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Spoiler! :
Rated for cursing.
~*~
It ended with a funeral.
There was my father, his shirt and pants perfectly ironed, his hair perfectly coiffed yet his perfect life shattered. Shock was clear in his eyes, somehow melding with this dazed sort of look, like he was actually asleep in bed and would wake up to a perfect new day very soon. The opposite of my mother: his body was stiff and numb, his fingers digging into the caramel wood of the pew he sat in, completely still, almost statue like.
There was my mother, with her head cradled in her arms, her entire body bent down to her knees, her hands pulling her tangled, messy hair as she moaned and wept and wailed, the sound strongly muffled by the long, shroud-like dress her tears were soaking into.
There was Lucy, sniffling with her eyes swollen and red and wiping her nose with her too-long black dress sleeve. She didn't look like she belonged here, with her feathery blonde hair and forget-me-not eyes, but rather on the stained glass windows, an angel hiding amongst humans.
And there was me, standing on the side, head tilted, watching my family mourn my dead body. The casket was pearly white with red velvet lining and I felt claustrophobic just looking at it. It was an open-casket funeral and I looked plastic and fake, but not like a Barbie doll, even with my hair done in pretty curls and my lips so red they looked glossed in blood. I looked more like a corpse that some poor, unfortunate soul had filled with embalming fluid so I didn't begin to decompose during the funeral, which is exactly what I was.
The church was beautiful, with red carpet flooring and marble statues of Jesus and Mary. Painted ivy snaked up and down the walls, framing the glass windows that cast dyed shards of light on everyone's faces.
Aunt Ellie was crying, her shoulders shaking as she rubbed her swollen belly with one hand and squeezed Uncle Richard's hand with the other. Ryan was wailing, in the midst of his terrible twos, and Angelina was hushing and cooing him, her fair skin splotchy, her green eyes blood-shot, like a drunk's. A pang of envy ran through me as I noticed, even then, even there, she was more beautiful than any one person has the right to be.
There were others, cousins and aunts and uncles, grandparents from both sides and my godmother and her family. My boss and co-workers, the librarians at school, most of my teachers, the principal, my coach and all of my team mates, some strangers, some acquaintances, some people I hadn't seen in years. They meant nothing and everything to me and it hurt so much to realize that I had been loved by all these people.
Friends too, a shockingly large amount, some bowing their heads in prayer or maybe respect, others crying, others reading the paper pamphlet that described Chloe Deshmount's life in a couple hundred words. My eyes glanced over them, Emma and Akila and Rosie and Joshua and that guy from math class whose name I could never remember and dozens more all here, sitting, standing, kneeling, shaking, crying, all here at my funeral.
Father Sebastian was at the altar, tall, with a deep, soothing voice that spoke, almost sung, lost, shattered words in Latin; et lux perpetua luceat eis, et lux perpetua luceat eis, et lux perpetua luceat eis*. His eyes had a certain glassy look, like he was about to cry and his fingers gripped the podium tightly as he begun to speak in English again.
"For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day,"
A choked sob broke out of my mother and Angelina was fervently whispering along to the pastor, clutching a long strand of rosary beads in her hand, pushing bead by bead as she said each 'Amen'. Ryan, long-forgotten by his sister, was in his father's lap, sucking his thumb and staring up at the church walls, marveling at the stained glass.
The cold, salty taste of regret was fresh on my tongue as I noticed Aiden, sitting next to his mother, staring straight ahead, perhaps at nothing, his arms crossed, the corners of his eyes slightly wet. His mother was patting his knee, a worried, sad look on her face, glancing at him and Nina and recognizing the similarities between her children. Aiden gently pulled his leg away from his mother's hammering and gritted his teeth, hard. He swallowed and I could tell he was tasting regret as well.
Nina was on the other side of Aiden, looking small and lifeless, so unlike the brass, drunk girl who had slung her arm around my shoulder once and slurred it was just me and her against the world. She was wearing the satiny black dress she was supposed to wear to prom, sophomore year, when Jacob Flint asked her but her mom didn't let her go. We had picked it out together from this funky thrift shop on Murberry street, the one that my mother didn't like because she had once seen a homeless man peeing in the alley beside it.
I can imagine her in her room, fingering the edges of the dress with one hand and carefully applying red lipstick with the other, making sure not to tremble so her make-up wouldn't get messed up. The green of her iris' were vivid against the smoky eye shadow and thick mascara that coated the edges of her eyes, streaking down her face with black tears and I remember 7th grade when we tested whether our make-up really was water-proof.
The priest paused and suddenly, the shadow of an unusually large bird danced through the windows. The bird sang and there was silence except for the bird's voice, low and clear, mourning in it's own way. Then it stopped, the bird flew away and it seemed like everyone woke up, my father staring at the window long after the bird had gone. My eyes flicked back to Nina and Daniel and Aiden and Amber and then they stopped and looked back, noticing something that wasn't there before, like an inch of fabric revealed with simple stitch work.
Tyler, he came too, his face blank of emotion, like he wasn't even here, maybe remembering the last funeral he had been to. He was grasping Liza's hand, holding it so tightly I knew it must have been hurting her, and I stared at their laced hands and felt a raw, aching burn in my stomach, like someone had dripped acid over an open wound. Time stopped for a moment and my heart jack-hammered in my chest as I stared, hungrily eating up the sight of him. I was still shocked at how gorgeous he was, all blue eyes and dark, dark hair and stubble and this immense sort of sadness in his eyes, like the world was about to end and he had realized there was nothing he could do about it.
I felt light and a million and two memories shot through my head of us all and I really missed them for a minute. Suddenly the world had been taken off my shoulders, an eighteen year old Atlas and I was going to grab them both and tell them so much until the church bells rang three times and I remembered why Tyler was here, why Nina was here, why I was here, why everyone was here-
I was dead.
~*~
*'and let perpetual light shine upon them' in Latin; often repeated during funeral prayers.
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