STARDUST ⭑ LUKE PATTERSON

eight

"WHERE ARE YOU GOING?"

    "Stop following me!" Emmy screeches, practically speed walking down the sidewalk. She could have blipped, but that would exert too much energy. She wouldn't know where she'd end up.

    Dawn appears beside her, hand gripping Em's arm and halting her movement instantly. "What happened in there?! I was dancing with Reggie and you just left!" Dawn questions.

    The lavender haired girl rips her arm away. "Because apparently that's all I know how to do," she spits out with malice.

    "What are you talking about?" Dawn's stature stands rigid, ready to accept any hard shit Em would hurl at her with the power of a thousand suns, but her energy was warm. It was caring. Welcoming. Loving.

    And Emmy absolutely despised it.

    "I leave, Dawn," she growls. "I take whatever is good in my life, I fuck it up, and then I walk away. That's what I've seen, and that's all I know how to do." The black haired girl's shoulders fall, the earth of her eyes softening into mud. It hurt to hear, yet she continues to listen. "Whenever anything gets too scary, I can't stay. I wasn't built to withstand it. It's like I'm a building with no boarded windows in the middle of a hurricane. I can't take it. I can't do it," Emmy continues to dish out, brows starting to furrow with grief.

    She nibbles at her bottom lip, trying so hard to stop crying because she knew if she started, she would never stop. With a desperate reach, her hands tug at her hair, trying to find something tangible to keep her anchored. Emmy was slipping. She was falling and no one was there to catch her, because she's ran away from anyone who would have.

    "It's my fault," she admits. "I-I-" she chokes back the sob that wretched at her lungs. "I loved him." Dawn doesn't make any sudden movement. She remains still. "I loved him with everything in me. I-I was always there for him, on his side. I never understood why he fought with her, but I believed in him. I knew he had his reasons.

    "We spent so much time together. He was my best friend, so why...why did he always leave?" Emmy breaks. Every ounce of anger coursing through her veins melts into a heavier, denser liquid, weighing her down until her shoulders hunched in and her knees buckle.

    "Did my dad not love me back?" Emmy whispers.

    And for the first time, Dawn was able to see her for who she really is: another broken girl in the shell of a spirit damned to roam the world. "No, baby," Dawn reassures, finally stepping up. Instantly, Emmy falls into her, small hands clutching at the fabric of her friend's jacket. She cries into Dawn's neck, hot tears searing into her skin.

    "Did he not love me enough? Wh-Why didn't he love me enough to stay?"

    "I don't know," Dawn murmurs, squeezing Emmy as tightly as she could, like doing that would piece her together again.

    "I know he and my mom fought a lot. I get that, but he was supposed to love me. That was his part of the deal," Emmy says, "And I was gonna love him forever too." She pulls away, staring up at her best friend with eyes of tsunamis and thunderstorms. "I don't want to see what my parents are doing because what if he's gone forever? What if I was the last straw, and he just left again, but didn't come back this time?"

    It killed the only thing left alive in Emmy to imagine her mom sitting alone at the dining table. One place mat. One dinner plate. No daughter. No husband. She couldn't bring herself to think about how one side of the bed was always cold, or one toothbrush in the medicine cabinet.

    And it would have been her fault. The only reason her dad would come home in the first place was for her, and not for her mother. Without her, there was no family.

    Her fingers curl around the loose parts of Dawn's jacket once more before burying herself back into the warm, welcoming embrace of her best friend. Emmy holds her tightly as she could and whispers, "He was supposed to teach me how to love, not how to leave."