p style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; outline: none 0px; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', HelveticaNeue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444;"when sammy died... when sammy died... when sammy died.../p
p style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; outline: none 0px; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', HelveticaNeue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444;"kat cried the hardest. she got the phone call, heard the news and started screaming and screaming and then she cried and didn't stop, not while holding abigail, not while hugging tara, not while going to sleep, and when she woke up the next day, the tears were fresh on her face still. she went to shower and found herself huddled in the corner, knees tucked in, thinking that if she turned the water up hot enough, it would overpower her sobs. all that happened was her exiting a half hour later, once the water had already run cold, still crying, body red and raw and sore. but why should she complain if her body hurt? sammy was hit by a car, a em style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; outline: none 0px; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box;"car, and he's gone he's gone he's gone and he was her first friend at the academy and he's not coming back he's not coming back and he's the only one who stuck with her and he's gone and who's going to stick with her like that now who is going to care about her that much. /embut kat didn't say that. she just cried and cried and cried, and when her tears ran out, she cried still, dry and painfully, until her eyes ached almost as much as her heart./p
p style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; outline: none 0px; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', HelveticaNeue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444;"everyone could see ollie suffering. everything he said to sammy ran through his mind, over and over again, on repeat. he got the phone call, heard the news, and then promptly threw his phone across the room, shattering it. because yeah, they broke up, but ollie had always thought - he had always figured - that eventually they'd make their way back to it and there'd be time for apologies and soft kisses in the sunlight and the company, and dance training and the open future splayed out ahead of them. christian let him keep the cardigan, though he didn't say he would. ollie wrapped it around himself, inhaling it, because it still smelled like him. like french fries and dust and the stupid sweaty jock straps he hated so much. when his mum washed the cardigan on accident - because it had been lying out for so long, and it smelled em style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; outline: none 0px; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box;"horrendous/em - that's when ollie cried the hardest. because no matter how hard he tried, all it smelled like was the cheap lemon detergent they got at the store and that's when he finally threw the stupid thing away./p
p style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; outline: none 0px; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', HelveticaNeue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444;"ben grieved quietly and alone. because he only knew sammy for a little under a year. what right did he have to grieve harder than those around him? sure, ollie knew him less, but he was his boyfriend and that was different. so he helped the others. he partnered abigail, because although he was good, he was definitely not much better than sammy, and abigail still couldn't stomach a good partner. he sat with christian on the beach and ignored the fact that they both knew christian was only thinking of the times he did it with sammy, the times sammy understood in the ways ben could never. with kat, he took her out to eat a lot, and let her push him around, and when she tried and tried to get him to talk about his issues, even if he had no glaring ones, he'd make up something for her to solve and codename because that's what she did with sammy so that's what he let her do with him. sometimes, with tara, it was hard. sometimes, she'd treat him like a brother, because christian could never be that for her again, and her and ethan rarely talk, and though he's her boyfriend, sammy was her brother, so he lets her do it. they both know it's not the same. and then, at the end of the day, when ben felt like he'd given all the smiles and good thoughts away to everyone else, he'd turn on the dvd sammy was going to use for his solo and watch it and cry and cry and tell himself it's fine because it's healthy for boys to cry, boys cry all the time, it doesn't mean anything, and ignores that the last time he cried that much was when he was seven, because he must have missed a time he must have he must have-/p
p style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; outline: none 0px; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', HelveticaNeue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444;"christian was guilty, and everyone could see it. how many times had sammy gotten on his case for screwing things up with his best friends? and then, there he was, with two broken hearts and one broken body on his shoulders. because he could've picked sammy up. sure, it wasn't his fault, sure he wasn't in the car, but the truth is, if he was there, there at least had been a chance. but, no, he always had to have his way, he always had to make things about him. so he clung to tara, because she was the only thing he had left. funny enough, he knew he didn't even like her that much anymore. not like that. he could learn, too, sure, if he really tried, but he didn't want to try. they were different now, they were all different, too fundamentally changed. and so he clung to tara, tara who had kissed him like no one ever had before. tara who he'd held on the boat ride that felt like it could last forever. tara he'd kissed on the beach when he thought no one was looking. tara who the summer he'd spent with was the best few months of his life. tara who he had been really happy with, who life had been simple with, once upon a time. never mind that she looked like she'd pass out from the pain every time no one was looking. never mind that she didn't dance anything except the red shoes for two months after the performance. never mind that she didn't bother with picking four leaf clovers off the ground because they didn't save sammy's life so what's the use? because if he held that picture of her, maybe it would be okay, and maybe they could heal together, and maybe he wouldn't have to think so hard and maybe-/p
p style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; outline: none 0px; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', HelveticaNeue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444;"tara's grief was so unlike any other pain in her life. she imploded, folding into herself and her pain. because sammy had been the only one who really understood. sammy had been the only one who'd got it, the only one to make her feel better on that first day, not by trying to, but by being like her. they knew what it was like to be underdogs, they knew what it was like to have everything working against them. but they'd made it anyway, they'd made it to nationals, beat the odds and the expectations and they had made it. well, she did. because he was close and then a stupid driver in a stupid car, on a stupid street ran into a stupid sammy who got himself killed and then left them to pick up all the stupid bloody pieces. wasn't that a laugh? soon as he made it, he was dead. and tara supposed she never really made it either. grace had won, not her, and she put everything she had into her solo. maybe she wasn't cut out for it. maybe she wasn't cut out for anything. tara had tried to stop smiling. every time someone told a joke, or she saw a rainbow or a sunset, or ben's eyes sparkled, and she wanted to smile, she stopped herself, because she shouldn't smile. what kind of person smiles when their best friend is dead? who does that? but it was so hard, because everything made tara smile, everything, and she em style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; outline: none 0px; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box;"shouldn't/em smile, she shouldn't, because sammy didn't get to smile. sammy wouldn't ever smile again. and the last thing he'd done was leave her a voicemail. his last thoughts were about someone else's happiness. messed up universe, tara thought. she used to think she could fly, and now, tara supposed she was destined to let other people fall./p
p style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; outline: none 0px; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', HelveticaNeue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444;"when abigail got the call, she was still smiling. still. just like a year ago when he'd kissed her on the log at camp and she couldn't stop smiling the whole night, he'd kissed her again and lifted her up and she went to rehearsal and heard the teacher tell her how she was actually dancing with feeling for once, and she went to her dorm and smiled and had dinner and smiled, because she was finally letting it all in, she was finally allowing something good to happen to her. and then she got the call and she smiled, because she hadn't checked caller id and she just assumed it was sammy, because all she could think about was sammy, and in a twisted sort of way it was him. except it was ms raine. ms raine who's voice trembled like abigail had never heard it and then ms. raine who she never imagined she'd hang up on, but here she was, doing it. so she stepped into the shower and tried to let it wipe his scent off her, tried to let the water scrape the emotion off her skin, and though her clothes were heavy her mind felt even heavier and she could feel her breath get shallower and shallower and she didn't care because he kissed her like they had a lifetime and they did have one but it wasn't her lifetime, it was only his. abigail was only in the shower for twenty minutes before kat and tara found her, but it wasn't until six months later that she really pulled herself out. and she knew that her heart was broken, and it was always going to be broken. she was going to carry that pain around with her forever. forever. and that made her happy, because he'd be with her. even though, he was never really going to be by her side./p
p style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; outline: none 0px; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; margin: 15px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', HelveticaNeue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444;"they all went up to dance, because it was what sammy would've wanted. even though kat's bones ached with the exhaustion of staying upright, and the though of abigail dancing with a partner other than sammy felt wrong, and ollie knew sammy was his only real link to the group, and tara knew there was always going to be a missing link and ben knew that his dance was taken from the person who should have gotten to perform it. they danced their hearts out, because sammy would never get to see it. they danced stronger than they ever had. and they knew that even though the idiot had died, his death ensured their fates together. they were always going to be bonded in an indescribable way and it was all sammy's fault. but even though it hurt, and even though they were tired, they danced and danced and danced like their lives depended on it, because sammy's did. sammy's life had depended on dancing. except it hadn't, really. it had depended on them, together. and if they danced, sammy might never see them again, but in the dance, he would always be, and then - and then - he would live forever. /p
p style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; outline: none 0px; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', HelveticaNeue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444;"kat cried the hardest. she got the phone call, heard the news and started screaming and screaming and then she cried and didn't stop, not while holding abigail, not while hugging tara, not while going to sleep, and when she woke up the next day, the tears were fresh on her face still. she went to shower and found herself huddled in the corner, knees tucked in, thinking that if she turned the water up hot enough, it would overpower her sobs. all that happened was her exiting a half hour later, once the water had already run cold, still crying, body red and raw and sore. but why should she complain if her body hurt? sammy was hit by a car, a em style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; outline: none 0px; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box;"car, and he's gone he's gone he's gone and he was her first friend at the academy and he's not coming back he's not coming back and he's the only one who stuck with her and he's gone and who's going to stick with her like that now who is going to care about her that much. /embut kat didn't say that. she just cried and cried and cried, and when her tears ran out, she cried still, dry and painfully, until her eyes ached almost as much as her heart./p
p style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; outline: none 0px; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', HelveticaNeue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444;"everyone could see ollie suffering. everything he said to sammy ran through his mind, over and over again, on repeat. he got the phone call, heard the news, and then promptly threw his phone across the room, shattering it. because yeah, they broke up, but ollie had always thought - he had always figured - that eventually they'd make their way back to it and there'd be time for apologies and soft kisses in the sunlight and the company, and dance training and the open future splayed out ahead of them. christian let him keep the cardigan, though he didn't say he would. ollie wrapped it around himself, inhaling it, because it still smelled like him. like french fries and dust and the stupid sweaty jock straps he hated so much. when his mum washed the cardigan on accident - because it had been lying out for so long, and it smelled em style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; outline: none 0px; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box;"horrendous/em - that's when ollie cried the hardest. because no matter how hard he tried, all it smelled like was the cheap lemon detergent they got at the store and that's when he finally threw the stupid thing away./p
p style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; outline: none 0px; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', HelveticaNeue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444;"ben grieved quietly and alone. because he only knew sammy for a little under a year. what right did he have to grieve harder than those around him? sure, ollie knew him less, but he was his boyfriend and that was different. so he helped the others. he partnered abigail, because although he was good, he was definitely not much better than sammy, and abigail still couldn't stomach a good partner. he sat with christian on the beach and ignored the fact that they both knew christian was only thinking of the times he did it with sammy, the times sammy understood in the ways ben could never. with kat, he took her out to eat a lot, and let her push him around, and when she tried and tried to get him to talk about his issues, even if he had no glaring ones, he'd make up something for her to solve and codename because that's what she did with sammy so that's what he let her do with him. sometimes, with tara, it was hard. sometimes, she'd treat him like a brother, because christian could never be that for her again, and her and ethan rarely talk, and though he's her boyfriend, sammy was her brother, so he lets her do it. they both know it's not the same. and then, at the end of the day, when ben felt like he'd given all the smiles and good thoughts away to everyone else, he'd turn on the dvd sammy was going to use for his solo and watch it and cry and cry and tell himself it's fine because it's healthy for boys to cry, boys cry all the time, it doesn't mean anything, and ignores that the last time he cried that much was when he was seven, because he must have missed a time he must have he must have-/p
p style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; outline: none 0px; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', HelveticaNeue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444;"christian was guilty, and everyone could see it. how many times had sammy gotten on his case for screwing things up with his best friends? and then, there he was, with two broken hearts and one broken body on his shoulders. because he could've picked sammy up. sure, it wasn't his fault, sure he wasn't in the car, but the truth is, if he was there, there at least had been a chance. but, no, he always had to have his way, he always had to make things about him. so he clung to tara, because she was the only thing he had left. funny enough, he knew he didn't even like her that much anymore. not like that. he could learn, too, sure, if he really tried, but he didn't want to try. they were different now, they were all different, too fundamentally changed. and so he clung to tara, tara who had kissed him like no one ever had before. tara who he'd held on the boat ride that felt like it could last forever. tara he'd kissed on the beach when he thought no one was looking. tara who the summer he'd spent with was the best few months of his life. tara who he had been really happy with, who life had been simple with, once upon a time. never mind that she looked like she'd pass out from the pain every time no one was looking. never mind that she didn't dance anything except the red shoes for two months after the performance. never mind that she didn't bother with picking four leaf clovers off the ground because they didn't save sammy's life so what's the use? because if he held that picture of her, maybe it would be okay, and maybe they could heal together, and maybe he wouldn't have to think so hard and maybe-/p
p style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; outline: none 0px; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', HelveticaNeue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444;"tara's grief was so unlike any other pain in her life. she imploded, folding into herself and her pain. because sammy had been the only one who really understood. sammy had been the only one who'd got it, the only one to make her feel better on that first day, not by trying to, but by being like her. they knew what it was like to be underdogs, they knew what it was like to have everything working against them. but they'd made it anyway, they'd made it to nationals, beat the odds and the expectations and they had made it. well, she did. because he was close and then a stupid driver in a stupid car, on a stupid street ran into a stupid sammy who got himself killed and then left them to pick up all the stupid bloody pieces. wasn't that a laugh? soon as he made it, he was dead. and tara supposed she never really made it either. grace had won, not her, and she put everything she had into her solo. maybe she wasn't cut out for it. maybe she wasn't cut out for anything. tara had tried to stop smiling. every time someone told a joke, or she saw a rainbow or a sunset, or ben's eyes sparkled, and she wanted to smile, she stopped herself, because she shouldn't smile. what kind of person smiles when their best friend is dead? who does that? but it was so hard, because everything made tara smile, everything, and she em style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; outline: none 0px; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box;"shouldn't/em smile, she shouldn't, because sammy didn't get to smile. sammy wouldn't ever smile again. and the last thing he'd done was leave her a voicemail. his last thoughts were about someone else's happiness. messed up universe, tara thought. she used to think she could fly, and now, tara supposed she was destined to let other people fall./p
p style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; outline: none 0px; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', HelveticaNeue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444;"when abigail got the call, she was still smiling. still. just like a year ago when he'd kissed her on the log at camp and she couldn't stop smiling the whole night, he'd kissed her again and lifted her up and she went to rehearsal and heard the teacher tell her how she was actually dancing with feeling for once, and she went to her dorm and smiled and had dinner and smiled, because she was finally letting it all in, she was finally allowing something good to happen to her. and then she got the call and she smiled, because she hadn't checked caller id and she just assumed it was sammy, because all she could think about was sammy, and in a twisted sort of way it was him. except it was ms raine. ms raine who's voice trembled like abigail had never heard it and then ms. raine who she never imagined she'd hang up on, but here she was, doing it. so she stepped into the shower and tried to let it wipe his scent off her, tried to let the water scrape the emotion off her skin, and though her clothes were heavy her mind felt even heavier and she could feel her breath get shallower and shallower and she didn't care because he kissed her like they had a lifetime and they did have one but it wasn't her lifetime, it was only his. abigail was only in the shower for twenty minutes before kat and tara found her, but it wasn't until six months later that she really pulled herself out. and she knew that her heart was broken, and it was always going to be broken. she was going to carry that pain around with her forever. forever. and that made her happy, because he'd be with her. even though, he was never really going to be by her side./p
p style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; outline: none 0px; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; margin: 15px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', HelveticaNeue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444;"they all went up to dance, because it was what sammy would've wanted. even though kat's bones ached with the exhaustion of staying upright, and the though of abigail dancing with a partner other than sammy felt wrong, and ollie knew sammy was his only real link to the group, and tara knew there was always going to be a missing link and ben knew that his dance was taken from the person who should have gotten to perform it. they danced their hearts out, because sammy would never get to see it. they danced stronger than they ever had. and they knew that even though the idiot had died, his death ensured their fates together. they were always going to be bonded in an indescribable way and it was all sammy's fault. but even though it hurt, and even though they were tired, they danced and danced and danced like their lives depended on it, because sammy's did. sammy's life had depended on dancing. except it hadn't, really. it had depended on them, together. and if they danced, sammy might never see them again, but in the dance, he would always be, and then - and then - he would live forever. /p