The Twilight Twenty-Five
Prompt #: Nineteen
Pen name: TRDancer
Pairing: Bree
Rating: T
Photos for prompts can be found here:
community[dot]livejournal[dot]com/thetwilight25/13912[dot]html
Please note that this story is set in an alternate universe where Victoria did not create the newborn army. Edward wasn't such an idiot and managed to kill her in NM when they were chasing her around or something. Whatevs. Also, this is based on the song Passage, which is all about this chick dying. So, heartfail ahead, I think.
Mufasa: Simba, let me tell you something my father told me. Look at the stars. The great kings of the past are up there, watching over us.
Young Simba: Really?
Mufasa: Yes. So whenever you feel alone, just remember that those kings will always be there to guide you. And so will I.
According to the local paper, I died yesterday in a car crash.
In reality, I died two days ago, and I've been sitting at this broken piano ever since. Through the upright part of the piano, I have a nice view of Earth and everything that's going on down there.
Not exactly what I expected from the afterlife, but hey, I didn't exactly expect to die at sixteen, either.
I zoom back into the paper, reading the article about me.
Bree Tanner, a sixteen year old sophomore at West Seattle High School, was killed in a car collision yesterday. Alcohol and foul play are not suspected factors. The other driver involved was not injured... blahblahblah.
I sigh and zoom out again, not interested in reading quotes from the other driver or my fellow students claiming to be my friends to be in the paper.
Since I woke up here after the explosion of my windshield shattering into a million pieces, I've figured out that the screen on the piano is connected to my mind somehow. Whoever or whatever I think of, it shows me it. With some experimentation, I've discovered that I can even make it shut off if I clear my mind enough, but that took a lot of effort, and who the hell wastes their energy when they're dead? Not I.
I figure my butt should be asleep after sitting on this piano bench for so long, but apparently you don't fall asleep at all in the afterlife. You also don't get to play the piano, even though you're sitting at one 24/7, since, like I said, it's broken. Random keys are pushed in, they're all yellow, and not a one moves an inch.
I want my money back. This is not the afterlife I signed up for. Give me angels and pearly white gates any day.
I sigh and look at the screen. My thinking about the crash has brought me a lovely view of the other driver, who goes by the nice name of Edward, hugging his wife, Bella, who is sobbing into his shoulder. I snort at the scene. "Suck it up, princess. He's not dead. Get over it."
Being dead has kinda made me cynical.
Just a tad.
I think of Riley instead. He appears on the screen in front of me, sitting on his bed, staring blankly at the TV, which is playing reruns of That 70s Show. He knows I'm dead, of course—the whole of Seattle does, I remind myself. At least, everyone who reads the newspaper.
There's a knock at his door, and he calls out for them to come in. It's his mother, come to inform him that there are more people at the door to see him. Almost every time I've checked in on him, someone has wanted to talk to him. He sighs and tells her he doesn't want to talk to people. She sighs, putting a hand on her hip. "Riley, it's important for you to be around people at a time like this."
He looks at her. "A time like what, Mom?"
She shakes her head and ducks out, closing the door behind her. I don't approve. I think she's right and should insist he goes out with his friends. "Too much That 70s Show alone in your bedroom will turn your brain to mush," I tell him aloud, even though I know he can't hear me.
Watching the aftermath of death is never pretty, even when it's someone else's death. When it's your own, it's downright terrifying. The first thing I saw when I woke up here was my crushed Chevy Impala. That in itself upset me—I'd saved for years to buy myself a car. Then I saw my sister jump out of the family van and run up behind the crowd. She called my name over and over, trying to push through to get to the car, but my father held her back.
I decided this was a good thing, because I didn't want Kylie to remember me the way I looked when they pulled me out of the wreckage. Let's just say I didn't look myself—I didn't even look human.
As I wonder to myself if they're going to have a funeral or something, the screen shows me a funeral home, my mother standing in the foyer of it. She's wearing a black dress and clutches an unused tissue in one hand. She looks more beautiful than she ever did when I was alive, and I wonder if that's just because I didn't pay attention or what.
A middle aged man walks up to her and asks for her name. She answers—May Tanner—and he flips through his appointment book as he tells her how sorry he is for her loss. I can tell that she can see through his bullshit, even though she nods and says thank you.
Thinking of the funeral too hard on my part fast forwards the screen to the weekend, about three days later. I raise my eyebrows—the absence of chronological time is new, though the part where nothing makes sense is old news by now. For all I know, I died years ago in the real world, and I only just woke up to see what's been going on.
Riley leans against a tree at the back of the crowd, watching silently. Many a person passes him by and gives their condolences, which he merely nods at, continuing to stare blankly at the grass. It's starting to turn brown; it's almost autumn. I remember that it was well in the nineties the week before I died and frown, because I missed the turning of the seasons. I will never be alive to see that happen again.
Of course, I can watch through this lovely piano screen. Whoop dee doo. Thanks, God, you're a doll.
My mother, father, and sister all stand by my coffin. It's pretty nice, I note. I wonder if my body is in there. I think about it and the screen flashes with flickering flames. The unrecognizable lump that was me glows and crumbles into a fine gray ash before my eyes, and I suck in a deep breath. I no longer exist on Earth, I realize. I am nothing.
The screen flashes to show Kylie gripping an urn in her arms. She carefully holds out a clenched fist and then opens it, letting the wind catch the dust and blow it over the water and trees. She takes a deep breath, then turns the urn upside down, letting what was left of me disappear into the air. I am everywhere.
We're back at the funeral. My mother trembles as my coffin is lowered into the dirt, tears running down her face, making it glisten in the low light of the sunset. It seems like she should be sobbing, the way she's shaking so much, but she isn't. Her grief is silent, while Kylie's is loud and angry. My father doesn't seem to grieve at all. I wonder if he ever expresses emotion. He seems like all the students that have come to my funeral—there because they feel they have to be.
Thinking about the students makes a view of the school gym appear. The principal stands in front of the crowd of students and says something about what a great asset to the music program and to the school in general I was. He calls for a moment of silence in my name, and I note that quite a few students are crying—but it's only because someone died, not because I died.
Riley sits at the top of the bleachers, his face grim and unchanging.
I think of the pain he must be going through. I know how I feel having lost him, but he must have it worse, seeing as he doesn't get to watch me through a nice piano screen.
I wonder, which hurts more, watching but not having, or just not having?
The screen changes to show Riley sitting on his bed, sort of swaying back and forth. Something in his hand flashes in the sunlight streaming through the window. I look closer to see that it's his Swiss Army knife. I watch, horrified, as he holds it to his wrist.
"No!" I scream at him, but it falls upon deaf ears. This feeling is worse than dying. It's like my already unbeating heart has been ripped out of my chest. I pound my head into the piano, covering my eyes and wishing it would all just stop.
The keys on the piano seem to turn even more yellow.
I glance up at the screen, terrified that he killed himself. But no, he's flipping the knife shut and throwing it across the room.
"Tomorrow comes," he says in a whisper. "Hold on a while."
There is no blood. Perhaps he heard me, after all, somehow. My heart seems to grow back into place, though I feel like a piece of it is still missing.
Months pass as I watch the screen. They've planted a tree for me in the front yard, and it's grown some, but it seems to have an objection to the winter cold. I empathize with it; I never liked winter much either.
My mother sleeps restlessly, dreaming of me holding my own child. My heart breaks again for what can never be. Kylie sits up that same night, watching homemade tapes of us running around in the backyard in the summer, blowing bubbles and trying to beat each other at absolutely everything. She laughs at my attempt to climb a tree, tears running down her face.
Just one more piece of my heart is ripped out. It's okay, I didn't need it.
A new girl moves into town. Her name is Angela Weber, and the school assigns her my schedule. They give her all my books and slap a name tag with her name over the one reading 'Bree Tanner' on my locker. The teachers give her the only empty seat in their classes—mine. I wonder if she knows she's sitting where the dead girl used to. I wonder if she knows she's taking over the dead girl's life.
I decide she probably doesn't.
New girl graduates, along with everyone I ever went to school with. Years pass, my tree grows, drinking melted snow and rainfall, reaching a height of eight feet. It's a pale and fragile thing, and my father silently compares it to me.
Suddenly it's the summer before my sister starts her senior year. She begs Mom and Dad to let her go to Florida with her friends. Instead, they insist they go on a family vacation to Hawaii.
They don't say it, but I hear it in their thoughts: We haven't had a vacation since before Bree.
An odd thing happens as Kylie shrieks when my father splashes her with water and she attacks back. A few keys on the piano, the lowest octave—they straighten themselves out and turn a glistening white, like they're fresh off a grand piano.
I play them, but the only sounds they can make are depressing.
It's better than the silence, though.
Back at home, my sister has her first day of the twelfth grade. Walking home, because she's still afraid of driving, she takes a detour through a wooded area and finds a sparrow with a broken wing. Remembering when I would bring home stray animals, she takes it home and nurses it back to health.
As it flies away a couple weeks later, a huge grin that I haven't seen her smile since I was alive spreads across her face.
Another octave on the piano turns to white.
My father gets home from work a few weeks later and walks up to my tree. He reaches up and plucks a tiny apple off it. He stares at it for a moment, then tucks it into his coat pocket.
"These are a sign of second chances," he tells my sister later that night, giving her one of his classic we-can-do-this lectures. She agrees.
The octave that turned white before's keys straighten out. I play them. They make the song much happier than it had been.
My sister graduates with a sad smile and a sunburn on her face. I'm surprised to see Riley in the crowd. I've been avoiding thinking of him since all I ever got was him sitting in his room, depressed. It made me want to die again whenever I saw him looking like that. He looks better now, though he's blinking like he's never seen the sun before.
"What did I tell you, it wasn't good for you to sit down there all alone," I scold him.
There is a special presentation at the ceremony. In honour of my sister's graduation and the fact that I'll never get to, the school is buying the baby grand piano I'd always pushed for and putting a plaque with 'In Memory of Bree Tanner' on it.
Good to know my brief efforts weren't completely in vain. Even if I had to die to make it happen.
My piano here in the afterlife likes that. An octave turns white and the keys straighten out.
My sister's boyfriend proposes to her at their graduation party. She tells him she'll think about it—she's always had commitment issues. Lying in her bed alone later that night, she asks at a whisper what I would do.
I want to tell her to say yes, that her boyfriend is perfect for her. I've been watching him, of course, and he hasn't even come close to cheating on her.
Not that that makes the perfect man, but it certainly helps a fuckton.
She does say yes. They move in together and go to college and have kids and have the life I never will. But I know that I am in their thoughts, if not every moment, often enough for me.
Another octave becomes perfect.
My mother rifles through photo albums, pausing particularly on pictures of me. She stores these away in their own personal album, smiling as she thinks that I was, indeed, a lovely one.
Thanks, Mom. Glad you realized.
She stores the photo album in the bottom of the box, sighing sadly as she does so.
Yet another octave turns white. I play simple songs, glad to have something to do other than watch and watch and watch.
I've lost track of time now. It's been ages and ages and ages since I died. Seems like a lifetime to me. Long enough for them to have made such a jump in technology that it is now almost impossible to crash a car. Even Kylie will drive with these new safety guards and multiple reassurances from her husband that she can't die the way I did.
I observe a freeway full of the safely packaged people hurtling back and forth, hardly making a sound, and smile. I wouldn't wish a car accident upon anybody.
Over the years and accomplishments of my family, all but one octave, the highest one, are perfect. I can play most songs, though some are missing a note here and there. The absence bothers me.
I wonder one day what Riley is doing.
He appears on the screen, sitting next to a fire and throwing pieces of paper into it. Looking closer, I see that they're the love letter we sent to each other in freshman year, when we were young and naive. I can almost feel the tears building up behind my eyes, but I don't cry.
He throws the last one in and stands, turning to a woman sitting in a lawn chair behind him. She pats the one next to her, and he sits down, leaning into her.
"Good job, sweetheart," she whispers to him, her curly red hair falling in front of her face.
"It was needed," he replies. "Will you marry me?"
Just like that, the rest of the piano turns white and the screen goes blank. The piano transforms from the pale blue upright it was to a legitimate grand piano.
Tears finally escape my eyes as I play my favourite song, the one everyone loved and will never hear again.
Because I never wrote it down.