Nine days. It had been nine days sine Thelma had felt the knife sink desolately into her heart. Nine days had passed since she had felt her soul unceremoniously torn from herself, from Cassie, from the living. She sat, on her bench that the school had so casually and injudiciously dedicated to her memory. She rolled her eyes at the thought of it,
"Did the really think I'd care about a sodding bench?! I'm dead for Christ's sake. Some memory of me…give the dyke a bench!" She thought to herself in sardonically wry amusement, whilst absentmindedly chucking malteasers into her mouth.
Squinting her eyes towards the sun that was shining piercingly in the cold autumn chill. Thelma looked out over the lake where her body had been found. Gentle ripples were moving through the glassy water and Thelma could feel the hairs prickling on the back of her neck. She remembered seeing Cassie's face when her body had been drawn from the water. She could still see the tears, the despair and the guilt which Thelma had to witness and could not comfort. She remembered looking at her own pale and vacant face, desolate and somehow scared. Her own dead face had looked scared, sad and alone as her body lay limp and abandoned in the arms of a policeman.
"Mena Suvari, naked in the shower."
A voice spoke slowly and tantalisingly close into Thelma's ear causing her to jump and spin around, finding herself mere millimetres away from Cassie's smiling face, eyebrows raised, her lips almost touching Thelmas.
"What?!" exclaimed Thelma, confused and startled by the sudden thrust into reality.
"Sorry. Didn't know ghosts were so jumpy!" Cassie answered with a smile, taking a seat beside Thelma. She gazed out at the lake and breathed in the crisp autumn air.
"I just thought you could do with some cheering up…you look like a right moody cow. Even for a ghost," Cassie added.
"Nah…not really my type. Too much like a bloody alien. Now Angelina, she's my girl." Laughed Thelma, raising her eyebrow ceaselessly, lips pouted in a scrunched faux kiss face which made Cassie smile and laugh warmly at her.
"So where've you been anyway?" Asked Thelma as she picked up a sausage from a pile that she had stashed next to her on the bench, and started to eat, "I looked for you everywhere this morning," Thelma muttered thickly and with much difficulty, her mouth being so full of food. "Went spying on Roxanne. You won't believe what she does when she's alone, or thinks she is." Laughed Thelma with a wink before shoving an entire sausage indecorously into her mouth.
Watching this, Cassie replied,
"You know, you talents really were wasted on women!" There was an amused sarcasm in her voice, "Anyway, I was nowhere…I was, out," she finished abruptly, suddenly appearing hugely interested in the arm of the bench next to her, a slight frown of feigned innocence on her face. She momentarily snatched a guilty glance at Thelma who had stopped mid eating, the sausage in her hand hovering near her open mouth, both eyebrows raised in questioning and suspicion of Cassie.
"Ok, I was with Troy." Sighed Cassie "And I know that you don't like him much but I do Thelma - don't give me that look – and I'm not stopping my life just because Azazeal is around. We were only playing pool and talking, he's really sweet."
"Oh," said Thelma in a voice that didn't quite sound like her own as she tried to hide her dismay that Cassie could become involved with Troy. Cassie had said that she wasn't stopping her life, but why couldn't she understand and care that Thelma had, and didn't have a choice. Thelma in life had been so deeply in love with her best friend that it sent shivers down her spine just to be near her. She would have done anything for Cassie, she had died for Cassie and Cassie just never seemed to understand. And in death nothing had changed, but running through Thelma's mind were all the thoughts she tried to repress. That she would never again hold Cassie, never again feel the touch of her skin, the warmth and safety of her embrace. She had lost her best friend and the only person she had ever really loved in one excruciating assault. She felt so painfully lost and alone that she forced herself to push all thought away from her and she angrily blinked back the tears that she could feel beginning to burn behind her eyes. Desperately scrabbling to change the subject of her thoughts she turned to Cassie,
"So, didn't you enjoy your dream last night?" Thelma spoke with a coy smile, remembering the steamy encounter that she had instigated in Cassie's dream.
"Oh yeah," said Cassie sarcastically, remembering and holding back a smile "and when exactly could you ever imagine me saying 'lets polka'?!"
"Not THAT bit" said Thelma in false exasperation "plus that was all you, I was just arriving at that point!"
"Well if you ever put me in frills again I will kill you for a second time!" Cassie retorted, wide eyed and nodding.
"Hey I liked the outfit, it gives you the whole sex kitten thing." Replied Thelma earnestly with a grin. "Who needs men?! You loved it!" smirked Thelma, pouting her lips out at Cassie.
"No, you were crap." Said Cassie, getting to her feet and striding away towards the school, looking back with a grin, to see Thelma looking confused and seeming to only just work out what Cassie had said. And looking at Cassie's triumphant and grinning face, she shouted after her,
"HEY!"