Aurum Bella. It was a fitting name. It translated to shining dawn and gold in Latin. And she was. Golden. Every little thing about her seemed shined, polished, bright, beautiful, and breathtaking.
Her personality was golden. It blinded you. The way she'd walk in on you having a bad day and make you grin like a fool was flawless. Forget chocolate, you just needed to talk to her for a minute.
Her words were golden. Aurum never said anything that came back to bite her. She always chose the perfect words to speak and they went together perfectly.
Her face was golden. Her eyes were full of life and sparkled 24/7. She was always smiling no matter what she was thinking inside.
Her actions were golden. Rocking back and forth on her heels, analyzing any problem in front of her, then setting out to fix it. Scaring the crap out of someone by tickling them was always timed perfectly.
Even her hair was golden. Blonde and bright. Smooth and soft as a... I sound like a pedophile, don't I?
Anyway, Aurum never let you see how messed up her life really was. We thought she led an average life and went to the anything but average school. The way she lit up the room made you think there was nothing wrong in her life.
Of course she had her random space outs. But all of us did. Everybody has those random moments where you get lost in thought. We almost never saw her face during hers blank outs.
Her cover started to leak through a month before the fire. That was when I finally got a glimpse of what she felt inside. Realizing that her thoughts weren't always sunny.
The first time was in gym class, at the beginning of the school year. She had been out of it since she got off the bus. Bumping into people in the halls, dropping things, forgetting class materials, and not knowing which class we had when. She wasn't talkative and she was unresponsive. During soccer, she bent down to tie her shoe, and the wind blew her hair away from her face. I glanced down as I jogged by and her expression was the so sad it was unbelievable. For a girl who never stopped smiling, the look on her face made me want to cry.
The second time was in Lit class a week later. We were reading a short story, and something, I don't remember what exactly, made her look up and gasp. I think it was something about a mass murderer. I didn't think much of it, because it was about murdering, so...
The third time was a week before the fire and Aurum had just been staring at her lunch for like ten minutes, and some of us had started to notice. Ashi and Jaz asked if she was okay, and she snapped out of it, but once again, she had that sad expression on, that she failed to hide. The table got quiet and even Fox stopped talking. But like all of our random quiet moments, we brushed it off and began to chat again.
The fourth time was the day before the fire. Jamie had made a joke about 'The Point' and the entire class had erupted in laughter. Between laughs, he made another comment about how Axel had been Arrow when we put on the play, and we started laughing even more. Aurum looked like she was about to cry. Her gaze was longing, like she wanted to hang on to the moment for the rest of her lives. We had no clue.