Title: Prom Queen
Summary: A new guy comes to the OC from Australia and he's bound to rock the relationships. So who's going to end up his Prom date? Not for SethSummer lovers. Anna comes in a bit later. SummerNew Guy and a bit of SethAnna and the smallest portion of RyanMarissa.
Pairing: SummerTom, SethAnna, RyanMarissa
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the OC characters. I only own Tom and Tina and Sarah and Rachel, the history teacher.
Chapter 16: Funeral
Summer walked into the cemetery and shivered. Half because of the wind that was sweeping what seemed like the whole of Newport and California and the world, and half because of the fact that cemeteries had a freaky effect on her. She looked up ahead of her and saw the four guys who were carrying the coffin. Seth was one of them and, surprisingly, so was Summer's dad. Despite the locking out of him. Apparently he had just hired Tom's mom and they hit it off. It was a respect thing but apparently he still didn't tell her about the whole locking-out thing.
One of the other two men was the spitting image of Tom, only the older version. Except his eyes were chestnut brown instead of electric blue. And his posture and outfit screamed wealthy business man instead of Tom's image which screamed relaxed, popular, cool guy who everyone loves. But Summer still knew that this was Tom's father. He had been the one who had paid for everything, after some argument with Tom's mom.
Summer bowed her head and just continued walking. Anna was walking beside her with her head bowed as well. Who knows what Anna was experiencing, she'd known Tom for ten years or whatever. She knew how much it hurt for her but it must've killed Anna more. The quality of the love didn't make up the time that it was felt. Even though she loved Tom so much it didn't mean that her love was more worth than Anna's. Or not. Or… She didn't know.
It seemed that Tom's ability to read into things a lot had passed onto Summer and it didn't exactly match Summer's personality. But like Anna had said, Summer had changed and reading into things fitted into this new personality. Her life was beginning to mould around reading into things too much. It was as if Tom had passed off a bit of himself onto her. Something of his, for her to remember him by. A want to separate a whole time to think about the past, present and future events. Probably while she was lying in bed before going to sleep.
The coffin came to a halt. They had come to the grave. In an orderly fashion the people behind the coffin, including Summer, chose which side to file around the grave and took it. Summer and Anna chose different sides and, when the coffin was placed on the elevator of the grave Summer's dad took his place next to Summer and Seth took his place next to Anna. It was as if the whole thing had been rehearsed, which it most certainly hadn't.
The priest began saying whatever he was saying. Summer wasn't exactly paying attention. She was going over what the last minutes had been like. What they'd talked about, what they hadn't talked about, what their expressions were. And exactly what she'd felt.
Right now she felt like crying, screaming and acting extremely violently all at once. Those rage blackouts were probably going to come back, and if they didn't then it wasn't as if Summer would actually know or anything.
She snapped out of the deep, 'meaningful' thought she'd been wrapped in. The priest was still droning on about how Tom was such a 'good and caring person'. Of course he was but it was as if the priest knew that. The priest didn't even know him so how could he be the one who was speaking at his funeral? At least Anna should be the one talking, she knew him a heck of a lot better than the stupid priest who had probably said exactly the same thing for hundreds of other people.
Finally the priest came to the end of his rantings and everyone stepped forward and paid their last respects to Tom. There were a few people that Summer didn't even know. There was one girl, she had some freckles, streaked brown hair, brown eyes and seemed like the person who was usually happy but had something terrible happen to her so she looked incredibly miserable. Like Tom dying.
This girl stepped forward and dropped a red and yellow rose into the grave. She then stepped back and let a tear fall down her face. Summer realised that everyone else had done so she stepped forward and dropped one red rose into the grave and, in her mind, said her last goodbye to Tom.
At the end of the burial Summer looked for the girl she'd seen earlier. She found her at the edge of the rest of the group of people. Summer guessed that this was Louise.
"Are you Louise?" Summer asked as she walked up behind her. Louise turned around and when she saw Summer she nodded and said,
"I guess you're Summer."
"Yeah, how did you know?" Summer asked.
"Same way you know who I am. Tom." Then Louise turned back to the view of the sunset and continued, "And Sarah. When she came back to Australia she felt the loyalty to tell me about you and Tom." Summer felt her mouth open out of shock and then she closed it after a few seconds. She shouldn't have expected anything better from Sarah, in her little time here she had proven indefinitely that she was the biggest bitch on the planet.
"I'm sorr…"
"Don't worry about it." Louise interrupted Summer and then continued, "He said he was sorry but we were over. And I moved on. You know." Louise said with a shrug that wasn't exactly believable.
"Right." Summer said, not believing it for a second. Not believing that Louise had been able to move on from the relationship that Louise and Tom had had. The one official date relationship. But even one date with Tom had you hooked. Summer knew because she'd only had one official date with him too. That on official date was the prom.
Louise then seemed to remember something and fumbled with the pocket of one of her jacket pockets. She brought out a ring and handed it to Summer. Summer took it at looked at it before looking at Louise with a puzzled expression on her face.
"Tom wanted to give it to you… It was his grandmother's, she gave it to him when she died." Louise's voice broke from the amount of emotion that made it so heavy.
"Before you went to the prom he emailed me and told me that if anything was to happen to him he wanted the ring to go to you. As a sign of his love."
"He said that?" Summer asked, feeling love flow through her veins readily.
"No, but I know that he would want you to have it."
"Oh," This was a shock to Summer and the love trickled less readily but it was there, "Well, thanks Louise." Louise smiled gently at her, nodded and left her to play with the ring in her fingers.
(Short chapter that, soorrrry. Louise is a nice girl who is based on my bestie called Mel. Only Mel isn't a loner and is quite popular. Anyway, only one more chapter and possible epilogue. The prologue will be in the form of a couple of emails from Tom to an unknown girl. But the girl becomes obvious in the end.)