Yo.

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"It will be alright, Jilly! Your godparents will take you in!" My best friend, Rizu, tried to assure me. I couldn't see the look of desperation on her face through my teary eyes, and honestly, I found it insulting that she thought it could ever be alright. My Parents just died on their way to pick me up from a recital! How can you ever feel better about that? After I found out, I didn't care that I sang perfectly, or that I didn't trip on the stage. All the happiness and Pride I had gained from the performance I lost as soon as the words left my teacher's mouth.

"You're parents are dead, Jilly. I'm so sorry... If there's anything I can do to help..."

"There's nothing you can do." I replied in a hollowed tone that I was surprised to hear coming out of my mouth. I didn't cry, but I felt the pain seep into my skin and envelope me into the never ending darkness; I was alone. Little did I know that wouldn't be the case for as long as I thought it would be. Almost as soon as I got home and the police stayed to watch me, my godparents came bursting through the door. My godfather had big silly bottle cap glasses that made his eyes look ten times their actual size, and my God mother had purple hair and tight clothes that hugged every one of her plump curves. I couldn't help but look down at my flat chest and sigh. As if I didn't feel bad enough my parents just... just... well, you know.

"Hello? You in there?" Rizu whimpered, nudging my arm playfully. I slapped her hand away from me. "It won't be okay! My parents are dead and it's my fault because I just HAD to show off at that stupid recital!" I got up from my seat and ran out of the classroom. My teacher yelled after me for a while, but eventually she just gave up. I thought I could handle school after a week off, but I guess I couldn't. Then the funeral came back to me.

My Godmother, Talia, bought me a simple black dress that looked good on me in the mirror. I was surprised that something so simple could look so great. I know what you're thinking: how can she care about how she looks when she's going to her Parents funeral? I wondered why too, until I remembered all the people that were going to be there molesting you with their eyes and waiting for you to cry. So I decided I would look good to make my Parents proud one last time.

I talked it over with my mom a lot about what I wanted done with my body after I died. I didn't need to think that hard. I knew I wanted to be burned. These conversations always upset her. She didn't want to think of my death. But one day she told me what to do with her and dad's bodies.

"Your father wants to be donated to science, and I want to be buried next to Grandma." She said, with one of her mournful half-smiles. I didn't like what they wanted me to do with their bodies, but I had to tell my godparents. Once they told me that the remains of my father were to beat up to be donated, I ran to the bathroom and threw up. If my father, who had sat in the back seat to protect my mother from the balloons they were going to ambush me with, I couldn't imagine the way my mother looked from sitting in the front seat.

They died from being hit head on. I told my Godparents to not spare me any details.

The car crashed into them at an intersection. It was their green light... but I guess that guy had somewhere to be. My mother survived that crash, they said, but not the second. The first guy hit them from the side. Then a tuck with a heavy load of oil was making a turn; it tried to stop, it swerved, and the cargo fell off and crushed my parents like a can of sardines. Then the sirens.

You wanna know what made me throw up a second time? I heard the sirens during my act. I ignored them because I thought the ambulance was going far away and taking inside of it strangers I would never meet.

My Godparents, who were the only ones left to decide what would happen to the unrecognizable corpses that use to be my parents, decided they would be buried next to each other at the same graveyard as most of my mother's family. So that's how I ended up at the funeral playing the part of the prettiest girl in a black dress. Black ribbons held my hair up in a ponytail, and my stockings made my legs itch. My eyes felt like they were going to pop out of their sockets. It was the second worst day of my life.

I kept running until I got to the bathrooms on the other side of the school. I don't know what possessed me to go there, but I sat in the stall closest to the door.

"Nice move, Jilly. Run out of class. You're going to have to stand outside holding those stupid buckets of water forever!" I listened to my comment bounce of the walls in an eerie echo. I looked down at my uniform only to realize that water was dripping on it. I thought, great, not only is it a really bad day, but my uniform is getting wet. I looked up to see where it was coming from, but the ceiling wasn't leaking. I rested my head on my hand to stare at the door, but suddenly I realized that my hand and face were soaked. I kicked open the stall door and gasped at my reflection in the mirror. This wasn't the Jilly I had been all of my life. It was a new Jilly that had to substitute because my parents took the real Jilly with them.

As soon as I pushed open the door to my Godparents house I was ambushed by Talia. She ushered me to my room and covered me up with blankets. She explained to me that I had every right to be sad and that my parents loved me very much. It killed me she did that. Talia then proceeded to tell me about their wedding, and about how proud they were when they told her about their new baby because she was in South Africa at the time. She brought me cookies and told me that it was hard for her too; that at work today she burst into tears at a meeting and was asked to leave. I laughed a little at this. She smiled. I love her, but I don't think I can ever call her mom.

Once she left, I sat in my bed nibbling on the cookies for a long time. I thought of how Maemi had come up to me today and said he was sorry about my parents. I thanked him, but I couldn't tell him how much it meant to me for him to say that. He's this really cute kid in my class who's really nice and shy. I like him a lot, but we're just friends. Karin also came up to me today and told me that if I needed to talk, she would be happy to listen because she doesn't have parents either. That's when I realized a lot of people in my class didn't have parents; Himeka, Kazune, Micchi, Karin, and now me. I didn't want to be on that list even if it meant I had a reason to talk to the coolest people in class. Rizu and I never became part of the Kazune-Z or the Micchirans because we decided that was way too extreme and there was zero chance of ever making friends with them if we joined a fan club. I mean, that's just crazy. Even if it was fun to watch them freak out about things, we didn't want to be the ones being laughed at.

I took a minty piece of bubble gum out of its rapper and popped it into my mouth. I decided I'd try that thing were you lick the rapper and stick it on your forehead. I hear that it burns. I fell asleep with the rapper on my head, and the next morning I woke up with a red patch of skin on my forehead where the wrapper used to be. I cried as I washed my face that morning getting ready for school.

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