Don't Freak Out

The funeral was small. Short. But to every viewer it felt like a decade. It was the worst day of their lives-but they didn't want it to end. They couldn't let go.

Lee didn't bother reigning her tears. She clung to her fiance like it was the end of the world. Her face was pink, her eyes squinty and small, and Lee knew she looked like crap, but didn't even care. Her lover had never met Page, so he couldn't say much, but he did feel a connection between him and Lee's sister, even after she died.

Lee was practically an orphan now. Without him she would be alone.

Page's friends, no matter how upset they were for her lying to them, it came nowhere close to how they felt staring at her pale face, kissed by death.

They said she was in her room, just sleeping, when a group of robbers broke in and murdered her. An innocent, defenseless, girl.

Such a scenario didn't seem read. But there were broken objects and blood stains in Page's room. Carpet, particularly the bed.

Page died before Payton and Izze could make up or talk things out.

Her murder couldn't have been coincidental, it had to do with the secret Page refused to tell her friends.

Izze mulled this over calmly, wondering if Page was involved with a gang. If Damien was, and dragged her into this mess. It was possible. Because he did drop out of school-excuse too depressed and traumatized.

What a wimp.

Payton, however, was not as composed as Izze, who was born to act like a leader in a crises. Payton knew Page best, and felt like she lost a part of her. A part she would never be able to get back, or forget about. Every random seconds Payton would burst into sobs and, at one point, when she couldn't breathe, she turned away from Page for some air.

Later, as Page's pale coffin was closed and lowered into earth, beside her father's grave, everyone was thinking the same thing in disdain.

Page's mom didn't come. Lee mailed her, called her, hunted her down, and when she was found Mrs. Fare promised she would come. What mother wouldn't for their own daughter?

But she didn't.

And everyone swore, as they trudged out of the muddy graveyard, that Page had smiled slightly, just as the casket closed.