Imperfect

25. Haunted

Haunted by Taylor Swift

Stood there and watched you walk away

From everything we had

But I still mean every word I said to you

Come on, come on don't leave me like this

I thought I had you figured out

Something's gone terribly wrong, you're all I wanted

There was a girl who thought happy-ever-afters existed. She never stopped laughing, smiling, hoping, dreaming. She had everything and nothing. But she was contented. Innocent, pretty and pink girl. Though no one knew about the times she cried herself to sleep, listening to her mother on the phone, talking, wishing that everything could be normal. When everyone else had a father and mother to be there with them. No one knew how much she wished she could be someone else, on weekends when families went out together but she was alone, when she was a 12-year-old graduating, a big occasion, but no one but her mother was there but every other person in the cohort had both parents there with her. And she knew, she knew it was all her fault.

And then there was a girl who couldn't keep her pain in anymore. All the pent-up pain, anger, frustration which she didn't know how to keep in, not anymore. And-and she did something she regretted for the rest of her years: she killed her father. She hated herself for it, but lost lives cannot be regained.

Not now. Not ever.

That's when she realised that there were no such things as do-overs and happy-ever-afters.

And then there was a girl who was too scared to face what she had done. Afraid to bring everyone she loved down with her, and she ran away. She was scared. Scared of what she had done and what she could do. Scared of hurting someone again and out there, someone would have to go through the pain of losing a loved one. What she hadn't known was that she would end up causing more damage than what she intended.

Took a life from a boy she barely knew but she knew he didn't deserve to die. She knew, she knew what it was like to lose someone, but she had done it. The boy-Asher-had a family who loved and cared for him, and she had ripped his family apart. Fayth. The stranger with the green-silver aura, how she had ruined everything for her. Broke the heart of a girl who had understood a stranger, shared her pain, treated her like family: Ashlye. How Ash had never looked at her the same way again after they returned home, Ash in her new one, but she herself back in her real home with her mother, who still had no idea about the night her father died.

And there was nothing she could do.

Now, there is a girl.

Her name is Kayla. She's 13. Her eyes don't shine with that light, unlike every other girl her age. Her sea-green aura fades into black at the edges, though no one but her will see it. Just like they won't know how the perfect girl they once thought they knew is just a façade, a mask built on broken promises, broken dreams, the grain of sand at the centre of a pearl. No one but her will realise that she's changed, everything's changed. They won't look past the sunshine disguise and see the cracks beneath and love her for it. And that's a fact of life.

She's imperfect.

You and I walk a fragile line

I have known it all this time

But I never thought I'd live to see it break

It's getting dark and it's all too quiet

And I can't trust anything now

And it's comin' over you like it's all a big mistake