Have you ever read about what happens to two people when they lose someone who was equally important to them?

It goes one of two ways. They either grow apart, the pain of their loss coming between them like a brick wall that can't be torn down. The guilt eats away at them, the grief and despair takes root in your very blood. It's normal. It's normal to resent the person who you share your pain with.

Or, you bond over the shared trauma.

Your pain becomes a connection between you that no one else could possibly fathom. It links your very souls together. It might not be the healthiest way to grieve, but at least you aren't alone. You're not alone because you know there's at least one other person in the world who is feeling the same mind shattering pain that you are.

It was clear to anyone who could see us, the way that Bella and I reacted. There were no questions that our shared loss had bonded us even further. Though, not many people had been able to experience our behaviour.

A month can go by quickly when you're drowning on dry land. A month can go by quickly when the only thing you're capable of doing is crying, or sleeping.

My parents had flown back from wherever they were, when they heard the news. I felt like I could barely recognize them when they walked into Bella's room. Their skin was tanned and glowing but their eyes showcased a small portion of the pain I had been feeling in my chest.

The pain I had been feeling in my heart. In my toes, in my fingers. In my lungs, in my brain. In my skin.

The pain was everywhere.

Our parents let us take a month off of school. I don't know if it was out of pity, or out of understanding that we physically couldn't. How could we walk those halls when the only thing they reminded us of was Isla?

How could we drive to school knowing that we would have one less stop to make on the way? How could we eat lunch in the cafeteria knowing that she wouldn't be sitting there? How could we wake up in the morning knowing that she wasn't going to answer our calls? We couldn't.

We spent our time in Bella's room instead. Or my room. We didn't do much, besides sleep and cry. We listened to the tutor that our parents paid for. We did the work we were supposed to.

But then, we crawled into bed and held each other while we had the never ending realization that we had lost apart of our souls at that beach. Isla was gone. She was never coming back, and every morning that we woke up and remembered that was another day we wouldn't leave the house.

The funeral was the worst part. It was blurry, for the most part. Like a memory from long ago, the moments all blending into one another. Besides the screams of Isla's mother. I would never forget the sound of those screams. I could hear the pain in them. I could hear every ounce of grief and panic she was feeling. I heard them in my nightmares sometimes.

Bella and I sat on the front pew with her family, and together we rose to the podium when they called on us to make a speech. We talked about a trip to Mexico we had taken one winter, my parents were there as less than reliable supervisors. We had spent most of the time on the beach by ourselves, but there was one moment we would never forget. It was the moment. You know, the one that you look back on when you're old and grey. Not that Isla would ever get the chance to look back on it now.

The three of us were on the beach, when the sun began to set. It was the most gorgeous sunset I had ever been blessed to see. The sky turned such a vibrant shade of coral, and we all just sat in silence and looked at it. We held hands, and I knew we were all thinking the same thing. We were thinking about how grateful we were to be together, to have found each other, to know each other. And as if the Gods were agreeing, three dolphins began to jump in and out of the water in front of us.

We didn't know at the time that it would be the moment we talked about at Isla's funeral. I mean, how could we ever know that? It makes you think, doesn't it? What moments will matter. It's never the moments you think will matter. It's never the big things, is it? It's the little things. The small things. The snapshot of a moment, the minutes and the tiny seconds. The ones that we don't know will matter.

Maybe that's what life is about. The seconds and the minutes, not the years.

And I would do anything, anything, for more minutes with Isla.

They say that's one of the stages, right? Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. The problem is, you can't tell which stage you're in when everything blends together. When you feel nothing but pain. There's no denial here, there no bargaining, and there's definitely no acceptance.

It's just pain.

Will I always just feel pain?

"Are you ready for tomorrow?" Bella asked me, her face only inches away from mine. She was sleeping over again, like she did most nights. But the bed still felt too big, we were used to it being the three of us.

"No," I told her honestly. I'd tried to picture this day for weeks now. The day we went back to real life. But, I couldn't even get past the ride there. I couldn't get past waking up and realizing that Isla wouldn't be with us, and that she would never be with us again.

"Me neither," Bella muttered, and I could tell by the way that she was speaking that her eyes were closed and she was starting to drift. "It feels like we haven't been to school in years."

"Might as well have been years. Everything is different. Everything's changed," I replied with a sigh.

"I don't want to go," Bella told me, her voice held a slight crack.

"At least we'll be together," I said, grabbing her hand and squeezing it tightly.

"We'll always be together, Indie," Bella hummed out.

"That's what we used to say," I reminded her, "Isla used to say it too. But it's not true, we're not together anymore."

"I know," Bella told me, squeezing my hand back.

"We'll be together until we can't be together any longer," I said, closing my eyes. "And then, we'll find each other again. We'll find each other in every lifetime."