Chapter 5

Those soccer games were supposed to be a fun activity. It wasn't supposed to end in black. But if you were to look around, that would be the only colour you could see. There was nothing but black clothes, black makeup, black furniture, and a black casket. Most of the flowers were tiger lilies-Andrea's favourites. But there were also a lot of roses. Red, white, yellow, pink, any colour, really. But the roses, no matter how sweet they smelled, or how colourful they shone, could not take away from the black.

Seb, May, Gen, and Justin stood in a small circle in complete silence. None of them could really think of what would be appropriate to say.

"Thank you. Thank you so much for coming," wept Mrs. Aguilera, wiping a tear from her eye. "I know you three weren't very close with Andy, but I'm sure she would've appreciated you all coming."

"Of course," said Seb. "Andrea was an amazing person. She deserves to have her life be celebrated."

"Thank you. You know, she may be in a better place now, but I just wish she hadn't made it there so soon."

Once Andrea's mother had left them alone, Justin leaned forward a little and whispered, "Does anyone else feel freaked the fuck out that this happened?"

"Uh, yeah," said Seb. "She was a survivor, and now she's dead. How can you not flip your shit? She should've been dead, she got a second chance, and now, she is."

"It's like someone made something right. Like she was supposed to die, and they were fixing it."

"You don't seriously believe that shit?" Gen grumbled.

"I do."

"Okay, well if we were supposed to die in that collapse, why was I given the ability to save us?"

"Well, I don't know."

"Exactly."

May remained silent, though with all of this talk, her eyes began to swell. Seb acknowledged this and put his arm around her, rubbing her shoulder. Gen acknowledged this and cleared her throat to get him to stop touching her, but he refused.

"Uhm," May squealed, practically so high-pitched only dogs could hear her. "I should go talk to, uh, Robbie." Robbie was Andrea's boyfriend. "He's pretty…well, he's just how you think he'd be."

"Alright." At Seb's last word, May turned her back on the three of them and proceeded to go and see Robbie. "What the fuck is your problem?"

"I have no problem, what the fuck is yours?" Gen said through her teeth.

"I have no fucking problem, if you had an ounce of goddamn humanity…"

"Then what?"

"Then you'd understand that she's in a tough fucking place right now. Her best friend just died. I kinda have that in common with her, I know exactly how she's feeling, and I'm trying to let her know that I'm in the same place as her. And you don't give a shit."

"I do give a shit."

"God, Gen, no, you don't, you're such a bitch."

"Hey," Justin whispered, trying to calm Seb down a little bit.

Seb lowered his voice. "I'm trying to be a friend to her because she needs one. What did she do to you that makes her such a horrible person as to deserve to be neglected in her time of need?"

"I just don't like her."

"That's good. But she's a person."

Seb and Gen would never get along when it came to this. Despite neither of them really liking May, Seb had the decency to be nice to her. But Gen never understood the meaning of 'nice'. Gen was never 'nice' to anybody. It wasn't who she was.

Justin rolled his eyes. "I'd love to stay and baby sit, but I have to go, it's almost four."

"Where to?" Seb inquired, turning away from Gen for a moment.

"I have a date with Morgan."

"A date? Really?"

"Yeah. It's gonna be great. We're going to candlelit dinner and a romantic comedy. 10 Things I Hate About You. Julia Stiles. Heath Ledger."

"Sounds fun."

"It would be, if it weren't all in my fucking dreams. He's straight."

"Aw, man. I'm sorry."

"It's fine. I get to look at his gorgeous ass every day. I mean, he still loves me. Not like I'd like him to, but he does. But in all honesty, he promised me he'd take me to see 10 Things I Hate About You tonight, and it starts at 4:30, so I have to go."

"Have fun," Gen said, forcing a smile as Justin strutted on his way.

She tried to turn to walk away from Seb, but he grabbed her wrist and forced her back to him. "I'm not gonna fight with you about her anymore. I'm just fucking scared."

"About what?"

"You don't find this weird at all?"

"Of course I find it weird. You know what else I found weird? The fact that I saw the fucking future."

"Gen, can you stop thinking about yourself for five fucking seconds? I'm trying to have a fucking conversation with you." Gen didn't like when Sebastien told her off about her self involvement. She knew it was true, but she certainly didn't like to be told it.

"Seb, just go have a smoke, you're stressed."

"I will after. I need you to talk to me about this."

"What?"

"I'm scared."

"Yeah, you said that."

Seb tensed up a bit. "It was weird. The way she died, it looked painful. You weren't there, you don't know. But it was scary. It looked...I don't know. Like, brutal. And I mean, well, maybe we were all meant to die young and viciously." He thought Gen would think he was speaking nonsense. He thought maybe he was. "And maybe Justin's right, maybe that's what's happening."

"So you think we're all gonna die?"

"We all die. I mean I think we're gonna die soon."

"Well we could. We all could. What does it matter?"

"I don't want to die."

"Well if you do, then you do."

"You're not scared of dying?"

"No. And you shouldn't be either."

But Gen was lying. She wanted to seem strong, like she didn't care. But he was making sense to her. She didn't want him to.

Gen tried to leave again, but Seb held her back again. "Okay, think of it this way: How possible is it that Johns would be able to kick that hard as to impale her? And how likely is it that it would hit her square in the back of the head? And that it would stay perfectly still on her head when she fell?"

"I know it's not likely, Seb, but come on, it happened. What, you think it was planned?"

"I think it was supernatural."