Ughhh random excerpt thingy from my book

I had a dream about one of those nights I spent with Dess. She’s like a ghost, haunting me, stalking me, and bringing me to my knees only but exceptionally every time I think that I can shake her off. Since she’s been gone, she’s become more of a force in my life than a person. An aching, gaping sinkhole in my chest that I pile anything and everything into, and, like a sinkhole, it only seems to open wider and wider.

We were both still in high school. It was a year ago, sitting on the same bed that I was asleep in, watching one of those old, cheesy romance movies that you can blink and miss, and she pointed to one of the pictures I had on the wall. The one in which men in trenchcoats are falling from the sky, cold and stone-faced. 

Her voice is resonant, feathery, almost. “Hey, I feel like I know that.”

“You probably do. It’s Magritte.” 

“Huh. It’s pretty neat.” Then she laughs. “Maybe one day you’ll have your paintings in random people’s bedrooms.”

That was the funny thing about Dess: She always tried to present herself in this tough, rugged sort of way, but she wasn’t really either of those things. She would stay up late with me on the phone, when we would confess to our own darknesses, before picking up sticky stars for each other within them.

Sticky stars. I used to have the glow in the dark ones on my ceiling when I was a little kid. I never knew what happened to them. I just had a particularly bad day of school once, and when I finally returned to my room, they were all gone. That night I laid in bed and cried.