was laying down.
“Why?” she sobbed, rocking back and forth. “Why? Why? Why?” It was the only thing she could think enough say aloud. Everything else was a jumble of thoughts that threatened to drag her under and caused her to suffocate underneath the onslaught of emotions she never expected to feel.
Rocking back and forth, she clutched a pillow to her chest as she cried into it. Finally, exhaustion caught up to her and she curled up and attempted to get some sleep. It didn’t help that she would jerk awake, remembering the painful scene between them, and start sobbing all over again.
Her sisters and father only noticed that Anne didn’t come down to cook dinner; thankfully Elizabeth held on to the lie they both knew was a lie. The next day she came upstairs with a pint of Bunny Tracks, knowing that her sister liked the combination of mini chocolate bunnies, caramel and fudge swirls, and vanilla ice cream.
She had also picked up Moose Tracks and Phish Food when she had been out shopping. Mary, oblivious as always, didn’t notice the last-minute addition of four pints of ice cream to their shopping as she pondered over the freezer pizza section even though she had been sent to grab a frozen lasagna.
Elizabeth, being Elizabeth, seized the chance to grab a pint of Strawberry Cheesecake for herself.
“Hey,” she whispered, barely knocking on the door as she pushed it open to notice that Anne was still curled up in bed. “This might help.”
“Bunny Tracks?”
“There’s some Moose Tracks and Phish Food downstairs if you would rather have more chocolate,” Elizabeth told her.
“Thank you.”
“We’ve all had our own broken hearts,” was all her sister said before disappearing out of the room.
It was probably the only time Anne could ever recall her sister being so caring towards her. Not that Elizabeth was a mean sister, only she tended to look towards her own best interest than worry about others.
Granted, according to Elizabeth’s line of thinking, the sooner Anne recovered from the initial pain of her heartbreak, the sooner Anne would be able to resume her normal routine which included the cooking and cleaning.
