Sitting alone in his room, his mind was left in a drug induced haze. The pot had him in a relaxed state. The cold hard taste of reality kept drifting into his subconscious mind. He kept pushing it away with everything he had. Jeremy Gilbert had no desire to feel anything right now. He didn’t want to be reminded that his parents were dead. No one could tell him exactly why the Gilberts drove off the edge of Whickery Bridge that day. It was just a terrible awful accident. Elena was alive but they were gone.

The smoke came out of his lips in a stream while he held the burning nub in his fingers. He had always been known as Elena’s little brother. They were the kids of a doctor, so they got everything they wanted. Jeremy still felt as though what he said or did didn’t matter. Elena was pretty, popular and a cheerleader. Jeremy was all things completely opposite of his sister. He sat in his room with a picture of his parents in his hand. This wasn’t supposed to happen. He wasn’t supposed to be an orphan at 15. He was so bound by grief he didn’t even hear the door open behind him. “Jer… you okay in there?” It was his Mom’s sister Jenna. She was just as lost as Jeremy and Elena were.

He still had the marijuana in his hand. He didn’t even care if Jenna saw it or not. “Does it even matter anymore?” He mumbled. He was still sitting there a moment longer until he put the picture down on the bed beside him. He also snuffed out the smoldering joint in his hand. “I’m going out Aunt Jenna.” He didn’t bother listening to anything she had to say or even caring at this point. He just had to go.

Fifteen minutes later he was bounding down the stairs and out the front door. He pulled his jacket up around his neck until the top of it reached his ears. His hands were shoved into the pockets. The only thing he could hear was the sounds of his feet hitting the pavement and his heart beating in his ears. He felt completely and utterly alone at this point. He just kept going. He didn’t have a specific destination in mind. He just needed to go out.

It was fall so there was that slight chill in the air. He welcomed that cold because he actually felt something other than the deep sense of loss that came from losing your parents at such an early age. There wouldn’t be any more trips to the lake in the fall with bonfires and roasted marshmallows. There wouldn’t be any more weekend trips to Virginia Beach in the summer with volley ball and sunburns that made him feel like a lobster. There wouldn’t be any more birthdays with so much pizza it was coming out of his ears. What the hell was even going to happen at Christmas? It was all GONE.

He hadn’t even noticed that his pace had quickened. Unspent tears made his brown eyes ache. Jeremy was so emotional right now, he tripped over his feet and fell to the ground in an unceremonious lump tearing his blue jeans in the process. The physical pain along with the emotional agony finally took it’s toll on the boy. Laying on the well manicured terrain of Mystic Falls Cemetery, Jeremy didn’t want to move. He finally gathered enough courage to stand up slowly brushing the dirt and the grass from his body. There was a superficial gash on his leg. He took out a handkerchief and tied it over the wound on his right leg to stop the bleeding. Jeremy turned his eyes to the sky. “Okay. I give up! What the hell else can you do to me huh?” His arms dropped back down to his sides where he felt his cell phone vibrating.

Jeremy pulled out the device. With an angry look on his face. There was an unread message from Elena. What did she want now? Couldn’t any of them just leave him alone? He lost his mother. Were they trying to replace her? They just needed to back off and fast.

Jer, where are you? Aunt Jenna is worried sick.

The boy slammed the phone shut and slid it back into his pocket. He didn’t want to talk to Jenna or Elena right now. Jeremy needed to be alone. He was being smothered because he was the boy who lost his parents and almost lost his sister. He kept stomping through the cemetery past all the newer tombstones to find the old mausoleums. His temper was mounting again. Anger gave way to rage. Resentment, bitterness and despair all threatened to rip him apart on the inside. He stopped by a particular crypt where he and all his stoner friends used to just sit and do just about anything that any of them had in their pockets. Usually it was Jeremy who brought the goods so they all could just turn off their brains even for just a little while. This time he was alone. There was plenty of evidence of parties here and there. Jeremy just took a seat on a hickory stump and buried his head in his hands.

The little lost lamb began to sob uncontrollably. Tears burst forth like a ruptured dam. He was for a brief moment a little boy who just wanted his mom and dad. The agony of loss and the end of innocence turned Jeremy Gilbert into a pile of conflicting emotions all at the worst possible moment for any human to endure. If this was what being an adult was like, he hated it already. He wished like hell that this was just a terrible nightmare. He would just sit up in his bed screaming having his mom just chase away all the monsters like she did when he was six years old.

She was gone and so was his father. The monsters were here to stay. What was the young Gilbert going to do now?