I visit sometimes when the sun goes down.

I expect to find you in your room, curled under your blankets, a half-empty bottle of beer next to your head.

Instead, you’re away. Laughing. Drinking, yes, but with friends.

The truth hits like a train.

You’re happier now that I’m dead.

Ellie Stewart is 17 and lives in Utah, but neither of those things will last for much longer. She will move to the Pacific Northwest one day and continue writing short stories, poems, and eventually a novel, surrounded by fish tanks and house plants.