Do (not) speak ill of the Dead

This is Girl speaking. This is my attempt at a more modern approach. That is all!

On the second day, Sofia is opening the coffee shop while scrolling through all the things she missed out on last night. The pub. The cocktails. The music. The girls went without her, just did not think of inviting her along since they knew she would be working the next morning and all. Genuinely sorry for it, though! Yeah, right… Just like that other times when they thought she was allergic to seafood so noooo it never crossed their mind that she
would want vegetarian sushi or when she just really did not seem that interested in reading so why would she join a book club or when they really did try to catch her a spare ticket to see her favorite band on her birthday. 

“Next time!” they would say. There would always be a next time.

Sofia’s eyes are locked on the green-eyed guy, smiling a bit too wide beside her not-so-single-friend, or acquaintance, whatever you wanna call it. And of course, her hair has been washed thoroughly and styled with whatever suspicious substance she got in that cupboard of hers. But Sofia knows, she knows of her crocket teeth, her uneven eyelids and of that Saturday morning she broke out in vomit and acne, of all the times she did not light up a room.

“A whole bunch of phonies,” she mumbles to herself, and continues onto the next post, the next to break her heart. Her ex. On vacation. With his new girl. He never had the money or time to travel with her, nor post her anywhere, for that matter. What an asshole. A loser. They all are. 

And the cash register… it won’t close. Of course it is malfunctioning. Of course it is giving her a hard time today of all days.  She is about to slam it in rage, but is interrupted by Tonya barging in, out of breath and late as always.

“Helloooo darling, isn’t it a splendid morning?” grinning from ear to ear. She always does that. Exaggerate every word and every facial expression, living out a life made for the stage, one full of romance and tragedy, one which the painfully mundane audience can never relate to. Sometimes Sofia wonders if her very first word was “materfamilias” instead of “mama”. Even if it wasn’t, she would certainly still go around telling everyone it was, that there has always just been something special about her.

“Speak for yourself…” Sofia mumbles, while turning on the coffee machine. It makes an awful sound, yearning for her to put it out of its misery. “You are late, by the way!” she yells over its shrieks. 

“Oh, sweetheart, I know! Traffic was a total fiasco today. You should be ecstatic over me just making it out in one piece, still standing! You see…” then she goes on with a lengthy explanation that Sofia cannot be bothered to hear. Instead, she redirects her focus to the coffee stain, on the table across the room, next to the window. Last night’s shift must have forgotten to clean it. Or maybe they just did not bother. Leaving her with all their dirty work. Of course they would. A coffee stain, an ugly, putrid thing, worthy of no one’s attention. Only when the dark beverage is spilled all over someone’s favorite shirt, does anyone seem to notice. But then what does it matter? The damage is already done. Skin burnt off and shirt forever tainted. 

“So… what do you think?” Tonya looks at her expectingly, face all up in her business. 

“Huh, what?” Sofia asks, intending to insult her but instead just coming across as genuinely thoughtless. 

“My crop top! I thrifted it yesterday. Were you not listening?”  

“Uhm… alright… what about it?” Sofia looks at it, failing to see the appeal of neon green and printed smileys. It looks like something straight from a low-budget teen drama in the early 2000s. 

“Well, don’t you want to just adulate it forever and ever?”

“Take a guess.” Sofia answers heartlessly, and then continues: “You need to cover up with an apron anyway, and anything you thrift is certainly not work attire.”

For a moment, Tonya’s eyes turn smaller and her smile lowers, but she quickly picks herself back up to her usual self: “Whatever, you just love to hate everything.” And starts to wipe over an already cleaned table. In fact, by Sofia. 

The bell chimes, as the first customer enters. A girl, about the same age as Sofia. Hair reaching her shoulders. Badly colored, but stylish. Her small figure hidden, wrists peeking out of sleeves too wide and the hem of her pants sleazing along the floor. She seems unfocused, not meeting either of their eyes, as if her mind has escaped to a place of peace while her body is still in a haze. Sofia got to say, the sight catches her with intrigue. A girl unlike the snobs she usually encounters, someone not caring for outer appearances or polite formalities.

Tonya, smile strained, bumps Sofia gently and whispers: “Hey, don’t worry, I got this one for us.”

What she really means by that, is that she will put on her charm while Sofia does the hard work, take the orders, take the complaints, take the plates out (along with the trash) and if she is really lucky, take a good burn while steaming milk. While Tonya… busy chatting up the customers, being pretty and twirling her hair. She does draw in a whole lot of tips for the both of them, she’ll give her that, but God, being paired with her is always a pain in the neck.  

The girl walks up to the counter, staring at their soon-to-be-expired brownies for so long Sofia starts worrying that she might be some sort of inspector from one of those food safety agencies. She really should have wiped off the coffee stain when she had the chance. 

“Hii there,” Tonya starts, in her high-pitched voice, as if she is talking to a lost child looking for mom. “Don’t you look divine today? Gosh, your hair! I have always sought to color mine!” 

It falls flat. The girl looks at her as if she just committed a crime against her. Maybe in the girl’s world, she just did. Tonya gulps, and sends Sofia a distressed look, signaling a need for backup. Sofia must admit, she finds the sight to be quite amusing.

“What can I get you today, miss?” Sofia asks, a weak smile, although genuine. 

The girl, at the very least, acknowledges her and nods in the directions of the chocolate chip cookies. 

“A cookie, huh?”

Another nod.

“Anything else?”

The girl hesitates for a bit, and then shakes her head.

“To sit here, or to…”

The girl shakes her head again, without hesitation this time.

“Okay, got it. A chocolate chip cookie coming right up.”

Sofia puts the lukewarm cookie in a bag and hands it over, and the girl mumbles some words she assumes is a thank you. 

That is when she takes notice of it, the girl’s necklace. It is, as Tonya would have put it, heavenly. A golden rose with diamonds at the end of its petals, reflecting back at her, even in dimmed lighting. All of a sudden, Sofia is the one to lose sight of her surroundings. She is taken back to simpler times. The cooling of a breeze or a glass of cordial on a hot summer day. Running barefoot, nurtured in the evening. Heated asphalt. Stolen bicycles. Tipping toes into water. A maple leaf, never turning into autumn. Unbeknownst to her… to everyone. But her hair, her rose gold hair, forever with a streak of red. 

“Uhm… Sofia…” Tonya laughs nervously, eyes about to pop out. It snaps Sofia out of it. 

“Huh? Yeah?”

“The customer is waiting.” A smile so wide, a murderous one. 

“Oh, yeah, of course… sorry.” Sofia tries to hide her embarrassment while fumbling the bag. “I just forgot to…” 

“It’s okay.” It baffles Sofia that Tonya’s voice has become so low all of a sudden. Maybe bloodthirst does that to people. Then she realizes it is not Tonya speaking at all, but the girl, and that baffles her even more. 

“Oh, thank you...” Sofia turns suddenly shy, something she rarely does. 

The girl takes the bag. Turns around. Hair changing color in the lighting. That is when it hits Sofia. The fact that she will likely never see this girl again. She will go out the door. Only her fingerprints on the doorknob, next to the coffee stain, will be proof that she has ever been. For a little while, at least, but by the time the stain is gone, she will be too. 

This thought strikes Sofia with panic, an extreme fear of the girl never knowing what her stupid necklace had meant for someone like Sofia. Someone who learned to hate so early on. Someone who had lost sight of beauty. And to rediscover it…

“Wait!” Sofia shouts.

The girl turns back, startled. 

“I just wanted you to know that… I really like your necklace.” Her voice cracks, like a child about to burst out in choked up cries, getting on everyone’s nerves. She has never felt more foolish.

Something, impossible to say exactly what, lights up in the girl: “Oh, thank you.”

“How did you find it?”

“It was a gift,” the girl’s voice suddenly hardens. 

A gift… That is how Sofia knows the girl is loved by someone out there, and… although she once again failed to connect… although she will never have someone who sees her in diamonds or flowers or maple leaves, she is relieved: “It is beautiful.”

“Thank you. So are— thank you.”

Then, she is gone.

“What was that all about?” Tonya asks, eyebrows raised, blind to the world Sofia had just left. 

“I… don’t know.” Sofia answers, still in a daze. 

Then, as the bell chimes and an old woman is disgusted by the coffee stain, she forgets about it all and gets back to work.  

____________________________________________________________________________________

On the fifth day, Carol is sitting in the park, her bag besides her saving a seat. As she waits, she reapplies her lipstick, layer after layer, never truly satisfied. The reflection in the compact mirror is betraying her, darkening her undereye the more she conceals it. And she can sense the tiniest wrinkle when touching her skin, one which is not to be seen, like it is buried underneath her exterior.  

She checks her watch, time after time. The baton hands unmoved. It must be broken. Maybe it has been for a while now. She should have it fixed, ask the horologist in town, but the days are passing on so quick and she keeps getting lost on a road constantly changing. Yesterday, or perhaps it was the day before, she was on her way to meet her old man at his bakery, prices made for children with pocket money, only to find that it has turned into a gourmet restaurant for fancily dressed people. She rushed to the first telephone kiosk she could find and dialed his number to ask why he kept this from her, why he had given up nostalgic innocence to evil forces only set on marking the future. He had not picked up, though. She had brushed off the dust on her fingers, ready to jump on the first bus to go to his house, but by that time, the sun had already set.

Now, whenever that is, she is sitting in the park, waiting for her husband. He has been out for a business trip, in Tokyo. She did not meet him at the airport. She did not even wait at home. Carol knew that the day he would land and step back on common ground, that they would be over. She did not want to face it. She hoped for delays. But it did not change the fact that her mind was set, that she had found another woman’s lipstick, a shade lighter than hers, under their bed. The place they had intermingled their innermost parts, where he saw her soul for what it was and stitched it back up… That would be the same place he would break all they had been building together, and tear her apart, leaving her to do her own fixing, and forever conceal the stitches thereafter. 

He knows she knows. Not because she told him. She would never have the courage to. But because she kissed him with lips that was never hers, marked their house with it. 

Now he lives there with a woman she has never even seen, a woman she could never be. And she is just an outsider looking in. 

All this thinking about the past is making her uneasy. She does not even know if he will show up, if he remembers their spot. The place he embraced her for the first time, actually held her, not just touched her. It was the day after her mother had died from cancer, and she had no clue what to do with the inheritance she was left with, the pompous ring she had despised but could not let go off. He had told her that everything would be okay, that no one and nothing would ever harm her for as long as he lived, especially not a ring. Then, a year later, he put a diamond one on her finger, and she knew from there on out that he was a man true to his words. 

Or at least so she thought. 

She looks at her watch one more time, and sighs. It is still the same. She holds the mirror up and puts on a brave face, ready to finally gather the will to leave it all behind, but is caught off guard by the glimpse of a tiny-figured silhouette behind her. Carol is quick to turn her head, pained by the idea that her husband has been underfed for his whole trip.

A girl. A very strange one. Rebelliously dressed. A denim jacket, patched up in cartoon characters and political statements, and a tank top for inside wear. She is not even attired in a skirt, but pants similar to those her husband would like. She must be what people call a modern woman, breaking free from societal standards. Her mother would talk about them quite a lot, women cutting their hair short and joining protests to pursue degrees instead of men. From the bed in her tower, she would stare at them, derisive sniffs and nose held up so high, while her hair was falling out. A hatred which is only ever birthed by envy. Carol learned to only ever wear long dresses and aprons from there on out. 

The girl walks past Carol, not even acknowledging her. Naturally, from the girl’s perspective, she is just a boring woman pushing expiration. So, she knows that she needs to take the initiative to make her presence known:

“Excuse me, miss!” 

The girl looks around, as to see who she is talking to, carrying herself with a lot less confidence than Carol had expected. A lost doe. Their eyes lock eventually, her pupils dilating, going from anticipation to dread rapidly. 

“I am sorry to bother you, but would you be so kind and sit with me for a bit? I am waiting for someone, but they seem to be late, and I have not brought anything to entertain myself with,” Carol continues, tone a whole lot milder than what she has planned for her soon-to-be-divorcee. 

The girl awkwardly laughs to delay her hesitation, so Carol removes the bag next to her as if she has already agreed to join. In the end she gives in to the pressure and sits down.

The girl is awfully quiet. She does not seem to have much to say, and Carol is too tired for formalities. She starts regretting her decision, feeling stupid for thinking that talking with someone decades younger than her would give her some sort of encouragement, what she needed to curse out her husband and start a new life. The girl seems to be even more shakey than her. Maybe Carol should not have held her to so high expectations. She is still so young, after all, and is yet to stand on her own two feet without stumbling. Carol remembers her own youth. She was awfully clumsy, and certainly did not know how to address her elders. It is a miracle that her husband saw the allure in laughing before any joke has been finished and having a score of hiccups at moments of silence.  

Carol takes a good look at her. Sharp features, made for elegance, yet she chose a different route. Carol raises her hand to touch her own sloppy jawline and feels sudden rage she has only ever witnessed from across the dinner table. It terrifies her. 

That is when she notices it. The necklace hanging from her neck. A bit pompous, but unlike anything her mother would wear. Bold edges for her spirit and diamonds for the heart of her. Everything Carol strived to be, while also everything she was forced to be. 

“Your necklace… It is breathtaking.” 

 The girl adjusts her seating, as if she suddenly became aware of her discomfort. She mumbles some words of appreciation, and then raises her voice to say: “My friend gave it to me.”

Friends… Carol used to have those… They would take turns on hosting parties and drink tea together, sometimes with a hint of dark rum added, from the flask they all had slid underneath their coats. The nights the booze would really get to their head, they would gossip about all the ways men were the most toxic substance of them all and laugh about all the times a hand had gotten a little too close, like it was the most normal thing to wit about. She cannot remember the last time she conversed with a woman. She thinks she misses it.

“Ah, your friend huh? How long have you known her?” Carol asks, struggling to estimate the girl’s age, if she is expected to still keep all her childhood mates.  

“Oh, well… since we were really young, ma’am,” she slightly smiles, clearly not used to address anyone as ma’am. That makes Carol smile too.

“I have a friend like that too!” Carol lies, trying to recall any face from her own youth. There was this girl she once danced with at prom, behind the school building, after they both had been let down by their dates. She thinks she had dark, curly hair. “Friends like that are worth keeping.” 

“Oh, eheh, yeah... I suppose so…” The girl is dragging her words, while looking down and twiddling with the sleeves of her jacket.

“What is the matter? Did the two of you get into a fight?” Carol asks concerned, imagining how upset she would have been if the girl from prom had found someone else to dance with, if things had ended badly between the two of them. She does not think it did, but she does feel the slightest of panic when…

“Uhm n…”

“I am sure the two of you will sort things out soon enough.”

 “No… it is not that…”

“Then what is it?” Carol asks, expecting the worst, yet still not being prepared for what is to come.

“She just died.” The girl says bluntly, face still, detached. 

“Oh…”

“Yeah…” 

Carol feels the urge to lend the girl her tears, to embrace her, tell her that everything will be okay and that no one will hurt her again. But she is paralyzed, mind drifting back to prom. What had actually happened to that girl? A vague image of people dressed in black and a chilly summer day… a breeze which froze her in time…

“You don’t have to feel sorry for me. I am not the one who died,” the girl breaks the silence.

“But you are the one who has to keep living with the loss,” Carol replies, not sure who she is speaking to.

“I suppose so, but…” 

“I bet she was kind,” Carol continues, as if she is trying to compensate for something. 

“Well…”

“God takes away the best people way too soon, doesn’t he?”

The girl goes quiet, and Carol feels stupid for not realizing that she is likely an atheist and deconstructing hierarchies of religious institutions, like all modern women do. 

“She knew how to make you laugh…” she says in the end, not to Carol, but to whatever part of her is mourning. 

That is how Carol knows that the girl has lost someone truly wonderful. 

The breeze never gets to them, but the setting sun does. Without saying a formal farewell, the girl stands up, readying herself to leave. Carol cannot blame her. Her legs are still made for running. 

“Do you know where to go from here? Do you want me to walk you?” The girl asks, clearly hoping for her to say no. Carol both appreciates and is offended by the request. 

“I will be quite alright, darling. I am still waiting for my friend.”

The girl looks like she wants to say something but doesn’t. Instead, she does a half-hearted wave and slouches away with her hands in her pocket. 

Carol knows no one is coming, that it is time for her to go, somewhere she can lean against the stall bars at her old gymnasium and wait for someone to ask for her hand, somewhere she can still dream for something bigger, at night in the schoolyard. She takes a look in the mirror one last time. Her entire face covered in wrinkles, tracing back to every life she never lived, and skin so loose as the years has dragged her down. Her eyes… they stayed the same, through it all, remained undefeated. 

Her husband is no longer with her. He has not been for a long time. She remained loyal to him, even after death tore them apart. A part of her knew, could not forget, that it was never her watch which was broken. 

And she should be missing him. She is missing him. 

Yet, all she is thinking of….

Is her. 

____________________________________________________________________________________

On the seventh day, Jacob is wobbling upwards to the rooftop, hands clenched to the stair railing, and a buzzing in his head from the shots he just did. They said he couldn’t, that his body was too weak and that he had to slow down. He proved them wru-wrong. 

Desperate for air, he runs down the door, and falls over, face pressed against the hard ground. 

“Sweet release…” he whispers to himself, dozing off to go somewhere he is still standing. 

“Are you okay?” a voice above him asks, likely god or the stars or whoever rules the skies. That is the first idea to cross his mind, at least, the only thing which seems to make sense, until he recalls that he is still at a party, and that most divine beings would worry too much about being influenced by his hedonistic indol-indulgec-indulge—whatever the word is! He is one to spill his always-way-too-full-glass, after all. 

It is the girl, from the party, the one with the pretty necklace. 

He had eyed her quite early on, but she seemed too busy with… well honestly anything except socializing. She was quite impossible to read, and it infuriated Jacob. So much so that he made a bet with himself, to gather up the courage to talk with her by the end of the night.

Well, he lost the bet, as she was the first to talk to him. 

Stupid Jacob.

“Hey, hey, heeeeehyyy--- there you are!” Jacob sits up, eyes drifting from her overly concerned face to her pretty, red dress, surprisingly sleeveless, considering the scars and all---

“Whatchu doing up hereee? You… all by yourself and…. looking over the city… that’s… are you batman?” Jacob is catching himself in his own stupidities, but the rush of finally talking to her feels so good that he cannot help but burst into a laugh.

The girl helps him get back up on his two feet. He is not giving her an easy time, resting his entire body against her, her small fingers melting into his sweat, face too close to his beer-stinking-mouth. He must be at least a head taller than her. It makes Jacob think about the mantis shrimp, the one his ex-girl—ex-lover—ex-let's-keep-it-casual showed him. A being so small, yet so ridiculously strong, defying the laws of nature. That is her right now. 

“We should probably fetch you some water,” the girl sighs.

“Nooo— don’t worry mantis, I got this!”

“My name is not…”

“How about we just look over the city lights for a bit? Go see the stars together! Maybe even dangle our legs over the…”

Jacob cannot really remember what happens next, but at one point his back is leaned on some sort of vent, slurping a mug of water. Minutes or hours later he is trying to walk a straight line. He is pretty sure he also rambles about shrimps for at least ten minutes, and cries hysterically the next, either about heartbreak or scholarships or his dad beating him. At least he is certain he kept his shirt on. 

The music and mania from downstairs starts to die out. The time can be set on anything from 3am to 5am when Jacob is finally sobering up. Or… sobering up as in he knows he will have regrets tomorrow. Still drunk enough to make more of them, though.

Jacob stands up, with a head beating so much louder than his heart, and walks up to the girl who stayed with him the whole night, leaned over the railing and watching the sun rise over a city still lit. 

“Hi so… uhmm… you don’t have to stay here with me,” Jacob laughs awkwardly. Shit. He could really use one shot of a confidence boost right now.

“It’s alright. I don’t really feel like partying anyway,” the girl replies, not seeming remotely ingenuine nor aware of the hour.

“I am pretty sure the party is over already. You can go home, is what I meant.”

“No offense, but you do not look like you should be alone right now.”

This offends Jacob a whole lot.

“Well, maybe I should not be around you! You might very well be a serial killer for all I know,” he attempts as a joke, but comes more across as a creep.

“I would have just let you be if I had wanted to kill you.”

Again, rude. 

He takes another look at her. She looks awful. Not awful as in ugly, far from it. In fact, she is rather gorgeous. But she is clearly exhausted. Her features no longer aligning with her expressions. Eyes, grand and made to fill so much, emptied of any light, even when looking at the sun and the stars it bypasses. Like the moon has possessed them. Whatever she has been up to these past days, it has worn her out. She could use a cigarette. Unfortunate for her, Jacob has been nicotine-free for two days. 

Then there is the necklace, the one she has been fiddling with the whole night. Whatever does it mean to her?

“Yo, what’s up with the necklace?” He asks.

This shakes the girl awake: “Oh… My friend gave it to me.”

“Coolcool, where is your friend ton—”

“She killed herself, a week ago.”

Blunt. Unfazed. 

Jacob, however, feels a knot form in his stomach, tied to his heart, pinning it down. The hangover is already getting to him. He feels the need for air, to throw up his insides, although he is already out in the open, above pollution, and is no longer sinking in vodka and lime-juice… no longer drowning… He floated back up, kept his head over water. He should be fine now. Now. Now is now, and then was then. What he was planning all those days ago does not matter anymore. The cold-hearted truths as he indulged, the darkness which chased him upwards, dragging him to a hole of… of what. Looking down at the moving cars, wondering if they were shooting stars, there to grant his final wish. 

He got out. He is out.

“Oh…” is all he manages to say. He feels his mind getting a bit hazy again. Did the girl spike him? She seems fucked up enough to do it. 

“Yeah.”

“What… was she like?” Jacob asks, while wondering what his buddy Carlos would have said if he… if he…

“Does it matter?” she sighs.

This stuns Jacob: “Of course it does! It does to anyone who has to live after her.”

“She…” the girl stops herself, thinks for a bit, and then she continues: “She was selfish.” 

Jacob can’t help but feel disgusted, regardless of how many times he has heard that people grieve in their own unique way. And also… hurt… perhaps. He does not know. He is not really the guy to talk about his feelings, or understand what they are for that matter. His therapist got sick of him after 3 sessions because of it.

“How can you say that?” 

“It’s just the truth,” she replies, and it is impossible to tell if she is bored out of her mind, putting up her defenses or feeling somewhat naked and vulnerable. 

“She was late to literally anything. She never asked how you were doing, even if you hadn’t attended school for like 3 weeks or more. I do not think she even noticed. She was always so caught up in her own things and… that god damn hamster of her. Nugget. It was all she ever cared about. A fucking hamster. Can you believe it? So, when it died… she… how does it make any sense… punishing everyone who has ever cared for her because of… some thing which would only have lived for two years anyway!”

She is the one to ramble now. It makes Jacob feel a bit less bad about himself, in some screwed up way. Her enchantment is fading as she speaks. The quiet girl he saw standing in the corner, thoughts too profound for a simple boy such as himself, she is all gone now. Her heart, made of the same flesh as his. Her body, without a soul, just like the rest. She is not a secret to uncover. She is just… some person. 

A quite dislikeable one at that. 

He relates more to her deceased friend than her. He would probably burn down the world for a hamster too.

“Nugget sounds like a pretty cool guy.”

She snorts, an attempt on either a laugh or mockery: “Yeah… He was not too bad. I know how this makes me sound. You must think I was a horrible friend. But I really wasn’t or… maybe I was, who even knows. One night she came over and started bawling, saying she can’t stop wishing harm on other people but that she wants it to stop. I do not know what I should have done that night. I ended up just saying nothing at all, not to her, not to anyone.”

“It sounds like she was really struggling…” Jacob mumbles, fingers drumming the railing, fighting the urge to blame her for leaving her friend all alone like that. All she would have had to tell her is that everyone thinks messed up things all of the time. Then he thinks of how the girl had not left him. She had chosen him, a stranger, over karaoke and hook ups. Maybe because she is not the type to get tempted, to break loose. Maybe she just had nothing better to do. Still, it could never have been him. And to think this might be her first time out of the house since…

“We all are struggling,” the girl smacks back, but quickly calms herself as she leans a little bit closer over the edge: “I’m sorry. You did not come up here to hear me rant about this. It is just that this is the first time I actually… People expect me to only say good things about her now, all of the time, and they always talk about her in such extraordinary terms but she was not all good and she was not all bad. If I can no longer say the things about her which infuriated me the most then it is like… she will be truly gone, forgotten.”

Her voice cracks up over the last part, and Jacob can for the first time feel her sorrow, what it contains, and with it all his previous detest for her goes away, as dumb as that might be. 

She looks away, clinging onto that tarnished necklace of hers, of someone who once loved her, and whispers through tears: “She knew how to make you laugh.”

There it is. The thing Carlos would have said about him. While the outside would sleep, they would hide underneath their beds and bully each other relentlessly, neither one of them missing a beat. Banter which no one else could ever understand. They would always have to clean up afterwards because Carlos kept making these awful snorting sounds and spilled cookie crumbs all over. It was always because of Jacob. He knew how to make him laugh.

And somehow knowing this makes Jacob feel closer to being whole again. The sun rises, rays reaching the ends of his hair, marking him with red, fueling him with the will to dance one last time. 

“Do you miss her?”

“More than anything.”