Roofers.

25. Zombie boy.

Scarlett POV.

Don't ask me how I got here. In a graveyard in the dead of night. Wearing nothing but my oversized Deadpool pyjamas and a pair of muddy Doc Martins over my knee-length looney toonz socks. All I knew was that I was marching up towards Rico's headstone, ready to knock someone out for so little as a sideways glance. All I knew was that one moment I was in my house and the next I was here. All I knew was that I was too angry to come up with a rational thought. Don't ask me why I was angry. I wouldn't be able to answer you.

In the darkness, the moon makes the granite look like it's littered with diamond glitter. Morning dew made the grass gleam like stardust. But I wasn't here to take in all the beauty. I was here for a reason.

He was there, sitting with his back against the cold granite slab as his eyes searched the stars, waiting in the deafening silence. I didn't care to ask what he was looking for, he'd never answer me. He never did. It had become almost comical. Under the moonlight he doesn't look so dead. His pale skin could almost feign colour, making his lips a certain shade of cool lilac, making veins the colour of violets. And if it weren't for the black, empty, soulless eyes staring back at me, I'd have forgotten he wasn't breathing.

There he was, with his short black hair and his favourite band tee and his stupid, fucken e-boy jeans. The ones with all the chains. The ones he left in. The blood still dripped down from his wrists, over his rings and onto the grass beneath him.

"You!" I roared, marching closer to him. His head snapped up to look at me. His familiar grin sliding to his face, the grin that was always there when we saw each other. The one that had faded away in the weeks before his departure. But then he stood up, shoving his ring fingered hands into his pockets as he stared at me, like he didn't already know why I was here. Or worse, as if he didn't know me. Or worse, as if he never did. "Fuck you!"

"Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!" I screamed, voice crackling like a whip of lightning as it shot out into the air. Tears dripped down my face in rivers. Or perhaps it was sweat. Or perhaps it was both. I cussed, and I screamed, and I raged. I stomped my feet into the grass as if that would force him to hear me. I stomped, and I stomped, and if my mother was here, she would call me a child. But I had zero fucks to give. I had nothing left, so what if I lost my dignity too?

Fire filled every vessel in my body, forcing my hands to fists. I punched him in the face, again and again. But my fists fall right through him. And not once do I get the satisfaction of knocking a bitch out for doing something stupid. He didn't even flinch, he only stood there. Like I was the stupid one. Like I was the dead one here. And maybe I was. Maybe I should've been. That would've made more sense.

"I hate you!" I screamed again. He didn't flinch and for a moment it seemed as if he couldn't hear me. The wind made him sway like a dandelion in a lonely field. I didn't mean that. I wouldn't be here if I meant that. And he knew me well enough to let this go, "I hate you." I told him again.

He simply stared at me. His hand lifted from his side to my face and I leaned into his corpse cold hands; searching for the warmth they once had. But the warmth that was once so familiar was now a foreign memory. He felt as though he was frozen in time. Lost in another life, barely gripping to reality. Sometimes I wondered if this was real myself. I stared up at his face, at the tattoos that ran up his neck, at the bags beneath his sunken eyes. At the lips, I had never gotten to know. The faint history of bruises that lined his jaw was no longer visible. I try to remember everything. Everything about his face, because I never want to forget the way his nose was slightly crooked and how you could never notice it except when you were 5 inches away. Because it's not visible in any of his pictures, because I fear watching video's of him and being forced to hear his voice.

"Why did you leave me, Jules?" I asked him, "Why won't you come back to me?"

He pushed the braids from my face. The corner of his mouth coming to a shaky raise, but his smile was just as dead as he was. Eyes that had once resembled precious stones stared down at me. A tear the colour of the galaxies rolled down his cheek and onto mine. But for the life of me, he never opened his mouth. So I lost it.

"No, don't do that!" I told him, "You don't get to fucking cry, you did this to yourself!"

"You don't get to fucking cry!" I yelled, shoving myself away from him. The tears didn't stop. They never would, because he left with tears in his eyes.

"Stop crying!" I shouted. "Rico, stop crying!"

"Please stop crying!" I was begging now, pleading for him to stop. Because when he cried, so did I. But I was already crying, so I only cried harder. 

I only cry in two ways. Either it's silence, the tears that bury themselves in my pillows, tears nobody can know about. And then there are the tears that rip themselves from my eyes. There are the tears that force anger from my throat until I taste my own blood in between my teeth. There are the tears that make my body collapse because my body refuses to support itself. And I shake and tremble and blubber. And all I could do is rock back and forth in a ball as my sobs tore me limb from limb. These were the tears that came now. These were the tears I could never hide, not if I tried.

"I'm sorry, alright!" I sobbed, "I'm sorry!"

"Just come back!"

"Just come back!"

"Just come back, Jules, dammit!" I screamed.

"Fuck you! Fuck you! I hate that I love you! Fuck you for making me love you! Fuck you for leaving me! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!" I gasped, sobbing, making futile attempts to catch my breath. "You left me like everyone else... you promised me!"

"Wake up!" I scream for so long I lose track of time. I scream for so long, I lose my voice. "Please!"

"You promised me," I coughed, choking for air as I crawled towards his gravestone. "You promised me you'd be here!"

"But you're not," I sniffed, heaving air into my lungs. He was only staring now, because somehow dying makes you an apathetic ass wipe. "You fucking piece of shit," I laughed into the silence. Wishing he could hear me, wishing he would simply say something in return. 

But that's not how dying works. You don't get to come back. I knew that. I knew he wasn't really sitting beside me too. I knew this whole thing was in my head. But sometimes dreaming is better than a reality full of unanswered questions.