What Follows 29 12.3: Greyscale

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"You'd like to give us something?" Aiden repeats as Jacob stands by idly, watching the situation.

"Who's William?" is what Tobias asks for the twentieth time.

William who's standing all tall and mighty, wipes away his glistening forehead, s.h.i.+fts a lot in his place, gulps once, twice, then finally speaks.

"I would like to apologize if I have interrupted something-" He says, trying a small smile and failing as his eyes a.s.sess the place. "I- forgive me- you probably know nothing about me and it's understandable."

Jacob steps closer to him and crosses his arms across his bare chest as his golden hair gets tousled by a light breeze. "How can we help you?"

William swallows hard again and I know that his anxiety is allowing him to only breathe burrowed oxygen. His left-hand reaches his back pocket to just touch his inhaler before dropping it by his side again.

"I wasn't close to her-" William says slowly. "But I really ... appreciated her-" He shakes his head once. "I loved her-" He tells them in a weak voice, looking down. "And I'm barely functioning even though we might have never talked-" William turns red. "We never... talked."

Tobias steps closer to me.

Jacob drops his arms by his sides as Aiden steps to stand right next to him, urging William to continue.

"It's nothing serious-" He says and it might seem that he's telling that to himself more than anyone else. "It's just that I can't imagine what your lives might be like right now-"

Jacob smirks. Tobias snorts.

"We get by-" Aiden says.

"Yes-" William takes a small step back and clears his throat. "I was just telling Mom...about it. I've been lying to her for almost three weeks. I knew my much more frequent asthma attacks were gonna give me away one day-"

"I'm sorry-" Jacob and I say simultaneously.

William waves it off. "It's nothing-" He says slowly. "Mom wants me to move on, that's all. So she suggested coming here-" He looks around again. "She said I should give away the things that reminded me of her to try comforting you a little-" He waves a hand in my brothers' direction. "She said that that'll make me feel better. That I might be doing something she'd want. You know, since Roseline doesn't know me and stuff."

Jacob steps even closer. "What do you have off of her?"

William immediately reaches for his backpack, exposing his sweat-drenched back. "Nothing much-" He says hastily, shyly. "We had our art cla.s.s together. She wouldn't do much but talk, smile... just be herself with other people as I'd draw some moments of those. And sometimes I'd even...I'd even compare her to significant historical characters because I-uh- love history and stuff-" He zips open his bag with shaky hands. "It's nothing much-" He rambles on, accidentally dropping his bag.

William shoots my brothers a nervous glance before picking his bag and pulling out a bulging leather notebook with papers escaping from its insides. And I can tell that that boy has been through so much. He's been bullied to no extent.

The slightest s.h.i.+fts in the air, the slightest sighs scare him.

"I've had it for a year or two, so it has seen better days-" William says as he closes the now empty bag and pulls it over both his shoulders. William then looks down at the notebook and lets his long fingers touch it thoroughly.

"Why would you give us such a thing?" Jacob asks him too bluntly, probably not meaning it. "Won't you need it? Isn't it personal?"

William s.h.i.+fts more, breathes out shakily. "It's nothing personal, really. It's all about her. Nothing about my-my feelings-"

"This whole notebook stinks of his love and feelings-" Tobias drawls, eyeing Willaim. "I mean, if I wanted to move on, I'd burn the thing. Not hand it over like it means anything-"

I look over at him with a frown. "It means everything, of course-"

Tobias nods, tilts his head, decides to say something only to decide against it.

"What he meant is, when you miss her, what are you gonna do?" Aiden asks instead and Tobias groans.

William slowly smiles, blinks heavenward. "I mean, a lot-" He shrugs, sniffs. "A lot of things remind me of her-" He looks at my brothers, eyes welling up. "But isn't this the whole point? Getting used to missing her until it just hopefully stops?"

"Oh boy-" Tobias breathes out dramatically and I shake my head.

My brothers share a glance and then Jacob shrugs. "Okay-" He says. "Thank you for thinking of us and for troubling yourself with all of this-"

William shrugs a shoulder noncommittally. "I'm doing it for myself before it being for her. I need to get on with my life. And so do you-" He says. "And I hope this might help even if by a little."

Jacob takes the book from William, his eyes hungry for its contents.

"Thank you-" Aiden responds as Jacob flips open the first page and glances at William.

"Yes, truly-" Jacob adds. "It's really thoughtful."

William nods, rubs the back of his head awkwardly and takes a few steps back. "It was nice talking to you-" He says, his eyes landing all over the place as he tries his best not to tear up more. "And I'm sorry for your loss-"

"Thanks for stopping by-" Aiden says again, exhaling heavily.

William smiles and raises his hand to salute them off before sharply turning on his heels and quickly stalking off down the street with dropped shoulders.

I stare at his back, my lips parted and my mind swirling with one question. Would I be alive had I let him love me? Could it have mattered?

The sound of someone clapping pulls me out of my pointless reverie. Tobias.

"Okay, that was sweet-" He then says. "He deserved a standing ovation."

"He loved me-" I tell him quietly, glancing back at the street. William is completely gone now and I wonder if I'll ever get to see him again. And I guess my answer to that is how well and how fast he'll move on.

If he moved on fast enough, I might not see him ever again.

"Yeah. And as usual, my Rose was blind to the love-" Tobias says and I roll my eyes.

"You say it like it's easy to be sure that people love you and not just pretending-" I say crossly. "Or that they even love you at all-"

"Well, either way, one thing is surely clear-" He says, eyeing Jacob who's now sitting on the bench swing with Aiden, staring, unblinking at the book's contents.

I cross my arms. "And that is?"

"You clearly didn't love yourself at all-" Tobias looks at me. "Because you were ready to live for other people but not for yourself-" I'm about to interrupt him, but he gives me a look that asks me to wait. "Let me finish-" Tobias lifts a brow. "You disliked yourself and thought lowly of it. And I, Rose-" Tobias holds my eyes. "I find this very confusing-"

My shoulders drop a little. "You find my self-hate confusing? Why?" I shake my head. "Because you think I'm too frickin awesome and should've seen my self-worth and blah, blah, blah?"

"No. Idiot. It's because you're proud-" He says. "You don't hit me off as suicidal."

I make a face. "Well, here's the thing with suicide cases... or with the 'Dead Losers Society', you came up with-" I gesture wildly. "There's no black or white. You can't say that happy people won't kill themselves and that sad f.u.c.ks are the ones that end up in h.e.l.l. There's a lot of greys there too, you know?"

Tobias narrows his eyes like he's not grasping my concept.

"You and I, Tobias, we're in the grey. We're the whole f.u.c.king greyscale in this story. You, a pa.s.sionate person no-one would ever think can off himself. And I, a proud person who seems to think that the whole world should revolve only about her. Who seems that nothing could ever shake her t.i.tanium core-" I shake my head. "But really, Tobias, nothing is what it seems to be."

"You're right."

"Of course I am-" I say. "Yes, you were pa.s.sionate, but you were f.u.c.king weak. You weren't strong enough to pursue your pa.s.sions without approval. You were just willing to get buried with them. And I? I, 'the s.h.i.+t', didn't really believe I was 'the s.h.i.+t' without the love of certain people in my life. Certain people, who are not right for me. So that was the end of me. The end of us."

Tobias looks at me and instead of saying anything he smiles. I s.h.i.+ft in my place.

"You've come a long way, you know-" He tells me, his eyes bright.

"A long, awful way, yes-" I say, squinting at the sun that's getting lower and lower. The sun that's currently giving up on lighting up the sky. The sun who's like me, who's tired to do the s.h.i.+t it's supposed to do. Tired of existing.

"In three weeks," Tobias adds. "I was a hot mess my whole first and a half cycle."

"Yeah, thanks to you-" I say.

"Why the sarcastic tone?" He asks me. "I mean, I did help you. A lot. I set you on the right path. So in the next cycle, you'd be...ready."

I say nothing when I notice how he's made it very clear that we won't meet again in the next cycles. I say nothing and look away.

"I think we should hold on to each other-" I say bitterly, looking at the now empty porch. "We might leave any moment now-"

I carefully glance sideways to find Tobias with his Benji standing very close to me. I blink and look away, my soulless heart giving away how it feels about this whole scenario by skipping a couple of bitter beats.

"So we're not going to talk about it?" He whispers and I know he's standing quite close. "How we're only one week away from not knowing each other?"

I blink more.

"It's better if we don't-" I say way too sharply, not even looking at him.

A pause.

"You're right-" Tobias says. "It's better if we don't."

I remember turning and staring into a deep shade of subtle gold, a shade of sunny sunsets, a shade of honey sugar and just a shade of beautiful hazel, before the sun finally sank in the sky, taking us within it into the night of its insides.

---

To be very aware that time's pa.s.sing, yet ignorant about how and where it's going, really gets you vexed. Like wow, I'd think, I've been dead for three weeks now (three weeks that I had no clue they pa.s.sed because it felt a lot less than that?). Like my body and the soil hugging it, are about to be an amazing, natural h.o.m.ogeneous mixture of the universe's elements.

I realize I'm no longer the curves that made me or the blond bob that framed my 'moon face'. My blue, 'soulful' eyes that Joshua loved looking into are no more than the protein that makes them and the elements that nourish the bacteria colonizing in them.

So really, our bodies, after all, are just b.l.o.o.d.y, edible, yummy machines that bacteria loves feeding on. And we? We are in the breaths that settle in our lungs, in the energy that we make, we are in the blood that if drained, takes our souls away. We are nonphysical things planted in many vulnerable physical things.

That's why, my friends, that's why we die. We die when those physical things break.

And the concept is scary crazy.

I realize that it becomes more difficult to open my eyes with every dimensional change, and it's probably because I'm just tired of being haunted down by my mistakes. Because I really dread what's to come.

And maybe I do have the right to dread it all, because what unfolds in front of my eyes? It's what people would call a nightmare.

I am standing and seeing the world upside down, or I'm seeing the world in deep, deep blue, or I'm seeing the world as a blur of odd, senseless colours, or I'm seeing it in 2D, or I'm just seeing the world as anything, anything but as a venue where it's acceptable to see my ex-boyfriend make out with my ex-best friend.

And really, really, I don't understand what the f.u.c.k is happening anymore.