Everything We Never Said

Content Warning: This section discusses death from a car accident, an illegal relationship between an adult and minor, domestic violence and abuse, emotional abuse, and abortion.

It’s the first day of Ella Graham’s senior year of high school, and she doesn’t want to get up. She thinks of Hayley Miller, her best friend, who died four months ago. Her grief hurts, as does thinking about Sawyer Hawkins, Hayley’s old boyfriend. At school, Ella sees Sawyer for the first time since Hayley’s funeral, and he looks at her with fury, which she feels she deserves. The school counselor, Mr. Wilkens, checks in with Ella, but she wishes that he’d save his attention for students who didn’t kill their best friends. The ceramics teacher gives Ella the mugs that she and Hayley made last year. Clutching them, Ella is distracted by Hayley’s fingerprint, and when she looks up, there’s a bus coming right at her. Sawyer shoves her out of the way, yelling that she’d have been killed if he weren’t watching. She shouts back, asking why he bothered. Ella knows that anything he says will be a mercy that she doesn’t deserve, and she walks away, vowing not to speak to him anymore.