Warning: This work has been rated 18+ for language.
Despite the death being several months ago, Miranda was finding it difficult to move on. She still loved Hayden, and now he was gone. It was Saturday. Miranda was heading to Hayden’s house, as she always did on the weekends. She smiled sadly when she reached the door. She entered the house. It was tidy, clean. She had cleaned up the mess so that Hayden’s place of death was in good shape. She hadn’t done any real digging in Hayden’s personal information. Today, she decided that she would. Inside of Hayden’s bedroom, she looked at the words carved into the walls. She ran her fingers over the words gently and sighed. “Worthless”, “Heartbreaker”, “Outcast”. So many incriminating words were carved onto these walls. Miranda looked around. She found a small booklet under the bed. She sat on the bed and read through it. It was a diary.
As she read, Miranda felt her heart break. The book, summarized, was about Hayden’s life. When he was a child, he was taken away from his parents. They didn’t want him. They gave him to an orphanage. A family took him in, and he loved them with all his heart. The father died. The mother became a crack addict. They went into debt. They lived in poverty. Hayden worked hard to support the family. When he could, he convinced his mother to allow him to be emancipated. He was living on his own at sixteen. Miranda realized. He never told her about any of this. She sighed heavily. Later on in the diary. It said why. He didn’t want to worry her. He didn’t want her to feel bad for him. He didn’t want to make her see him differently. At the end, the last entry read-
”I can’t take this anymore. I keep trying to talk to Miranda. She won’t listen. I should have never agreed to that deal. That deal… Never mind… It was worth it. They’ve been leaving her alone it seems. As long as she is happy, it was worth it. But this… This is too much. This wasn’t part of the deal… They never said it’d be this extreme… I broke her heart. It still breaks me. I can never forgive myself. A piece of sh*t like me doesn’t deserve anything. Not love. Not food. Not water. Not blood. Not life. I’m sure nobody will mind. It’d be so relieving too. Heh… All these f*cking scars… It feels so relieving to punish myself for all the horrible things I’ve done. I guess this would be the biggest punishment yet. There’s just one thing I wish I could do… Tell her I love her. Just one last time. To just hold her again, to kiss her again. I want those moments to return. I’m stupid for wanting that… I guess this is it. Goodbye, school. Goodbye, bullies. Goodbye, pain. Goodbye, suffering. Goodbye, starving. Goodbye, torture… Goodbye, Miranda Kindle.”
Miranda felt her heart shatter. “deal”? “They”? She realized that the group of students who had been pushing her around since sixth grade had been leaving her alone ever since Hayden broke up with her. Was that part of this “deal”? She felt awful. Miranda stood up slowly, looking at the book. She was going to put it back where she found it, but she decided against it. Clutching the book tightly in her hand, Miranda left his house quickly.
End of chapter
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140,226 Literary Works • 673,047 Reviews
the more i read the more i want to know. this is really good i cant stop from reading it. this is so good . i cant wait to read more. this broke my heart too. he did everyting for her. he blamed his self for eveything .poor baby its not all his fault. i hope she will be okay in the ned this is alot for her too. i cant belive she gose to his house and cleans not going to lie i would most likly do the same. your doing a geally good job cant wait to read more thank you for a good book cant wait to see what else you have for us
Hi, as I continue reading your novel I just get more and more intrigued by the story. Starting off with us finally learning Hayden's backstory. While it's nice to finally learn why made him take his life and what lead to everything happened I feel like this chapter you did a lot of telling and a lot less showing. Instead of telling us what the diary said and explaining to us his life maybe you should try having Miranda read from the diary out loud or in her mind to show us what's in the diary instead of just telling us about the backstory. That way it will be a bit more interesting to read. It's really nice for the breakup to finally make more sense though.
The paragraph coming from Hayden's words is really well written and is a good example of what I was talking about will the show not tell. Not only was it really written well with great diction so we really feel Hayden's despair and we can tell how depressed he his but it's more interesting then just telling us he's depressed and telling himself he started harming himself to punish himself. I love the repetition in the last sentence that really sells the point of him giving up on the world and ending his life and giving up everything he has.
I also feel like what I mentioned in my review on the last chapter about going into their characters more I feel like we could really use that now just because we aren't really getting that much about how Miranda is feeling and why she is looking through the diary. I feel like with more characterization us readers can understand what brought her to the house and what brought her to clean the house and why she decided not to dig through his personal stuff until now.
I'll leave you with a few things I'm wondering about in terms of the plot. I hope we get to know who trashed his house so bad if it really was just him or maybe somebody broke in or something and I also hope we get to know why he was getting beat up at school on the day he took his life. Continuing writing, I can't wait to read more!
Starlord here, with a mighty review....
okay...this is heartbreaking, as WinnyWriter pointed out...but honestly i did have a hard time following this. maybe because this seems so...distant i guess. i mean what is Miranda thinking? you give us clues, but no exact thoughts. any how i did find a few errors
when you say it was Saturday maybe try adding the word on? like it was on Saturday? unless of course you meant that it was literally Saturday. and when you say at the end, maybe it would sound better like at the end?
i'm sort of in a hurry right now so i'll get back with a fuller review later.
Ok, thank you for the review! I appreciate it
any time, any time.
So glad to see this chapter up! Wow, this is heart-breaking! And yet I am glad that you are addressing this very real issue. I'm anticipating a good resolution in which we see offers of hope for people who fight these battles.
Anyway, I saw things like this more than once throughout this chapter. Just be aware of them.
This chapter builds a good measure of suspense. You've revealed that Hayden was apparently forced into some kind of "deal," and that presents questions in the reader's mind that make us want to keep reading. Good job with that!
There are a few errors that I caught. Most of them are in places where you put a period in the middle of a sentence where I think you must've meant to put a comma. For example, this place: " Later on in the diary. It said why." That period between the two phrases should be a comma. Maybe it's just a typo. I totally understand those.
Well, that's all for now! Keep writing!
Thank you for the review!