Sleepless✎

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THE FUNERAL HAD COME AND GONE - with crying parents, suddenly realizing death doesn't choose by age. Shock stricken classmates and Ilaria, whom felt she was watching the whole thing from somewhere outside her body.

Even when she watched Kai's aunt give her eulogy... She wasn't listening. She only saw lips moving and facial expressions changing and tears. But then, that's all she saw everywhere she turned.

Rose stuck to her through the whole thing, not speaking, just being there... Ilaria appreciated silence and Rose knew that.

When it was all over, Ilaria mindlessly listened to Kai's aunt tell her they'd be back next month for his stuff but that she could take whatever she wanted.

She only nodded. Her mind wasn't in the present, instead - she heard the knife squelching and the police sirens.

It felt like that would be all she'd hear for the rest of her life.

And Kai's words.

It played in her head over. And over.

She hoped it was true. That she'd be okay someday.

Perhaps not that very year... Or the year after... But someday.

Her mother squeezed her hand "it won't always hurt." she said, bringing Ilaria's blanket over her.

Ilaria turned on her side and stared at her wall "it feels like it will."

Her mother never answered her, instead she kissed Ilaria's head and quietly left the room.

It was then that she let the tears fall.

It was never supposed to get so messed up.

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3 months later

Ilaria pushed open the front door to Kai's house. Some part of her almost called out his name.

She didn't move from the threshold, only stood there- waiting? For what? For Kai to somehow come down those steps - probably in his plaid pajamas and his hair messy already giving Ilaria a lecture about self preservation and how cold it was outside and to shut the door.

That never happened and eventually she had moved.

Her descent up the stairs was slow, she dragged herself up to Kai's room - it was emptier then before.

Kai's aunt and uncle had cleared some of the stuff out.

Ilaria's eyes were already burning. That first night they'd sat flat on his carpet, drinking coffee and cracking jokes and stringing up clues seemed so far away then. They were so clueless, so very clueless.

She moved towards his bedside table, deciding she should start there. Ilaria drew a finger over the counter top and pulled the draw open - inside she found a black notebook and beside it, a picture.

The picture was of her and Kai. It was a selfie she'd taken. Kai hated pictures. Loathed them even and in this one his face was buried in her neck, a hint of his smile was visible and Ilaria was grinning too, her curls messy-courtesy of Kai.

He had probably intended to frame it.

She'd do it for him, Ilaria decided and placed the picture in her box.

She left the notebook where it was and went through the rest of the room, her box filled gradually - she'd leave nothing behind. She didn't care where she'd put it.

But if his favorite tshirts and his classics were all she had left of him then that was what she was going to take.

Eventually, Ilaria went back to the notebook and slid down to the floor.

She cracked it open and placed it on her knees.

Kai's writing filled almost half of the book. It took Ilaria 1 page to realize he had written about them.

Not about the serial killer or his dead cousin or her dead bestfriend or any of the messed up shit that had happened.

Just about them. He'd written their story.

And in the tiny little black notebook, their story ended differently. Or it hadn't ended at all.

The last line Kai had written made Ilaria smile even though tears were trailing down her cheeks.

Her Kai, who would've thought he'd be such a romantic? She wanted to laugh and punch him in the chest and tease him about it forever.

But she couldn't do that. So she only read it over and over and over.

I'd follow her to hell, give her my soul, do anything, anything for her - she didn't need to ask.

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