Jaliza's One Shots

Ghost Bird FF: For The Best

I had to do this. I don't typical write these because...well I can't accept something like this happening. But I joined a writing group and part of the meeting is that the leader gives us some writing prompts. This story is what came of one of the prompts. The idea was planted there and so I needed to finish it so it'll stop plaguing my thoughts.

Prompt: Was it where they lost me that I finally found myself?

***

For The Best

I didn't know how I was supposed to feel. They were gone. It was as simple as that. They told me they would always be there for me, that they would always listen to me if I needed to talk to them. And I tried. I opened up to them, bared my heart, and they nearly tore each other apart because of it.

North's black eye.

Nathan's broken nose.

Kota's cracked glasses.

Silas's bleeding eyebrow.

Luke's quiet demeanor.

Gabriel's excessive swearing.

Victor's dull eyes.

Sean's broken expression.

Mr. Blackbourne's catatonic state.

I did that. Me.

So I told them to leave. They couldn't all share me and I wasn't willing to tear them apart and there was no way I could just choose one. So I asked them to leave.

And they did.

I looked around the empty living room in my house, seeing everything with new eyes. What was once filled with life, with so much happiness, was now cold and empty. A blank. No signs of the boys' existence were around. All the photographs taken down, jackets or shoes that were left behind gone. No extra books from Kota, or Nathan's running shoes, or Gabriel's fashion magazines, or Luke's 3DS.

Nothing.

I stared at the blank wall, remembered talking to Gabriel about painting it. He thought it was a good idea and we spent weeks trying to figure out what we wanted to do. We were giddy with painting my house. My house. Dad left it to me when he took off and as soon as Maria turned eighteen, she left too. So it was my house and we were excited to turn it into our house.

The blank wall was trying to mock me now; telling me it wasn't going to become our house. But I paid no attention to its taunts.

I now knew exactly what I wanted done.

I grabbed my keys, got into my car, and went to the nearest department store. I grabbed all their favorite colors. The red, dark blue, baby blue, white, grey, black, orange, purple, and hunter green. I grabbed other colors, paintbrushes of all sizes, some tarp, and then went back to the house that was supposed to be ours.

When I unlocked the door, the silence nearly drowned me.

This just proved how alone I really was. How final the ending was. I nearly drowned in the guilt but I forced my feet forward.

I shook off my dark thoughts and entered the empty room. I laid the tarp down, dumped paint into trays, grabbed a brush and started painting.

Time no longer mattered. I lost myself to the steady strokes of the paintbrush against the wall, to the sound of the bristles, the smell of the paint, the colors that reflected in my eyes.

I thought of each boy. Of my memories with each other.

Kota. My Fifty-two. His dog running me over the night we met. The Eskimo kisses. The counting of my fingers and toes. His growing leadership.