Lilly's death was a travesty. She was supposed to burn out in bright, sickly flames… not be snuffed. She would have wanted to die beautiful, not blood-stained. And the name on her grave is not her own but the one her mother wanted.
She had never been a Lillian. She had never been a darling.
She was cut off mid-step in the most mundane way, and no matter how much attention her method of murder attracted (which she would have loved) it was not her style. If she was going to die it would have to be spectacular.
But now she was dead and there was a grey stone in the ground and her mother was controlling her memory even more than she had tried to control her life.
That memory was left in the hands of the few people who were scared of it, shying away from everything that she had loved, that she had been. Soon she was going to disappear into the negative.
Veronica never wore raspberry lip gloss anymore, she still had a tube but it wasn't hers. Stuffed in her purse the last time she had seen Lilly, at the most depressing car wash in retrospect. Raspberry was her flavor – sweet like strawberry but a little more bitter. Veronica only ever put peach on her lips now.
Logan never took off his choker, he kept it wrapped around his throat in all places: shower, pool, bed. Especially in bed, even if it was someone else's. She had given it to him one day, smiling that mommy's credit card had some uses and boys who wore jewelery were sexy. She had been straddled on him – pinned on a lounger – and he hadn't cared much about it then. He just tucked it into his pocket as he addressed the matter at hand.
Duncan never went into Lilly's room. Ever. Not once since she had died. Lilly had always hated him invading her privacy although the hypocrite did exactly the same thing. When she stopped being able to complain he stopped doing it. She was a closed door with no signs, third right along the corridor from the top of the stairs.
Lilly's death was a recipe for melancholy. Everything she had ever done became a tragedy. Every song she had loved became a ballad for dead friends, a disaster. Every smile came with gritted teeth – watery and weak – painful to watch.
She would have hated that, hated them for it.
Lilly had been a firefly and now she was sad thoughts, a cold stone and a list of nevers. The whole thing was a travesty and it was beginning to show.