How can a blue sky look so dull? Austin Moon's hands are in his pockets. He stares down at the shine on his shoes and glares at them. They're not allowed to shine, not on a day like today. In fact, they're never allowed to shine again. Neither should the sun.
A pastor's voice is muffled in his ears, he can only hear the gentle hum of the deepness to his vocal chords. Last night he was sure his heart had rotted, decayed even, but this morning he knows that there's a small piece still hanging there because it's throbbing and it's aching. He can't breathe.
He settles for only using his nostrils to breathe because if he opens his mouth he just might sob very loudly. He's not crying, but he can feel his nose becoming plugged with snot. He'll be fine if he faints, but when the crowd begins to disperse, he finally lets himself breathe. He relaxes when he doesn't sob, but he knows anyone next to him heard his breath shake.
That's why the guy he considers his brother pats his shoulder and says, "It's going to be alright, Austin."
But no, it's not, because his best friend shouldn't be in the ground. They had settled her inside a white casket because she loved water lilies and she was innocent, pure. The purest color was white but there was nothing pretty like a water lily, pure like her, with that casket. Especially because he knew there was no heartbeat inside that casket. A cold body only.
He regretted slipping into the viewing last night at late hours. Nobody was there. He wanted it that way. He snuck into the room and there was her casket, top half opened and he could see her pretty face. He nearly felt scared to walk up, but he had. He had and regretted it. She was stiff like a statue, cold like nothing else, and gone like the wind on a sunny day. She wasn't coming back.
Not even when he said, "Ally, please."
It wasn't like she heard that. She was dead.
He was a stupid boy. She slipped through his finger tips like holding a palm full of paint. She dripped at his feet like goo. He forgot to say goodbye to her. He should have just called her. Why didn't he ever just call her? Even for a hello, even for a biology question, even for a small I haven't forgotten about you. He knows that she thought he did. He didn't plan for her to think that, of course not, but football got ahead of him, his new guitar got ahead of him, his new friends got ahead of him, his parents fighting got ahead of him.
There is a small crowd of three people: Austin, Ally's good friend Trish, and Austin's like-brother Dez. Trish was like a mess, her small body shaking, teeth chattering, eyes looking like somebody had socked both of them with a bold fist. Not somebody, something - sadness, grief, pain, heartbreak. Just because Austin wasn't around much didn't mean his bones weren't shifting uncomfortably in his body, that his heart was not hanging on by one thread, that he didn't want to rip open his veins just to spill out the regrets he wished he didn't feel. Dez wasn't close to Ally, but there was a sadness in him, too. Ally was his English partner. She was good with literature. She was shy. He did the talking for all presentations, she did the work. She liked it like that. They both put their heads together. She was a good kid, Dez knew that.
"Well," Trish's voice was croaky and it made the boys wince, "I should go." she lost her voice by the end of her statement, it was a fragile, broken whisper. Dez gave her a small smile and nodded. His eyes were compassionate but sad. Austin didn't want to look at her. If he looked at her, he might see a faint memory of her at Ally's side while they laughed about something completely stupid. He loved seeing them like that. It used to make him feel happy inside. Like there was no such thing as pain.
She shifts away. Her steps are slow, like there is a force that's begging her not to go but she gets to her car anyway. She doesn't drive away. She lays her head on the wheel and Austin cringes because he can hear her wails from all the way over. Dez glanced at Austin before back at Trish. Something pulled him towards Trish. He didn't feel right letting her cry alone. She at least needed a shoulder so he left Austin and walked towards Trish's car. He hardly knew the girl, but she still let him in on the passenger side. He started to comfort her with a side hug.
Alone.
Austin liked it alone. Ally did, too. He throws his head back to look at the sky. His eyes are red but they're not wet. He's not letting himself cry but the lump tearing his throat apart is just begging to burst. Austin looks at the shape of the clouds. He smiles sadly. One looks like a dragon, the other looks like a mix of a cat and a bicycle. Ally would've probably told him it looked like something totally different, maybe like City Hall, although it never really did.
He sits down on the ground, patting the grass around him as he lays back. He stares at the sight. He feels drunk from his sadness. He watches the clouds peacefully. One looks like a pencil box. He lets his thoughts steal him away.
x
"You have a big nose."
Austin looked over at the girl sitting next to him in the desk. She had a purple pencil box sitting in front of her. It was organized neatly somehow. Pencils and pencil crayons spread inside of it, glue stick to the side, and scissors propped on top of the pencils.
"What?" Austin kinda laughed because she was kinda cute with big brown eyes and ugly glasses. Ugly glasses suited her - in a good way. He wasn't sure if that made sense but it did to him and that was all that mattered.
"Sorry," she muttered, "My Mom says I say things out of turn and I'm starting to realize it now." She pulls at a chunk of her hair and starts to chew on it.
Austin grimaces, "What are you doing?" he questioned. She tore the chunk from her mouth.
She looks embarrassed with pink cheeks. "I also have a weird habit of biting my hair when I get nervous. I'm such a freak." she mumbled. Austin laughed. She looked at him startled, a small smile placed on her lips. She generally didn't make people laugh. She wasn't very humorous.
Austin begged to differ all the time
She had introduced herself as Ally Dawson and once she reached eleven years old, admitted that her full name was Allyson-Marie. She hated it so she preferred to call herself Ally. Austin liked Ally better, too. She was a really good person. A good person with an odd love for school, lots of insecurities, and a knack for puns. Austin loved her puns, even when they weren't funny. He still laughed though.
Eventually, Ally told Austin she liked his nose. It was straight and not raunchy. Ally decided that maybe it was the angle she saw his nose at that made her think that when they were nine. Third grade was a cool year, they recollect their memories with little souvenirs. The two had decorated a big shoe box with weird drawings and awesome scrapbooking letters. They took something from every moment out of their day for an entire year and placed it in the box. When they looked at it again, they decided, yeah, it was a cool year.
He had introduced himself as Austin Moon, her new best friend and it remained that way for a while. Even when the boys at school told Austin to get away from her for she smells like fish. He even leaned over and sniffed her but looked at her confused and said, "You don't smell like fish. More like apples and vanilla." Ally never knew how to respond so she just shook her head and decided to work on math.
Austin liked playing on the playground but Ally would settle for the ground. The clouds were interesting. They made weird shapes and Ally liked to make up a story. One time Austin begrudgingly joined her on the ground and she told him an entire story (that was pretty much two hours long) about a turtle who became a unicorn. Austin tried not to laugh the whole way through. He hated cloud watching, but some part of him loved that specific memory.
. . .
They were twelve when they made it to sixth grade. Ally was crying in the girl's bathroom. Austin was waiting awkwardly outside. His new friend Trent had told Ally that her hair looked like a mop and her teeth were bucked. Austin was thinking long and hard about it. Ally's teeth were a little bit brought forward but Austin never considered them bucked neither did her dentist, and Austin most definitely didn't think her hair looked like a mop. He liked her hair. It shined in the sun.
He can hear her sniffling. "Ally?" he called from outside the girl's bathroom but didn't receive a reply. He sighed softly. "I'll just wait here." he told her, shifting lightly from one foot to the other. It was the first day of their second semester. He couldn't just leave her. She'd probably get lost.
Ally finds her way out of the bathroom. She stopped in her steps. "You...You did stay." she muttered, slightly embarrassed. Her face was red, swollen, and hurt. Austin slowly nodded, a small smile on his face.
He didn't like it when Ally was upset, so he brushed a hand over her cheek to rid all the wetness. "Are you okay now?"
She smiled brightly at him, that sparkle back in her eyes. "Much!"
But she never really recovered. She begged the dentist for braces and even when biting down into the mold was hard and made her feel like she was going to choke on it, she did it for the sake of having good teeth. Soon they became straight and white like pearls. Austin approved of them.
In the seventh grade, Ally trimmed her hair and learned how to curl it. Her mother thought it was outrageous to want such perfect hair but Ally achieved learning how to perfect it. Her mother wondered if she should enroll into some beauty school. Austin always rolled his eyes. He liked Ally the way she was. It was pitiful that she tried so hard in the morning.
She still loved school. Even when Cassidy would dump milk on her at lunch, when Elliott would push her down, when Trent would laugh at her, when Austin would always be the one cleaning her up, picking her up, cheering her up. He loved Ally. She was his best friend. How can anyone dislike her? She was funny, sweet, kind, weird.
The only person who learned what a wonderful person Ally was, was Trish De La Rosa. A bossy Latina who Austin was jealous of for stealing her away.
"Ally, you promised you'd be partners with me!" Trish scowled. Ally was sitting next to Austin who was glaring over at Trish. Ally had been Trish's partner last assignment! Why did she do this? Maybe Trish didn't have any other friends but Ally in this class but that didn't mean she got to have Ally all the time!
"Oh, uh..." she glanced at Austin nervously.
"Are you kidding me, Ally?" Austin howled at her, a few kids glancing at them. Austin tossed his head back and groaned. "Fine." he grumbled. "I'm not walking home with you."
"Austin, grow up." Ally snapped, narrowing her eyes at him. He should grow up. They were like twelve-ish/thirteen. He sighed, picked up his things and sat next to Elliott who agreed quickly to be Austin partner. He mocked Ally the entire time, Austin found himself laughing but after every joke he got guilty.
Ally glanced over her shoulder at him and when she smiled apologetically at him, he smiled back. When Elliott made another sexist joke about her, Austin finally snapped, "That's my best friend, you know." Elliott backed off for the day.
. . .
She got kind of bad in the eighth grade. Her anxieties, insecurities were totally ridiculous. He caught her with scratched wrists sometimes, but when she lied about her cat doing it, he believed her. Until her cat died and the lie still slipped out and he realized, it wasn't her cat. It was her. Ally was hurting herself.
"You shouldn't do that," he whispered. She tugged down her sleeve and never replied. Mr. Rudy was continuing his lesson on the Aztec's. It intrigued Ally and gave her a good reason not to respond to Austin. He sighed.
He didn't know why she cut. Maybe it was because her mom left her father and now it was just Lester and Ally on their own. But Ally never seemed to be bothered by it. Maybe she didn't care. Her wrists said something else. Sometimes her song did, too.
The cutting escalated until she didn't like taking off her hoodie's anymore and even Trish had noticed. She called Austin over and they tried to make up a plan to get it all to stop but, nope, they never could get Ally alone long enough to ask her about it. She would see the secretive glances and always figured they wanted to talk about it. She always picked up her things and lied about needing to be at her father's store to do her shift. Ally had social anxiety so it was hardly believable that she wanted to actually go to work but it was the only excuse she had to avoid those conversations with Austin and Trish.
Her social anxiety was another thing that escalated, too. She didn't like going places very much anymore and it worried her father. She ran all the way to Austin's house, which was across the city, crying because she couldn't go to work again, she didn't want to. She was going to embarrass herself, they were all going to judge her. Austin quickly wrapped his arms around Ally and begged Lester to let her take one more shift off. She was only thirteen after all, she didn't really need this job.
She stopped coming to school for a couple of weeks because sitting in a desk with so many students just wracked her nerves until she felt them falling apart inside her body. She was scared that somebody would say something about what she was wearing, there would be a group assignment, the teacher would call on her, there might be a presentation, the hallways might be too crowded and they'd all see her have one of her crazy panic attacks. It was something she didn't want to risk. She manipulated her father so many times into letting her stay home before he finally put his foot down and forced her back to school.
It was super hard but Austin always promised to be there for her. He even switched into all of her classes to ease her nerves. She relied on him for everything. Talking for her, presenting, talking to the teacher about not calling on her in class, defending her when she was insulted, etc. Trish had done the same. She wouldn't have made it through eighth grade without them.
. . . .
When Austin met the really preppy, pretty girls in the ninth grade, he realized how lame Ally was. He stilled liked her though. But not as much as he used to, Ally decided. Austin, however, had a different version. He loved Ally, forever and always, she was his best friend but his new buddy, Dallas, said that she was holding him down. He shouldn't be in charge of her insecurities, her falls, her own problems. That wasn't fair. Austin had more going on.
Like new friends. He met a guy named Dez. Dez thought Ally was cool, though, it was his other friend Gavin who thought Ally was a nut case. Ally got confused when Gavin insulted her in front of the entire class and the only person who defended her was her teacher. Not Austin. Austin stared at his feet instead, sending her a guilty glance. She forgave him silently.
Her life wasn't going very easy. Her anxiety was awful due to being at a new school, her father had a cancer scare, and Trish had gotten into an accident. But Ally was learning how to pick herself up; Trish was fine and would return to school in a couple weeks, her father was perfectly healthy after all, and she was seeing a counselor about her anxiety disorder.
But Austin's life was hard, too! His parents weren't getting along anymore. They fought every night and sometimes Austin would cry. He never told anyone that. They'd think he was a baby. He kept it to himself but it really hurt that his parents' marriage was falling apart. He remembered that this happened to Ally and he thought about telling her, but he never did. He told Dez. Dez helped him out. Austin's grades suffered a lot so he went to Ally for tutoring. She was good at it but he got even more worried about her after that because he discovered another thing about his best friend.
She still cut, but like a lot. Her skin was practically bruising from how many times that blade was tearing her flesh apart. She had moved to cutting her thighs, too, now and her ankles. She didn't each much either. Austin offered her some pizza and she said no. She dismissed herself for being a picky eater but when his mother asked her to stay for dinner, he saw her tense up and refuse to stay over.
He got really mad, but never said a word. Instead, he told himself that Ally was becoming too much work. Ally changed a lot. She used to be so carefree, bubbly, and happy. Now she's fear-stricken, depressed, and always caring about what others thought. It started to piss him off.
He pushed her away eventually. She asked him to hang out and he said no. It was flat and blunt, just no. She texted him searching for an explanation and he refused to reply. At school, he acknowledged her with a smile but no chat. It was odd. Ally could feel the strings to their friendship snapping. She told Trish and Trish said that Austin still cares about Ally but needed time to reach out to other people now. Ally agreed softly, her sadness was quiet but it was there.
Austin joined the football team eventually and totally loved it. He became quarterback. That's when he didn't even smile at her in the halls. It was tenth grade now. It seemed Ally took ninth grade for granted because it was the last school year when Austin remembered her existence.
The only time Ally felt like she was still a part of his life was when she had an English assignment with Dez and he would go on and on about Austin. He shared wonderful stories, like how Austin got a touchdown, how Austin almost ripped his pants dancing but saved himself from embarrassment, and even how Austin got his first girlfriend. Ally felt bad when she heard that the girl cheated on him. Dez said that Austin used her for popularity. It upset Ally but she never voiced her opinion. She felt like it wasn't her place anymore.
"Hey, you and Austin don't talk much anymore?" Dez gave her an odd glance.
She smiled shyly and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. She shook her head. "No. Not for a while now. I think we just started to go separate ways."
"Hm, probably." Dez agreed but he never looked at Ally long enough to see in her eyes how much she missed Austin. In fact, nobody looked at Ally long enough to notice how thin she had gotten, or how her teeth started to look grey, and how her hair was thinning down. They didn't look at her long enough to see the tears in her eyes even when she was laughing, or that she had no where left to cut on her arms or thighs.
So she cut her hair.
They liked the look because they didn't know she'd stood in the bathroom mirror and chopped it all off because she felt like it. Because she felt sad and wanted to destroy herself. Because no cut was going to be big enough or deep enough to feel good so she found other ways to destroy herself. Like pulling away from Trish, too, like forgetting about her homework and not trying hard in school, like pulling at her hair until the roots pinched out of her scalp, like earning a smoking habit.
Austin did.
Eleventh grade. A girl named Brooke was sitting on his lap. He was running his finger tips up and down her spine comfortingly while she was talking on the phone with a friend of hers. Brooke glanced down at him and smiled apologetically but Austin shook his head as if to tell her silently that it was fine. She focused on the ground again as she giggled at whatever her friend said.
Austin looked over where he recognized two girls. Two girls he hadn't exactly seen around in the last two years. A Latina and a brunette. One who just makes him chuckle when he thinks of her and one who has left her finger prints on his heart forever.
The Latina is ranting about something. He can't hear what but when she stopped suddenly in the hallway and straightens Ally in front of her, he sees how horrible she looks. Especially standing next to somebody who is as healthy as Trish. Ally has thinned out in an unhealthy manner, she doesn't really have a chest, her hair is short and looks like it's going to fall out like a cancer patients. She wears a sweater that probably would have fit her a couple years ago but it doesn't anymore. It hangs off of her like a rag. Her laugh isn't even the same when it echoes out from her lungs. It's got a slight memory of her, but the rest of it is empty. Her eyes are dull and baggy. Maybe she hasn't slept. Something falls out of her pocket. He sees its a box of cigarettes. Trish picks it up and hands it to her before continuing on with her rant.
He frowns. Ally never smoked before. His eyes are taken away from Ally when Brooke kisses his lips and apologizes again for talking on the phone for so long. He smiles up at her but it's forced. When he glances over, the two girls are gone. An odd feeling is tugging at his heart. A feeling like he just wanted to run to Ally and scoop her up. He wanted her to have her long, beautiful, shiny hair again, her wide smile, her full laugh, nice body.
. . .
Twelfth grade they hadn't talked for a long time. Austin is sitting as his lunch table waiting for Brooke again. Dez slides into the seat where Austin wanted his girlfriend to sit but he hadn't seen Dez in a week so he smiles at him instead. "Dez!"
"Hey, Man." Dez's throat is scratchy. Austin laughs at his friend.
"Cold still got you?" Austin questioned. Dez nodded his head. Austin glanced over and there was Ally again. She was so much worse. A thing had gone around the school a month ago about Ally's father almost forcing her into treatment because she was so "messed up" as the students put it. Trish denied the fact but Austin eavesdropped on Trish's conversation with Dallas and knew it was totally true because Trish's voice cracked slightly. He could hear the worry in her voice while she was in the midst of denying the supposed rumor.
It had to be the truth by the way Ally looks with her broken posture. She slouches a lot, she doesn't always show up to biology, and at lunch time, he's never seen her grab one bite of anything. It almost made his heart feel heavy but he was good at numbing the sensation.
"What's up?" Dez croaked. He looked over in Austin's line of vision. "Why don't you talk to her?"
Austin didn't mind that Dez sounded awful. He sighed. "I can't. Not anymore."
"Sure, you can. Go over there and be like Ally, missed you! Let's hang!" Dez said. Austin laughed at the sound of his voice again but then shook his head and let a sullen expression cross his features.
"No." Austin said. "I just can't."
"I think the rumor was true." Dez said. Austin nodded his head in agreement. "She's looked bad for a while and I heard she got a DUI."
"DUI?" Austin questioned, his eyes wide. That wasn't like Ally at all. Not his Ally.
"Yeah, apparently. I don't know if it's true." Dez shrugged. Austin prayed it wasn't. That was his innocent Ally. His innocent, broken Ally. She's soon joined by Trish. "At least her friend seems to really care about her."
"Are you saying I don't?" Austin wasn't sure why he got offended but he had.
"No..." Dez drawled, "I just...Trish stuck by her. For everything. You sort of...Austin, you're my friend, but you left. Because some of the guys said it wasn't cool. Said she wasn't cool. You kinda suck."
Austin felt guilty but Dez's last statement made him chuckle. He nodded in agreement. He did kinda suck. He shouldn't have ditched out on Ally. Never. He couldn't find it in him to apologize. Something he didn't know he would regret by next Monday.
. .
I think you were the best thing in my life.
He frowns at the unknown number. Who's this?
He waits for a reply. And then, A memory.
He knew right away. Ally?
He didn't receive a reply after that. He decided it was a prank call and shrugs. He tosses his phone to the side and feels completely drowsy. He didn't get a lot of sleep last night considering he and Brooke had a fight. They were okay now but she was starting to annoy him lately with her constant badgering. He falls asleep, phone at the end of his bed, hands rested on his chest. His heart thumps really hard like although his mind doesn't know it, his heart does. She's going away for a while. His heart is echoing its palpitations, don't go. It's thumping back, I'm already gone.
When Austin wakes up the next morning, he nearly stumbles backwards when he sees his parents in the living room, sitting side by side and holding hands. He frowns, feeling like he's hallucinating this. "Mom?"
His mom lives on the other side of Miami. What was she doing in his Dad's house with them? He realizes that his father has sorrowful eyes and his mother's are red and weary. She looks over and sees Austin. She starts to sob. "Oh, Austin!" she runs to him and holds him.
He's lost. "Mom, Dad? What...What are you..." There is something abnormally wrong and he can feel it right in his gut. Maybe his heart knew what had happened before his mind had registered it.
"Honey, It's Ally, you remember Ally, right?" Mimi sobs again, still holding him.
"Of course I remember Ally," Austin said slowly. He started to get curious.
"Honey..." she whispered.
Mike knew his ex-wife couldn't finish the news to their son, so he swallowed the lump in his throat at the memory of the sweet girl and decided to tell Austin himself, "Son, they found her this morning." His eyes met Austin's, "She was..." he took a deep breath, "Ally had wrapped herself up in a blanket and shot herself in the head."
Austin stumbled out of his mother's grip. She sobbed harder now. "Ar...Yo...No.." he couldn't get out a sentence, not even a word. Had he heard right? Suddenly, he remembers the messages on his phone and he feels like he's going to get sick. "She's fine.." he mumbled.
Mimi shakes her head, wailing now. "No, Honey, she's not. Ally's gone."
He walks away from his parents, tripping and stumbling down the hallway. She goes after him but Mike grabs his ex-wife. "Mimi, leave him." They can hear their son retching in the bathroom. It's an awful sound and it makes Mimi cry into Mike's chest.
Poor Sweet, Ally. Just gone.
Like the wind.
x
Austin takes a deep breath. He can't breathe. He focuses on the clouds. He laughs as he sobs. They look like ducks, swords, dragons, the ocean. Ally would've convinced Austin inside a story-telling of a knight having his sword while riding a dragon along the ocean-side trying to protect his army of ducks. Austin would have laughed at it.
"I should've taken it away," he whispered to himself as he thought back to when they were just kids and he never exactly did much to help her with her troubled life. He sighed to himself, tears rolling down the sides of his face. "I didn't say goodbye."
Somebody walks and sits down beside him. They lay next to him. He looks over and he sees her face. Her brown hair reaches her ribcage again, her face is pale, her eyes sparkling. She smiles up at the sky, watching the clouds with him. He looks at her and more tears fall from his eyes. He missed his best friend.
"I don't like goodbye's," she said to him, her voice smooth with no cracks this time. His heart lurches. "I don't like goodbye's because goodbye's mean you're gone. And I'm not gone, I'm just...not here right now."
And he smiles.
She's not gone. She's just going to be away for a little bit...Like on a vacation. He will see her again.
So...I'm depressed now because of this. But it was in my head. And I felt like maybe somebody needed a good cry and this might've done the trick. I apologize. I've had a sad day so I wrote a sad one shot. Apologies.