Then Came You

by Cherelle Louise

I take her hand and squeeze it. “I promise.” And then the alarm on my watch goes off, meaning I have to get to work. I give her an apologetic look, but she waves it away instantly.

  “Don’t worry about it: you’ve got to work, Darcy. You can help me when you get back, if you want. But you never know, I might have finished by then.” She sighs and leans back on the stool to watch me grab a coat and my satchel to leave for work. I turn to smile at her and wave reluctantly, and she returns it. “Stop worrying! Seriously, get to work.”

  I laugh at her forceful tone and do as she says, yelling bye out load and closing the front door behind me. It feels weird having Dana alone in my house, and yet it feels almost natural. I just hope to God dad doesn’t show up out of the blue.

  Clara is humming when I get to work, a long plait sticking out under her cap and she’s swaying randomly as she stacks chocolate wrappers onto the shelves. I smirk, sneak up behind her, and press my fingers in the sides of her ribs, making her jump and yelp.

  “Darcy,” she snaps once she turns around. “I thought you weren’t coming in today: didn’t someone die?”

  “Oh, how very subtle of you, Clara,” I scoff sarcastically.

  She shrugs casually. “Eh, you know that isn’t my style. Anywho, what are you doing here? I’m sure Boss-Man will give you time off.”

  I shake my head sadly. “Honestly Clara, I just need to do something right now. I feel stuck at that house and not being able to help Dana that great, almost like I’m a horrible friend and I have no use there.”

  “I understand,” she says slowly after thinking it over. “You do whatever you think is right.”

  “I’m trying,” I murmur as she walks away to get more chocolate bars. “I just don’t know if that’s enough.”

  The funeral was going to be on the Saturday, and we were all going to attend. Dana, Remy and I had gone shopping for an outfit, but in the end, Dana had decided to wear on of her Grandma’s dresses because she wanted to feel closer to her. She hadn’t shown it to us, but I doubt that’s because she wanted it to be a surprise. She most likely just felt like she wanted it to be kept a secret from the world, something between only her and her Gran.

  We’d finally bought white lilies and yellow daffodils: both of her Ma’s favourite flowers. Everyone was ordered not to wear black, and to dress as happy as they could. She couldn’t tell them not to cry, but that was a given: Dana will probably be crying herself.

  I sigh and look down at the white net dress, feeling like I should dress more appropriately for a funeral, and yet also knowing that this is what Dana wants. I don’t put on any makeup and I put my hair into a bun at the nape of my neck. Besides me, Remy is wearing a lilac plain dress and a white cardigan over the top, looking as normal as she ever could, despite the pink hair. She’d put it in a plaint and is wearing a chunky white headband, so the colour isn’t as in-your-face.

  As for Dana, she’s still in my bedroom, crying slightly as she gets ready. We’d all decided it would be best to leave her be, and soon enough she was making her way downstairs. She looked stunning in the yellow vintage dress, with frills and everything. It made her look innocent and girly, with her white hair loose and wavy, her make-up more natural and not as much, and she’s got a little white flower in her hair.

  “Ready, guys?” She asks us softly, and we both chuckle.

  “Shouldn’t we be asking you that?” I remind her with a raised eyebrow.

  She shrugs with a tiny, almost none-existent grin. “I follow my own rules. You should know that by now, Darcy.”

  “Trust me, everyone knows,” Remy jokes lightly, before taking both our arms and leading us outside, where Joey is waiting for us with his black car. He’s wearing a black suit, but because Dana insisted on colour, he’s also sporting a spotty orange and green tie. Tyler is also with him, wearing a pair of black pants and a navy shirts with the sleeves rolled up, and a white tie around his neck.

  The drive to the church is quiet, just like you’d expect a ride to a funeral to be. We’re all lost in thought as Joey pulls up outside the ancient building and we climb out and join the already huddled collection of family and friends of Grace Winters.

  Dana walks timidly up to the crowd and makes light chit chat as we stand awkwardly to the side, feeling out of place. We’re only here to pay our respects to Grace and to give moral support to Dana: we don’t know any of these people, and they don’t know us.

  And then, the pink haired woman from the diner walks over, wearing a red blazer and skirt, bright enough to give her lipstick a run for its money. “Hello again,” she says in her perky voice. “Small world, huh? So how did you guys know Grace?”

  “We’re friends with her granddaughter,” Joey says, nodding his head in the direction of Dana, who is talking to someone we can’t see.

  She nods slowly. “Grace and my mum were the best of friends, and neighbours. Grace was like an auntie to me. My name’s Marlene; I don’t suppose any of you have some gum?” We shake our heads and she sighs, turning away to talk to some other people. Probably people with gum.

  “She’s so weird,” I muse as I turn back to the guys. They nod slowly, even Remy.

  “Maybe she’s a crazy cat woman,” Remy says randomly.

  Joey looks at her like she’s mad, his eyebrows raised. “Yeah, she’s the crazy one.”

  The funeral was sad, colourful and filled with memories and life all at the same time as we sit at the front on a pew besides Dana, who is sat between me and Joey, with Remy next to Joey, and Tyler at my side. Both Dana and Tyler are holding my hands, and Dana’s tightens every now and then, and I know that she’s trying not to cry.

  And then, the vicar announces that it’s time for some speeches, and one by one people stand up to talk about how Grace had changed their lives and their memories. Some were funny, some tragic and some were just normal life situations. When the last person sits down, Dana surprisingly stands up, and I watch as she walks slowly up to the altar and faces everyone with a heartbroken expression, a scrap of paper shaking in her hands as she starts to speak.

  “W-When I was a little girl, my Ma always used to tell me that I was her special princess, and that I deserved the world. She would hug me, kiss me, and tell me that she loved me with all her heart. M-my parents didn’t feel the same way, and my mum and dad moved to the other side of the world for work, leaving me with the only woman who really loved me.

  “She raised me like her own, and in a way a was her own. She loved me and I loved her, and that was the way it was always meant to be. Ma always had high expectations for me – not in a bad way – she just wanted me to be the best I could, and I’ve tried, I really have. I never wanted to let her down, and I lived to see that proud look in her eyes and the smile on her face. It was like I’d really done something right.

  “But I couldn’t do everything right, and I did make a few mistakes. I guess that’s why I felt like I was letting her down.” She looks up and her eyes meet min for a split second, tears running down her face. “I’m the girl you’d probably cross the street to avoid, and I admit I’m probably not the best person to be around sometimes.

  “But Ma made me want to be a better person. And I’m never going to stop trying, because I’m going to make sure she’ll be proud of me with everything I do.” She turns to the coffin and chokes slightly as fresh tears run down her face. “I love you, Ma. And I will never forget you.”

  Twenty Four

  We’re walking out the church when all of a sudden Remy squeals, and dashes to a rusty truck that’s parked outside. A tanned guy with light brown hair and faded jeans tucked into cowboy boots steps out and she throws herself at him.

  “That’s Ben,” Joey tells me, just when I’m about to ask why Remy is hugging a stranger. They get in the van and drive off without looking back, leaving us behind to watch in shock. “And that was rude: she’s always ditching us for him, but since they hardly ever get to see each other, we let it go.”

  Tyler sn
eaks behind me and wraps his arms around my waist, swaying me from side to side. “Have you spoken to Dana yet?” He asks me after kissing the side of my neck. I shake my head slowly.

  “I’ll go find her in a minute.” I notice Joey watching us wistfully and sigh. “Couldn’t Cam make it, Joey?”

  He shrugs, “He lives over an hour away, Darcy. And he does have a life of his own, too.”

  I hear someone gasp – Dana. Turning around, I see her standing shock-still and staring at a black haired guy with snakebites and an awkward smile as he rubs the back of his neck. He steps towards her and she stumbles forward.

  “Alex…” she whispers in pain, before slowly making her way towards him. We watch as they talk quietly together, before she wraps her arms around him and starts to cry. He strokes her hair back and whispers in her ear as he comforts her.

  “Bloody hell,” Joey says in shock besides me. “I didn’t think that was ever going to happen.”

  I smirk at him. “Well, maybe now things are going to get better for her: hell, for all of us.”

  I watch glumly as Dana packs her bag and heads downstairs: she’s going to stay with a close friend of her Ma – one with normal coloured hair. She sighs, turns around at the front door, and pulls my in for a tight hug.

  “Thank you for be here for me, Darcy.” She breathes into my necks. “You’re a true friend.”

  I wave goodbye as she drives off and close the door with a sigh. I feel empty all of a sudden, and tears begin to roll down my face. The last couple of days have been horrid, and I’m glad things might start getting better. The air in my lungs is shallow and I struggle to catch a breath as I stumble into the livingroom and fall onto the couch.

  I’m crying for no reason. I’m crying for everything.

  Without me realising it, the front door closes shut and standing at the doorway is my dad, looking like the alcoholic he is with bloodshot eyes, a few days stubble and the stench of alcohol rolling off him like an aura. So much for trying to change.

  “You’re in my seat,” he forces out through gritted teeth, pushing me out the way to make room in his dent.

  I sniffle and stand up to leave the room, but his mocking laugh makes me freeze. “You still crying over her?” He begins to cough painfully, hacking into his fist. When he’s finished, he scowls back up at me. “She doesn’t deserve it, you know.”

  “I-I don’t understand,” I mumble, refusing to look at him as my eyes stay downcast.

  He snickers at me gruffly once again, and it sends shudders down my spine. “She didn’t love us. She couldn’t stand living with us. She hated us.” A thick tear rolls down his face, his bloodshot eyes angry and hurt as he vents in a drunken rage. “She despised us.”

  “No she didn’t,” I mumble. “Mum loved us both, remember? We were a family; we were happy. Don’t you remember that, dad?”

  He laughs bitterly and shakes his head. “You were a kid, and you still are; you have no idea what she was really like. She didn’t love us, and she wasn’t happy.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He sighs and rubs the stubble on his face in thought. “Let me tell you a story,” he says, grabbing a beer from besides the couch and uncapping it with his thumb before knocking it back greedily. He looks back at me and his face is void of emotion as he swings the bottle between his legs. “It’s about the real woman your mother was.”

  “What if I don’t want to hear it?” I whimper, scared of the way he was acting. He scoffs and eyes me until I slowly sit on the couch as far from him as possible, making him smirk.

  “That’s what I thought,” he says before belching loudly. His eyes meet mine and he begins to talk. “Your mum was the love of my life; we were childhood sweethearts, but of course, she’s already told you this story so many times. We met when I moved schools and we fell in love straight away: but it wasn’t that simple.

  “Your mum was a cheerleader, and she was a whore.” He says simple, shaking his head in anger. “And she just couldn’t stop sleeping around all the time we were together. Eventually, she stopped when she got pregnant, because she wanted us to be together as a family.

  “She was silly, though, and she wouldn’t stop cheerleading. One day, she fell, and she lost the baby. She changed after that, got real depressed, and we didn’t talk for over a year. We ended up sleeping together at prom, and that’s when she got pregnant with you. We stayed together because of you, and I went to college whilst she stayed at home.

  “We fell back in love eventually, but mostly for your sake. When you were born, she loved you to bits, but she could never forget her first pregnancy, and questioned why you lived and that one didn’t. She tried to be a mum, a wife and a family woman, but when you started high school and she realised you were the age she was, she changed once again.

  “She kept up the act for the both of us, but I saw the pills she would take every day. She became obsessed with them, and she wouldn’t stop when I begged her to. Eventually, she gave up, and she dived into the water and she made sure she didn’t come back up for air. She killed herself, Darcy. She killed herself because of us.”

  I’m trembling and crying as my heart is shattered again and again with each word of his story. “No,” I whisper hoarsely. “You’re lying. You’re lying!” I stand up to leave the room and start to back out, but he stops me with a low, dark laugh that sounds nothing like the man who raised me. There’s no happiness or love in that laugh: there’s no life.

  “She committed suicide, Darcy.” He growled at me, and those red eyes look up to glare evilly at me. “She hated us.”

  I run out of the room and out of that house, heading to the one place I can take solace: the lake. I push my way through trees and leaves, gasping for air as pain wracks through my body. My mind is screaming at me, my heart is thumping to fast to be comfortable as I fall to the ground near my tree. I don’t care that there’s dirt on my face and that my body is sore as I stare at the water.

  I feel sick that I need the one thing that killed my mum: water is a monster, and yet it takes care of me, it makes me feel safe and wanted. Is this how she felt before she killed herself?

  No, no no no no, I gasp out loud. I can’t let myself think like that. I won’t. My mum was happy, she always smiled.

  I think back to the times when she would laugh like an angel, making me smile up at her. Her eyes would light up and her head would tip back like she couldn’t control the happiness inside her. She wouldn’t go a day without smiling.

  The woman my dad described – that wasn’t my mum. That’s not the mum I know. Because if it is, then that means I really am like her. Haven’t I thought of killing myself before?

  Yeah, but I’ve never actually done it.

  I begin to drift off to the sound of calm waves, my whole body heavy. My eyes shut and the last three words I hear before I fully succumb to sleep are the words my dad said to me before, the words that I couldn’t forget.

  “She hated us.”

  Twenty Five

  I wake up to the sound of quiet voices, and when I look up I see two blurred figures whispering to each other. I can’t make sense of what any of them are saying, and I can’t move my aching body to get a better look at who they are.

  They stopped talking, and the bigger blur makes its way over to me, the colours blending and changing shape to form the image of Tyler, his face filled with concern as he takes my hands in his.

  “Darcy, you’re awake: how do you feel?” He asks me softly, moving a hand to stroke the hair out of my face.

  I clear my throat before speaking. “I feel like shit,” I say honestly, before looking down. I really didn’t want to go into details. I hear a shuffle, and I look up to discover that the second blur had been Dana, and she had a similar expression on her face as Tyler as she stood next to him.

  She smiled gently. “Hey you, how was the camping trip? You know you’re supposed to take a tent, right?” She teases me, trying to make lig
ht of the situation. I roll my eyes at her, knowing full well that she’s worried about what had me crying and passed out in the woods all night. Which reminds me-

  “H-how did I get here?” I ask them both.

  “I found you,” Tyler says, sighing. “I’d tried calling the house that night to see how you were, and when you didn’t answer I went round to your house. Your – um, dad – told me you’d ran out and I knew straight away where you’d gone.” His eyes look up to meet mine. “You were unconscious and your clothes were ripped, you had mud on your face with tear marks and you looked so sad it broke my heart.”

  Dana nodded. “He called me after a while, from his house. Told me he’d found you and carried you back. We didn’t know if you’d want to see anyone.”

  “I’m not made of glass, guys: you can be honest with me about the last part,” I scoff. They blush and look down awkwardly, before Dana groans and meets my eyes.

  “We want to know what’s wrong with you,” she says honestly. “We’re worried and we know that you don’t have a great past. You have so any walls and it’s driving us crazy. Please open up to us,” she whispers the last part with tears in her eyes, and Tyler nods his head slowly.

  “Fine,” I mumble. I take a deep breath, before telling them half of my life story.

  “My mum died over half a year ago, she drowned.” I gulped. “She was the light of my life and after it that life kinda fell apart. My dad became empty and grey – he started drinking and working all the time. We moved about a month or so after that because we just couldn’t live with her ghost anymore: she was everywhere we went.”

  Tyler squeezes my hand tight, and I remember him telling me about his dad. I smile at him and kiss his cheek in thank you, before carrying on. “My dad’s an alcoholic – a really bad one. He’s never around, he can’t stand to look at me and he – he gets arrested quite a few times, meaning I have to pay the fines, because he got fired from his job.” A single drop of salt water rolls down my cheek and Tyler reaches up to wipe it away, making me smile sadly.