The Butterfly and The Moth

13:S

It's not that I didn't like her.

Okay, fine. It's not that I meant to not like Dahlia. In fact, it was the opposite. Of course I wanted to like her. Of course, I did.

It was Daisy's plan, even. Daisy fell instantly in love with her sister, from the moment that she made contact with Dahlia. I tried to tell her. I tried to tell her that maybe the grass wouldn't be greener on the other side. Dahlia could have been a horrible person. She could have been a liar, a thief. She could have been the last type of person that Daisy needed to be around.

But, Daisy didn't care. She told me that Dahlia was her flesh and blood. She told me that it didn't matter what Dahlia went through, or what the things she went through had caused her to become. She said she would love her anyway, because they were sisters and that meant more to her than anything.

And, of course, Daisy said that once she loved Dahlia, I would too.

I couldn't really tell my best friend that no matter how nice of a person Dahlia was— she and I would never be friends. Or anything close to it. Whether I tried to like her, or not.

But even though I couldn't help my dislike for Dahlia, my eyes wouldn't stop wandering toward her.

And that wasn't for the first time since I met her, but for today, it was for different reasons.

Dahlia sat as far she possibly could away from me, just like she had done our first class. I had stolen glances at her that day too, but like I said, for different reasons.

Everyone of our friends kept saying how much she looked like Daisy. The night that we first met her, god I wanted to punch my stupid friends in their stupid faces when they spoke about her. They kept saying how lucky we all were, not only to get a new girl that was actually hot, but for getting a girl that looked exactly like the girl they had all been crushing on for years.

It made me feel like I was crazy, because for the life of me, I just couldn't see it.

Maybe they had some similar features, but they were just so different that those shared features seemed completely insignificant.

Like two paintings that both used green to colour plants; but one painting displayed a white water lily on a sunny day, and the other displayed a twisted green tree that took root and sprouted in a sea of concrete.

Daisy was pretty in the most easy of ways. She never really had the option not to be pretty. She had all the clothes she could ever want. She had hair that never went a month without a trip to the salon. She had teeth that were bleached the whitest of whites.

But Dahlia... Dahlia was beautiful despite everything else. She had a kind of beauty that didn't depend on material things. The kind of beauty that never is shaded, even by trauma.

And anyone could tell she had a lot of trauma. Anyone that was looking, and not just seeing.

I felt a frown pull at my lips as I looked at her. I kept expecting her to catch me— to turn and stare back at me like the first night we met. Though, it was more like glaring back at me.

Not that I could blame her.

I was a dick to her, of course I was. Daisy had lectured me about how rude I was all night, not that I needed her to. I knew exactly how rude I had been. I just couldn't stop myself.

But, there had been so much life in her eyes as she glared back at me. She might have been through so much trauma, but she was fighting. I could tell by the fire in her eyes— Dahlia was a fighter.

That fact didn't make me like her any more. It was just something that was clear to me.

The same fire stayed in her eyes through every interaction we had. I couldn't blame her for the way she hated me. If someone spoke to me the way I did when we met, I'd hate them too.

But something was different today. I had expected that fire in her eyes when I attempted to apologize. I had expected that hate.

But when I looked into Dahlia's eyes; there was nothing.

There was no fire. Hell, there was no water. There was no energy, there was no air.

There was no oxygen.

There was nothing in her eyes as she looked back to me. And I don't know why, but it scared the fuck out of me.

It was the same now, as I looked at her. She was watching the blackboard as the teacher wrote. Her eyes were following his moments. But there was that same nothingness.

I let a heavy, but short sigh lift through my body as I finally tore my eyes away. I looked to the front of the classroom, but only for a single second because my eyes felt drawn back to her. I couldn't help them.

I didn't know why I fucking cared so much. Though this care wasn't easy. It wasn't just concern. This care was complicated. It was heavy.

Because while half of me was so happy that Dahlia was here, in Sapphire Cove, for Daisy's sake. The other half of me was dark. It was convoluted and twisted with envy and resentment.

There was a reason that Daisy and I were so close. There was a reason our relationship was so strong. We had a bond that developed over pain. And longing, and unfairness.

And while Daisy got the thing that we always hoped for, the thing that we both thought we would never have...

I didn't. And I never would.

And part of me truly hated Dahlia for that.