Rainy Days

The girl gazed up into the blue sky, her emerald eyes shining.

"Look! That one looks like-"

"A blob?" Alex cut her off. Evey huffed indignantly; they'd been watching the clouds drift by for an hour now, and much to her dismay, there were no heart-shaped clouds hovering over the two of them. No unearthly sign to assure her that the two of them were meant to be together.

But then Alex reached down and took her hand in his and she decided that maybe " just maybe " a supernatural message wasn't all that necessary after all.

***

"Why don't you just get out?" She screamed at him, furious. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and as she yelled, the boy she had been arguing with retorted with an even more scathing remark.

He drank almost constantly. A glass or two in the morning, another in the afternoon, and the rest of the bottle in the afternoon.

"Fine. Consider me gone!" He yelled before slamming the door behind him, shaking the walls of the apartment and making one of the picture frames fall to the carpet. Evey picked it up off the floor; it was a picture of the two of them, smiling and hugging each other. The frame and glass were cracked down the centre; she discarded it in a drawer in her bedroom, determined not to think about Alex anymore.

Weeks passed. Alex was having trouble coping with their messy break up. When not even Ryan could cheer him up. He became more and more scarce, hardly ever going to school and rarely seen outside his new apartment. Alcohol was his constant company. He wouldn't let anyone in, wouldn't talk to any of his friends anymore; he was secluded, a dangerous mess just waiting to break at the seams.

Alex stumbled home one night from a trip to the convenience store. He was light headed, dazed and tipsy " he hadn't eaten anything that day. As he slumped heavily against the wall of his apartment, he slowly had come to realize that his life was a dead end. He was going nowhere. Life wasn't worth living " at least, not without Evey. So he turned again to his old standby. He retrieved the bottle of alcohol from the kitchen cupboard and drank himself numb, downing glass after glass, slowly becoming less aware of the world around him. And when he felt as though he could drink no more, he retrieved the handgun he had kept 'in case of emergency' in his bedside table. He took a seat on his bed, writing a quick, sloppy note on a sheet of old parchment. And slowly but surely, he raised the gun to his head, taking one last sip of his whiskey before squeezing the trigger.

Ryan came to visit later that evening, bursting in without bothering to even knock. He, Tessa, Kevin, and the Thompson sisters had accompanied Evey here; she had decided that it was enough " that she wanted to apologize for breaking his heart.

She was the one who found him, his face down in his pillow, his mussed snowy white hair stained with crimson blood. She was the one who found the note that he clutched in his cold hands " his handwriting scrawled over it. 'I'll love you till the day I die, Evey.' And it was she who broke down, sobbing and shaking him, screaming his name over and over again while her friends stood in the doorway, struck with horror at the scene that had unfolded before them.

They were too late. He was already gone.

The next days were spent arranging the funeral. There was hardly ever a time after that day that Evey's eyes were not shining with tears of regret; her face was almost always red and puffy from crying. She hadn't wanted this to happen.

The rumours that circled Emerald City were ominous " Alex killed himself because Evey rejected him, it was Evey's fault Soul was dead, that Evey could have been less harsh and maybe he wouldn't have made such a rash decision. It killed her to hear these things through hushed whispers in Emerald High's halls.

The funeral was a private service " only Evey and a few others, Ryan, Tessa, Kevin, Liz and Patti (the Thompson sisters) among them. Evey laid a single white rose on the coffin before the gravediggers slowly lowered it into the ditch. She burst into tears as they began filling it in; Tessa had to lead her away from the scene, trying in vain to comfort the distraught girl.

The years passed, and life went on in Emerald City; gradually most people forgot the tragedy. Evey, however, did not. She was merely a shell of the former girl she had been. Her world had lost its meaning; Alex was dead, and he would never return. And it was her fault.

She began, like Alex before her, to drink her troubles away. She hid her alcohol addiction well, but her friends had noted the change in her attitude. She denied all accusations of her having a problem, but it didn't stop them from worrying. She became furtive; hiding her bottles of alcohol wherever she could. Her apartment smelled of old whiskey " she dared not let anyone into her home anymore. She gradually separated herself from her friends, and over time her alcohol addiction grew. Until one night…

Evey was seated on her bed, crying quietly. She had a bottle of whiskey on the table beside her. It was her demon; it held her captive, preventing her from living a full life. But she knew that she couldn't try to stop it. After thinking long and hard, she had decided tonight that there was only one way out.

She took the gun that she had found next to Alex's body that night; how fitting it was, she thought, that it was the second anniversary of his death. She took one last sip of her drink, before raising the gun slowly to her head with one hand, holding something carefully in the other. She smiled brokenly " her first smile since her love's death, and her last. She whispered two words " "Goodbye, Alex" and pulled the trigger.

Tessa was the one who found her, a day later when she had come over to see if Evey was all right; she hadn't been at school. When Evey didn't answer the door, she peeked cautiously inside, calling the girl's name softly. She made her way to Evey's bedroom, and when she opened the door, she screamed and flew immediately to the phone, dialling 9-1-1 frantically.

The coroners told her what she already had known; Evey had killed herself, in the exact same way that Alex had. They allowed Tessa in as they examined the room " Evey was in the same position as Alex’s had been in, her face pressed down into the bloodstained pillow. As she approached Evey's lifeless body, Tessa noticed something clutched tightly to her chest. With permission from the investigators she removed it from the girl's grasp, tears coming to her eyes once more as she saw what it was: a photo of Evey and Alex hugging each other and laughing. The photo was slightly faded, and the frame and glass were cracked down the middle.

At the funeral, it rained; they had decided to place her body next to his, underneath the willow tree that the two had seemed to love so much. Their headstones stood adjacent to each other; even after their souls had departed, the two were together. It was fitting, Tessa thought as she gazed up into the dark sky. The wind howled through the trees - a haunting, eerie lullaby for the two poor departed souls.