Heartbeat. Elizabeth Scott

      “Death...and life,” they always said, like my mother and what happened to her could be boiled down into three words and a pause.

      Some people in my classes said they were sorry or asked how I felt, but that was right after it happened, and when I didn’t break down and scream, when I kept coming to school, things went back to how they’d always been. Who was applying where, who needed what SAT score, who was going to hire someone to help them write their entrance essay and who was stressing out and how badly it would screw their grades.