Your name is Dave Strider and you find yourself falling asleep in the lazy blaze of the early evening sunshine. You're aware that if it had been midday you would have burnt to a crisp by now, but that thought is swatted away like a mouse is pushed into its hole by a housewife. You kick your heels against the peeling paint of the wall, and feel it crumble like bread crumbs beneath the impact. You open your eyes for the sole purpose of watching the flakes meander to the ground several storeys below you. From this high up, the ground seems pinched, obscured by the grey angles of apartment buildings. The horizon's sketchy, wavering in the heat.

As if to assist your heels, you absently tap the rubber foot of the red and white cane on the wall. It gives a pleasant rhythmic thud, and you continue. This and the far off cawing of birds are the only sounds that reach your ears. It's so quiet otherwise that you can almost imagine that light glaring off the metal railings is singing. It catches the corner of your eye like a diamond ring would the eye of a crow.

You absently finger at the smooth surface of the bottom half of your iPhone's screen. It's something to touch, something to feel, and you're thankful of that because everything else is so numb and painless and it's nice to feel the pressure on the pad of your thumb, nice to feel the humid breeze on your face. You're trapped in time, preserved in amber, and for all you know you're suspended in this moment as if in air. There's no strings holding you up and no ropes tying you down.

You're free but you can't bring yourself to fly away.

You'd love to speak, but your throat feels sluggish and dry at once. It's paralysed by the gloopy resin that's dripping down from the back of your tongue. You settle for the words to be drawn across your shadowed irises.

Wish you were here.

It's something you remember seeing on postcards, lined up on white wire racks outside souvenir shops. Fleeting memories of dreary seaside resorts dance through your mind and she's always there too. Smiling, laughing. Sometimes with chubby cheeks and clumsy digits, sometimes taller and slender and oddly graceful. Sometimes rounded, sometimes with sharp edges. Time-lapsed photographs, all with you and her but you can never make out your own face. It may be that you don't pay much attention to yourself, or that you paid a little too much attention to her.

She was the kind of friend that you grow up with and feel that you can let go at times. Sure, they had drifted apart; not because of fights, just because they wanted a change. She went with the angry short guy and the lanky nerd, you wandered off with John and Jade and Rose. But as if your pinkie fingers were tied together with a length of red cotton, you would always find your way back to each other. To you it's always been something inexplicable; you're cool, calm, a bit of a dick, and she was eccentric and quirky and overly friendly. Rose had always been baffled by your relationship, but your liability to take jabs at each other proved the strength of the bond.

But it was at our closest that it all fell apart.

It was something you hadn't seen coming. In your defence, you're not psychic, and your eyes were closed. You remember a faithful Clementine sunset, a swap of sunny smiles. A whitewashed cliff and green iron park bench. Pinkish slabs of granite tell a story of a thousand footfalls below you, and untied shoelaces cast snakelike shadows on the pages. She had her pixiesque nose pointed towards her spagnola ice cream that was balanced quite precariously on a dripping wafer cone and kept sending fond glances towards the side of your head. There was a returned smile. There was the anxious cry of a gull above your heads.

There was a scream of tires, the whining of an out of control engine. Her eyes barely had the chance to widen before you were both flung head over heels from the ledge. Her mouth was open wide but no cry registered in your ears. Just the rushing of wind and air resistance and the sounds of crisped autumn leaves flashing past you.

Falling, really falling, is a beautiful thing. It's quiet, it's peaceful, and you come to accept the consequences before you land because of this. From the top of the cliff, the ground below had looked soft, consisting majorly of loosely growing patches of chive like grass and fresh flowerbeds, but suddenly now it seemed hard and cold and unforgiving and you dreaded the impact; but you also anticipated it. You can only spend so long suspended in air as you were.

Falling's like the moment before death. And, in a sense, it was.

For her.

The driver of the car was arrested for careless driving and manslaughter due to gross negligence. You remember feeling a forlorn smile creep onto your lips during the trial at how exciting she would have found it. But unfortunately she died on the evening of the 16th September. She didn't make it past A&E. You were patched up; they kept an eye on you for a few days, and so did Bro, and you suffered but it was more emotional than anything.

It could have been me.

No, it should have been me.

She should be here.

I should be dead.

Now you're alone with your memories and your scars. Since the incident you've found yourself with multiple ivory marks on your already pale skin-at first they were a plum colour, as if bruised, but gradually they faded- randomly occurring migraines and partial blindness in your left eye. None of this greatly affects you, but you know it might affect others. You spend your time not letting anyone notice, and not letting anyone ask about her. Sure, people noticed when she just stopped coming to school, and for months after the accident you were forced to live with mumblings and rumours following you through the corridors. You refused the friendship of John and Rose and Jade. All you really wanted was for her to be okay, for her to come back.

You don't ask for much. At least, you don't think so. But if there's one thing you want more than anything else it's for her to be alive again. You want to hear her manic laugh in science class, you want to be able to spot her in the mornings solely by her colourful clothes. You want her to appear by your side on the evening of September 16th one year, when you faithfully return with a fresh bunch of red tulips, dusted with the cinnamon colour of the fading sunlight, and tell you that it's all been some prank gone wrong or some elaborate dream. You want her to smile at you, you want to laugh at her and with her and oh god you just want her to come back and be okay more than anything in this godforsaken world.

Her grave is tear provokingly picturesque. It's situated on that same cliff, a metre or two from the edge. The headstone is a pale grey marble, and the engraving is gilded.

Terezi Pyrope
1995-2009
The tears shed in your memory
shall be scarlet

That never really made much sense to you. She loved the colour red, she really did, but the image of scarlet tears was always a morbid one in your mind.

When the sun sets, as it had on the evening of the accident, strong and tangerine, the stone casts a beautiful long shadow across the top of the cliff. Just before the light fades, the top of the shadow touches the place where Terezi had sat on the bench. A golden plaque had been installed into the object, stating the date of her death and how she would be forever remembered. Knowing that none of the wardens would take the time to polish it, you take monthly outings to that spot to clean it. Other than that, and the yearly visit on the 16th September (which you try to work into the monthly visits anyway) you don't go there. You hole yourself up inside. Bro has most definitely noticed a change in your behaviour but he doesn't mention it. The last thing he wants to do is to make you cry because you're a Strider and that would be wrong.

The only time a Strider can cry is when it's all over.

Sure, you've cried. You've cried bucketloads of tears since she died, mainly in the first fortnight. You didn't let anyone see, but you cried. Her parents took pity on how you were clearly trying your hardest to keep a straight face at the funeral. But even though it's been nearly three years, you'll still cry every now and again. You lock yourself away and curl up and cry. It feels natural, and it's like you're letting everything out. You're a bottle of Faygo- ironic shit that it is- all shaken up and ready to blow.

You look up. While you were caught in your reminiscing, the amber encasing you had melted away and the sun had set. The curtain call of katydids and locusts swathes the city and you close your eyes and listen to them. Goosebumps are standing upright on your forearms and you can feel them where the breeze laps at your neck. The time display on your iPhone's lock screen shows 00:12. Your shoulders droop and you take one last wistful glance at the stars, which are as ever battling their way through the smog. You appreciate their efforts and take a moment to admire the vague winking they give.

It is once again September 16th and you, Dave Strider, have a job to do.