The Truth Hurts

05 │dust to dust

Taylor grows pale. She feels her lunch resurfacing as thoughts flood her mind. Terrible thoughts. As she looks into Kris' eyes, she can only see Daniel. An innocent kid who had his whole life ahead of him and it was ripped away within a matter of seconds. He stares back at her, just a confused child who doesn't understand how corrupt the world is... or the people in it.

She snaps back to reality.

"Well?" Kris snarls. "What, did you follow me here?"

"What? No." Taylor blushes, looking down at the ground. "I umm... I read about what happened in the newspaper. I just wanted to show my condolences."

Kris cocks an eyebrow, still not quite convinced. "From 30 feet away?"

"I'm not part of the family or anything. I didn't want to intrude." Taylor watches as Kris brushes her bangs out of her eyes and turns away, embarrassed. "I didn't know you were..."

"He's my brother." Kris pauses. "Was my brother."

Taylor tries her best to refrain from tearing up herself. "I'm sorry for your loss."

Shaking her head, Kris realizes how unfair she's been acting. "Sorry for attacking you."

"It's okay."

"And earlier at school—I was just so stressed, but still. That's no excuse."

"It's okay." Taylor repeats.

"It's not. We all have things going on in our lives." Kris smirks. "Can't go around slashing each other's throats out, right?"

Taylor gulps, feeling her body tense up. "Right."

The two look at each other as an awkward silence fills the air. Kris glances over to see her parents getting into their car. "Well, I should get going. The family is leaving. I'm Kris by the way."

"Taylor." She pauses, watching Kris as she turns around to walk away. "Hey, Kris."

Kris stops to look back at her.

"I'll see you in school?"

"Yeah." She nods before walking toward her parent's car.

The shade of the tree casts upon Taylor. She stands there for a few minutes to watch everyone leave in the same direction, probably to Kris' house. She glances past the cemetery and to the horizon that hides behind the distant forest. The red, radiant glare bleeds through the strips of trees and burns into her mind, before it slips downward and out of sight.

Kris hurriedly walks down the hallway of her house toward her bedroom. A commotion can be heard from her family talking in the living room, easily heard through the small house, and she wants nothing more than to be alone and to drown out the voices of everyone around her. She swings the door shut behind her as she walks into her room, tossing her coat onto the chair next to the door. Her guitar sits on its stand in the far corner of the room near her open closet, collecting a thin layer of dust.

She crawls into her bed and lies on her side, staring at the blank wall next to her. Words fill her mind, but these are of her own. When she's upset, laded with some kind of strong emotion, writing them down or singing them into a song always helps her feel better. It's a salubrious release for her, a way to let her emotions out without actually talking to someone. Unfortunately, that's where most of her original work has come from.

Leaning over the side of her bed, she reaches down and pulls out a notebook from her nightstand drawer. She tosses it on her bed and flips through several pages of lyrics until she comes across a blank page. Quickly, she jots down the words in her head before they escape her.

I always seem to see things that I shouldn't
I never seem to get it right
I always seem to paint such pretty pictures
But they're always in black-and-white

A tear falls onto the page, smearing the word 'white'. She wipes at her cheek and closes the notebook, pushing it aside. She lies back down to curl up on the bed, hugging her pillow, as she quietly cries into it.

Her phone buzzes from her jacket pocket, but she doesn't notice. A notification from YouTube pops up, revealing she had a new comment on one of her videos.

'Your voice is to die for.'

♫ ʜᴇᴀʀ ʏᴏᴜ ᴍᴇ / ᴊɪᴍᴍʏ ᴇᴀᴛ ᴡᴏʀʟᴅ ♫
♫ ʀɪᴠᴇʀ sᴏɴɢ / ʟᴜɴᴀ ʙʟᴀᴋᴇ ♫