Where The Fireflies Take you

Chapter 2

2007, September 28

Connecticut

Do you know why people wear black on funerals?

It's to prevent the soul of the dead person from recognizing you and following you home. You see the dead can't tell apart faces so if you wear anything other than black it will attach itself to you and follow you home.

If I had known this back then I'd have worn yellow to Allison's funeral. It was her favorite color.

My parents had to cut short their business trip and come back early, their displeasure of which was made startlingly clear. I'd been reminded again and again that I was the reason they had to miss out on a good opportunity.

Not a word of concern for their daughter who had just experienced a traumatic event much less sadness over her friend who had passed.

When her body was found two weeks later I wasn't allowed to see it. Not that there was much to see the kids at school whispered that it was nearly unrecognizable, like the river had stolen away not just her life but her beauty as well, as if it mattered anymore. One boy even joked that they'd have to do a closed casket, i was sent home for punching him in the face.

Jeremy hadn't come back to school, Aurther Young- whose dad worked with the Lowells- said that neither of them had shown up after the incident.

the incident, that's what everyone called it, i suppose that all it was to some people, was just a story to ward off future children from wandering in the woods out late, but something in my heart shriveled up and died when I thought of my best friend becoming a cautionary tale. Allison had been kind and clever and beautiful and she deserved more than to be remembered as a warning.

The funeral was held sixteen days after she was found, the boy was right, it was a closed casket. This was the first time I'd seen the Lowells since that night, I didn't approach and neither did they, a sharp difference in behavior since these people had felt more like my family than my own.

Jeremy's angry face kept popping up in my head, did all of them feel that way? , did they wish that I had died instead of their daughter?

Of course they did, I wished the same. SHE deserved to live. She was the one who should be here. That soil could have slipped under either one of us, why couldn't it have been me? I never had a home, not really, no one would care if I was six feet under. Except Allison, she would care but she'd be fine she'd move on with her lovely family and new friends.

It should have been me

They had asked me to speak at the service, but I declined, it's not that I didn't want to but the thought of standing there and saying her name made me feel sick to my stomach, and then riddled with guilt because it felt like I was making her death all about me. Other people spoke, they spoke about the first time they met her. they spoke about how beautiful she was inside and out. they talked about her beautiful smile.

That night the scene played out in my head, a hundred things I could have done differently, and her face, oh god her face, the fear that washed over her face when she slipped over the edge. I didn't sleep for a very long time after that.

whenever I saw the Lowells after that I was too afraid to ever look at their faces, afraid that I would see anger on their faces, afraid to look into their eyes that were so much like the ones I wanted to purge from my nightmares.

It was no use every day was like a revolving door of consequences, exhausting, monochromatic, and apathetic.

We moved out of that town in my junior year, but the ghosts of my mistakes followed. Every night was the same nightmare, it followed me throughout school into college and med school, which I dropped out of, to my parent's eternal disappointment.

As an adult, I tried several medications, which ultimately failed. In the end, getting Coco- my cat- is what helped me the most.

Cats get a bad rep my little feline bodyguard never leaves my side, but even she can only do so much against Allison's screams and her family's ravaged faces asking me why I didn't save her.

Some nights when I can't take it anymore I think Allison is punishing me, and in my most wretched hours, I hate her for it.

Authors note: still so sad, any thoughts on her extended melancholy? Happy reading!!