AN: Heyo. This chapter is during chapter 12 of Bridge to Terabithia but has a different name because I wanted to make it more original. I don't own any of the characters, plot, setting, etc. I revised it because I forgot to include some important stuff that I thought I put in. Thanks to MadTom for spotting my exclusions.

They slowly walked across their muddy field to the old Perkins' place, where many out-of-state cars were parked. As they approached, the door opened to reveal a strange man and an excited Prince Terrien. The man smiled sadly. "You must be the Aarons family. I see that the dog knows you. I've heard what a wonderful friend you were. Come in." He showed them into the golden room, living up to its name in the brilliant sunlight. Several strangers were clustered around, crying.

An old woman came up to Jesse. "I'm Les... Leslie's grandmother. Thank you for being so important to her." But it wasn't me, Jess wanted to say. It was all her. She was the special one; the one who made me her king. I did nothing.

Then Bill walked over to him. "If... if it wasn't for you..." He couldn't continue. "I just wanted to thank you for making her last year of life worth living. You were such a wonderful friend to her." And with that he threw his arms around Jess, sobbing. He sounded so much sadder than any grown-up had right to that, if it had not been under such sad circumstances, Jess would have laughed. As it was, he merely felt uncomfortable with the button pressing into his forehead and the hot tears dripping on his back. When he was released from the embrace, Jess stepped back and looked at the room, at the adults crying their hearts out.

He thought about what Leslie would say if she could see them. Stop crying, she'd say. How'd you like it if you were dead, and everyone was crying and making a fuss? The dead want peace. Everyone crying over them isn't any fun at all. And you're all crying for yourselves anyway. You're crying for your own loss. What about my loss? I lost my life! All you lost was one family member. You have more. Me, and all the other dead souls, we've only got one life, and we don't get another. She'd probably be mad at them, and say that they didn't care about her, else why'd they make her come to Lark Creek? If she had stayed in Arlington, she'd've lived. Jess was mad about that. They'd made this year the last of her life. Through the haze of his thoughts, Jess heard his father ask Bill a question.

"What's the situation?" said his gruff voice.

"Worse. The doctor called right before you came. She'll be dead with in the hour."

"Isn't there anything they can do? They are qualified doctors. What else are they paid for? Surely they can save her."

Bill shook his head. "She's in too bad of a condition for them to do anything. We've already made arrangements for the cremation." Cremation! They couldn't cremate her. Then he would never see her again. She should be buried nice and proper in the jumper she had worn to church for Easter. That's what he would do, and he was the only one who really cared about her. He never would've made her move to Lark Creek if she didn't want to. Now that she was dead, he should decide what happened to her.

"Can Jesse visit her? I think he wants to see her again real bad."

"No. She's in too bad a way. You'd never make it in time. Besides, they wouldn't even let us stay. If they'd let us, we'd be at her bedside right now. All of her relatives came all the way from Pennsylvania to see her one last time. But the doctors wouldn't allow it."

As they left, Jess thought, Leslie abandoned me. She had to go and die on me. And now she'd be- wait, where would she be? All of his worries about heaven and Hell came back to him in a rush of emotion. He was so caught up in his whirlwind of thoughts that he didn't even realize that he'd reached his door. "Do you want to come inside?" His father held open the door for him, and Jesse shot up to his room, returning in an instant with the paints and paper Leslie had given him. He'd never used them. Shaking off his mother's gentle questions, he ran to the creek and the broken rope hanging off of the crabapple tree.

In a scream of grief and anger at Leslie for leaving and hurting him like that, he threw his gifts into the current and watched them float away. He yelled after them, "I hate you! I wish I never met you. Why'd you have to die on me?"

"That was stupid," commented his father, who had followed him, unseen. Jess collapsed in his arms.

"I don't really hate her, but I'm so angry that she died." Jesse tried to unsuccessfully to swallow the tears that were forming in his throat.

"It's all right, son. Go ahead and cry. It's nothing to be ashamed of when your best friend dies." Jesse succumbed and allowed himself to be half-carried back to his house. While they were going, his father said, "It's like hell, isn't it?" Like he would to a man. But it reminded Jess of something.

"Do you think that people really go to hell? Like, if they don't believe in the Bible."

"Don't you be worried about Leslie. God ain't going to damn a little girl to hell." Jess never thought of Leslie as a little girl, but he supposed that to God's perspective, she was. After all, she was only ten. Too young to die, much less go to hell.

Jesse went right to bed after that, to try to escape the sorrows of reality. Bill and Judy had gone to Arlington to get Leslie's body. They would cremate her and bring the ashes back to Pennsylvania, where their family lived. The last thing Jesse heard as he fell asleep was the Burkes' Italian car pulling into the gravel driveway.

AN: How do you like it? Pls pls pls review. Some of that was Katherine Paterson but most was all me. Reviews are like Jesse to Leslie and Prince Terrien to Terabithia. So review!