Bonnie POV
'Bonnie! Bonnie! Where are you? We're going to be late!'
I barely heard the voice as it penetrated through the storm cloud of my thoughts.
'Bonnie!'
It was getting closer now, a thud was accompanying the words. She was coming up the stairs.
I rolled in bed so that my back was to the door. Let her try.
'You're still in bed?! We're going to be so late!' The voice was frustrated with a hint of worry attached to it.
I didn't react.
'Bonnie?' She was worried now.
'Look... we're supposed to be there in 20 minutes. Theres orange juice in the kitchen, poptarts in the cupboard. I'll see you there?'
I didn't answer.
She waited for an extra minute, desperately hoping for a reaction. Then she left the room, the thuding on the stairs grew further away and finally, I heard the jingly of keys and the front door shut.
Peace.
Emma POV
The funny thing about life sometimes, is that you don't get to make all the choices. Sometimes what happens to you just happens. Theres no rhyme or reason. A phone call with some news. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time. A situation so impossible that you can't even consider how to cope until you find yourself stuck in the thicket.
I pulled up in the car and looked at the small crowd gathering before me. People who had known nothing about her. School friends who wanted to be supportive but had barely known her as more than a face in a sea of faces.
People who looked at me now and vaguely recalled my connection. Their eyes said 'who are you?' 'what are you doing here?' they don't remember me. I sat next to many of them in classes for years but they don't know me. Just like they didn't know her. How she lit the world up.
I trudged past everyone until I reached the car that held her family. Did I go and say hello? Or should I nod and keep my distance for the moment? I shouldn't interrupt their own hell. Mine was enough.
Nodding respectively as I went past, I kept moving until I reached the doors, collected my programme and sat carefully in the third row from the front to wait for the rest to file in. The family, friends and strangers.
I looked down at the programme in front of me, the picture. God she hated that photo. I looked down further on the page to find the words that read why we were all here:
'In Loving Memory of Bonnie Emily Verstage
July 1996 - December 2018'
What happened?