Lacey Hoffman

“Our plane lands ahead of schedule, but it’s still late at night when we finally pull up to our house. The stars and the crickets are all out and calling us home. Our curtains are drawn, but a soft glow pours around the edges. A familiar pang hits me. This is how the house used to look when I came home after dark and Mom was in the living room, trilling away at the piano. If I don’t walk inside, maybe I can just stand out here with my suitcase and feel like she’s still there, waiting for me to go in so she can shout a greeting over the music without stopping her fingers. I can pretend that when she finishes the Rachmaninoff, she’ll swing her legs around the piano bench and leap up to give me a hug. And in a few days, when it’s Sunday, I’ll roll out of bed and find her in the kitchen making waffles with berries and whipped cream. I’ll hear that sunny voice chirp “Good morning!” to me while I’m still shaking off the fog of sleep, and I’ll grunt back in response, remember to smile at her, offer to help mix the batter. I’ll do all the things I constantly forgot to, all the things I wish I could go back and add in like another layer on a watercolor painting. “You coming, Leigh?” says Dad. Our driver pulls away from the house, and then there’s just me standing in the driveway with my suitcase, staring as Dad fiddles with his keys on the front porch. I let loose a long, slow exhale. “Guess we forgot to turn off the lights, huh?” “We didn’t,” he says, and the two simple words send my heart racing. Because what could that mean, except that Mom is actually alive and home and waiting for us right inside? My heart speeds as I drag my suitcase up to the porch and haul it in, trailing after Dad through the soft yellow light and into our house. “You’re home! Welcome back!” Arms wrap around me, and it takes a moment too long for me to process the shoulder pressing into my cheek, the soft shirt against my skin, the smell of deodorant and shampoo all wrong.”
― Emily X.R. Pan, The Astonishing Color of After

“Viola takes the menu and looks at it, then looks at the Senate bill pasted to the wall beside the window. “Interesting décor.” I look at it too. It’s newer, though I did see it the last time I was in. It has to do with banning silencers and certain kinds of ammunition. “That’s right, you’ve never been here.” I look around. “This is how it’s decorated. Has been ever since. The first bill they introduced after it happened got voted down, and Kathy hung it up by the register to remind everyone. Then there were others, and she hung those up too. Everything having to do with anything about guns: background checks, automatic weapons, ammo, concealed carry, anything at all.” “She hangs up bills having to do with gun control?” “Just the ones that get voted down.” “What about the ones that pass?” “I don’t think there are any of those.”
― Joseph Moldover, Every Moment After: A Young Adult Coming-of-Age Story of School Shooting Survivors and Friendship

“Here are a few statistics: Someone in the world dies by suicide every forty seconds. For every death by suicide there are more than twenty others attempting it. It’s the tenth-ranking cause of death in the United States. One of every sixty-two Americans is a suicide loss survivor. Those were taken from the World Health Organization and the American Association of Suicidology’s official data—the most recent available at the end of 2018 (the time of my writing this updated note).”
― Emily X.R. Pan, The Astonishing Color of After

“I’m…I’m sorry, I’ll keep this short. There is now a big gaping hole in our lives where a week ago there was our smart, funny, outgoing boy with his big personality. Andy always made us laugh and he made us…so proud, every day. He was an amazing son and loving brother, the best we could have ever asked for. I can’t even begin to wrap my mind around how to keep on living like this, without him, with that huge hole in our lives where my son is supposed to be. He was taken from us,…and I don’t know how anything will ever make sense again without him.” Daddy looked down at the piece of paper like he was trying to find the spot where he stopped reading earlier. I could see his chin was shaking. He kept looking at the paper and said: “I want to ask all of you to please keep Andy and the memories you have of him close and carry him with you always.” Mommy started shaking next to me. She let go of my arm and crossed her arms in front of her belly and leaned forward, so her head almost touched her legs, and her shoulders went up and down from crying. All around us people cried, and the sadness was like a big heavy blanket all around us and on top of us. I thought about Daddy’s speech, and I watched Mommy and everyone else cry, and it all didn’t feel like real life. Because Daddy did it, too: he didn’t talk about Andy like how he actually was. And so it was like everyone was crying and being sad, but not about the actual Andy, just a version of him that wasn’t the right one. It was like no one was saying good-bye properly to him. I felt like I wanted to stand up and yell at everyone to stop lying about my brother.”
― Rhiannon Navin, Only Child