So one day he found her crying, coiled up on the dirty ground. Her prince finally came to save her, and the rest she can figure out.

~~~

But it was a trick, and the clock struck twelve, we'll make sure to build your home brick by boring brick, or the wolf's gonna blow it down.

Keep your feet on the ground, when your head's in the clouds."

- Brick by Boring Brick - Paramore


Outside, there's a slight chill in the air, but nothing I can't handle. I stand on the sidewalk in front of my house for a long time, trying to decide if I even wanted to go anywhere, and if so, where.

My neighbors were out and about, picking up trash in their yards and frantically fighting the vegetation that had taken over their yards over the week.

I bury my hands in my jacket pocket and go right, north. This route will take me right past the Riley's house, and maybe it can give me some insight into what happened, because clearly I am losing my mind.

I’d been home for almost two hours yet, and there was still no sign of Andy. I no no physical harm can come to him, and he can defend himself like a big boy, but it still struck me with a pang of anxiety, thinking darkly that maybe today is the day he disappears...

I haven’t forgotten about what he said that day on the beach about suddenly disappearing because he’d ‘fulfilled his role’. It honestly terrified me, to wander around, waiting for him to come back, but then he never does.

I shiver, and mentally scold myself for decending down such a dark and unbecoming path. But then again, what part of my current life isn’t unbecoming I'm left in the ruins of what was a pretty good life, just trying to force things back together. Fixing material things is simple, add enough duct tape, and most things work like new again, but fixing yourself? That's a hard one. It's harder than I ever could have imagined to try and recall what kind of person I was three weeks ago because the change had been so drastic.

The sun is a nice change from the dreary cold. I enjoy the faint warmth it gives off as I make my way north on the sidewalk. I pass yards and give half hearted nods towards my neighbors outside checking damage. With any luck, the city will have the damaged power lines fixed soon, and we won't have to rely on candles and batteries to maintain a lifestyle.

What a weird thing to return home after a nice vacation week in California, still, this tragic occurance, as well as almost drowning and everything else that has come since we returned home - is not enough to make me want to leave... It makes me want to stay even more, because this town feels magical, like only bizarre, unexplainable things could happen here, and nowhere else, and as soon as I move, the magic with trickle away, leaving me with a blank outlook on miracles and disappointment.

California is just.... It’s too much, you know? When you think of California, you think of the Hollywood sign, the walk of fame, the amusement parks, and the celebrities. You imagine tar palms weeping over the boulevard and dinner on lantern-lit balconies overlooking LA. You don’t think of suburban families trying to make a living on small paychecks, struggling to keep drugs out of their home, and maintain the idea of family.

I don’t know... California just feels like a place that would lack values, somewhere someone like myself could get swallowed up in an instant, caught up in the chaos of trying to live an amazing life just to catch the attention of the cute celebrity boys, but instead, ending up drunk and homeless, calling a restaurant dumpster ‘home’.

California doesn’t feel like it could ever be quiet and serene, there’s always something going on, some incident that makes people lock their doors at night and fear walking through alley ways, and even though yes, those problems exist here, too, it’s not as prominent. It’s a town small enough to be dependably defended by the police force.

The sidewalk passes a familiar house, but this one does not belong to the Riley’s, no, it belongs to Elizabeth.

I hesitate at the bottom of her driveway, where it curls around two pointy topiary bushes, leading to the brick staircase up to the door. I never came here much, but just enough to feel the dull wave of nostalgia moving through my chest as I marvel at the house I hadn’t seen in two and a half months. It was the last time I visited, and we had a good time, but like any other time we were together, it often felt forced and lacked the emotion of a real friendship.

I push on before start to feel too tempted to approach the front door. North bound, I push on, unzipping my hoodie when the sun has warmed me up enough to feel comfortable in my own skin.

Up ahead, I can see the towering pine trees that reside in the center of Circle Park, and I realize that I’ve walked much further than I intended, but I proceed to approach the park with my hands in my pockets, fending off the remaining cold.

I hesitate on the sidewalk for a moment before proceeding to cross the muggy, damp ground. Each careful step produces a corresponding squishy sound effect.

At the center of the park is a little playground set up. I notice that there is two children hanging from the faded, rainbow colored bars of the jungle gym, and they’re animatedly speaking to each other. I walk past the playground and sit down on one of the benches facing the equiptment, comfortably watching them play.

The little girl couldn’t be much older than six or seven, and the boy looked about eight. I can’t tell what they’re talking about, but I can tell from the broad gestures the girl is using, and how interested the boy is in what she’s saying, that it must be important.

I sit there watching the kids for a good long while before a man approaches me and sits on the opposite end of the bench. I glance over at him in my peripheral vision a few times, and see that he’s a largely build man with short grey hair and stubble for a beard, extending down his neck just under his chin. He wears a heavy, dark brown coat, and a grey baseball cap.

We sit in silence, watching the kids for a while before he chuckles, and I peek over at him in confusion, expecting him to be looking at me, but no, he’s looking at the kids. Not in a creepy, stranger-danger kind of way, but in an adoring, longing fashion, the way an ex-parent looks at kids. It’s a heartbreaking gaze to see.

I don’t pry, but I’m curious, and he speaks.

“Kids playing just warms my heart,” he laughs, nodding towards them with a smile, before looking over at me sitting a few feet to his right. “makes me remember bringing my little girl out here.”

I smile at him, and decide to keep the conversation going, since he seems friendly enough.

“Your daughter?”

He gets a proud smile and nods, reaching into his coat pocket to produce his wallet, pulling a snapshot from it a few moments later. He holds it towards me, and I lean over to get a good look at the photo. The picture captures a girl, maybe twelve, with short, light blonde hair and blue eyes, excitedly smiling at the camera in front of a monument.

The photo is creased and lined with Scotch tape, it’s definitely seen some age.

“She’s beautiful.” I comment encouragingly, and his smile grows, then fades quickly as he tucks the photo away so carefully you’d think he was tucking in a child.

“She was,” he agrees thoughtfully. “She passed away, a few years back.”

“Oh...” I breathe, shock consuming my thoughts as I struggle to come up with something better to say. “I’m sorry.”

“Me, too.” He sighs, still wearing that sad, half hopeful smile. “When you have kids, you want to be with them through everything. When she was sixteen, she decided she didn’t need her old man around no more.”

His frown deepened in sorrow before he adds, “I’m sorry, this isn’t something you came here to hear,” he chuckles nervously, tucking his hands into his pockets. I frown, “you can tell me, if you want to.” I shrug, leaning back against the bench, watching the kids climb the ladder to the top of the slide.

A long moment of silence passes, and I assume he changed his mind and decided not to say anything else, when he speaks again.

“She was sixteen when she passed... She had ideas, and ambitions... But for every good thing she had, she had one bad... She got into the bad crowds at school, and before I could do anything, she was on drugs. It was hard to trace, and hard to stop. I could ground her and lock her in her room at night, but even that wasn’t enough to keep her from slipping through the cracks. She always found a way to get to what she wanted, she had my stubborness.”

Another long pause followed as he carefully chose his words. “I did everything I could to stop her from going. I’d bribe her with getting her anything she wanted in exchange for her soberity, but that wasn’t enough. One night she snuck out, and she didn’t come back. I circled the neighborhood, I-”

His eyes grew shiny as the memory played in his head. He choked on his emotions, and wiped his eyes with a hankerchief before continuing with a voice that shook in fear.

“I couldn’t find her anywhere, and she wouldn’t pick up her phone... Finally I get a call, but it’s from the last damn person in this town you’d want to hear from after losing your kid... It was a cop, calling to inform me that they had just found my daughter dead in an abandoned apartment with some kid crying in the corner, and I felt like my heart had fallen out of my chest. There is no words to describe what it feels like to get a call like that.”

Something clicks in my head, and I hesitantly peek at the man to see if he is stable enough for questioning.

“Who was the kid?”

He straightens up, and gets this angry grin, and stares up into the trees above the bench before replying, “That little shit got his... Died in a car accident a few weeks back.”

My heart skips a beat, and I swallow hard at the confirmation.

“However, after being on the receiving end, I would never wish something like that on any parent. I hated the kid’s guts, but I do feel God awful for his parents. I guess he was on his way home to visit or something.” He shrugs, then takes a deep breath and sighs, looking over at me. “I guess it just don’t matter any more, huh?”

I nod, and cross my arms, “No, it doesn’t. An unfortunate factor of life, the inability to change the events that take place within it.”

He nods in agreement, pursing his lips thoughtfully.

“She would have been twenty-eight, today. Today is her birthday, and every birthday leading up to her sixteenth, we always came here, and sat on this bench, and watched the ducks in the pond, and the kids flying kites, and she’d play until she was too tired to go on, then we’d go home. This park is such a lonely place without her, today.”

He stays a little longer, then rises, tipping his hat towards me. “Thanks for listening... Have a nice day, and please, don’t do anyting reckless, because you never know how much you’ll be missed until you’re gone.”

He hesitates a moment longer, and I nod, and he nods, and then he’s gone. His shoulders droop as he walks away, his steps are heavy and slow, like he has no reason to move forward.

What a strange conversation... I have no doubts that the daughter he spoke of was the same one Ashley told me about. Andy has a lot to explain when he returns, it seems... I can understand to some extent why he decided to keep it to himself, but something like that, it just seems like too much weight to keep it secret.

He was just a stupid kid, Ashley had said bitterly with a shake of his head. Wrong place, and the wrong time...

It wasn’t intentional, but it happened, and it tore away the last of his innocence when it did.

What the man had told me kept replaying in my head as I sat there... Some kid crying in the corner. I imagine him as a scrawny teen, alone in the corner of the abandoned apartment building, staring down the dead body of the girl he’d accidentaly killed the night before, her blood freezing in her veins, eyes growing glossy, and the stench of stale air settling around the scene.

I can imagine him being furious with himself and terrified... And when he would return to school again, everyone would know what he had done, and he would be stoned as an outcast for it. He might’ve tried to explain himself once or twice, but no one listened because they only believe in evidence and the rule of justice.

Maybe he went to jail for a bit for it, and maybe it straightened him out, or maybe he just became even more lost behind the thick concrete walls of the institution. His colorful dreams would fade away until only black and white remained, and he grew to have a bleak outlook on life when he was free. And when he would graduate, just a few days after the death of his best friend, he would pack a suitcase and head for California, never to look back.

And he lived like that for a long time before the loss had become too much and he came home to reconcile and maybe forgive himself. I wonder what might’ve happened had he actually made it home... He would have pulled into the driveway in front of his parent’s two story house, the same house he grew up in eight years earlier.

His family and friends would run out the front door as he climbed out of his truck, and they would surround him in tight hugs of longing, and he might’ve felt like he was home again.

Maybe after a few days, he would have changed his mind about things and decide to move back to Pendant, and Black Veil Brides would reunite, and he’d be happy again, and so would his bandmates. The lonely, quiet nights would fade away and they’d never feel depression again. They would mourn Ashley over bottles of beer, but cheer for whatever life he was leading elsewhere.

Maybe after a few weeks he’d have met a girl, not me, but someone. Maybe she’d be sweet and charming, or sarcastic and witty, but he’d love her and he’d stay for her. And a year later, they’d be married with plans of starting a family in the quiet little town they’d grown up in.

Where would I be, I wonder?... I imagine things would not have changed too much. I’d still be going to school everyday, still best friends with Elizabeth, and wishing silently for a change. Maybe one day I’d be somewhere in town, like the cafe or the library, and he’d be there, too, except I would only glance at him, and maybe we’d lock eyes, but nothing would happen. The happy glint in his blue irises would be for someone else, the girl on his arm excitedly telling him a story, and I’d be the strange girl who stared at him from across the room. Then I’d go home, think about him again once or twice during the week, and then never think of him again because the event had been so unphenomenal.

But, I can only wish things had turned out like that... I would give up everything we’ve built in a heartbeat to go back to the day of the crash, and stop it from happening. I’d give everything that I am away without concern just to keep him alive to keep living the life he fought too long to keep.

Thinking about our intwined fate made me think of that girl, too. What might’ve happened to her and Andy had she not died that night. They could have been good friends during the time they spent shooting up together, but that’s just one of the many details that gets lost in exchanged stories.

Had she lived that night, Andy would not have been bullied to the point of attempted suicide, and he wouldn’t have moved to California, and her Dad wouldn’t have to come to the park every year on her birthday alone to stare at the creaking, old playground equiptment with a bitter heart.

Fate and destiny are very strange things, aren’t they? A few simple actions can change everything. Just me walking to the park, sitting on this bench, could cause a string of events to take place that never would have if I hadn’t come here.

I look up as the little boy falls from the monkey bars, scraping his knees in the gravel below. The little girl gets up and runs towards him, and instead of calling him a klutz or taking the mishap as an opportunity to poke fun at the boy, she instead asks if he is okay, and helps him to his feet.

The park is empty aside from me, the playing kids, and an elderly couple walking the winding sidewalk in silence. I wonder if those refugees from the bar the other night found somewhere to call home.

I pull out my phone, and read through some news articles to get the gist of what’s going on around town, since we don’t have any power to just watch TV. Nothing new, really, just rumored reports that the city will be repairing Hampton Bridge in the next two weeks, but nothing regarding the dead zones that had become my neighborhood and the valley district.

I check the time, and am surprised to see that I dwindled away an entire forty-five minutes. The sky above me churns uncertainly, looking ready to split open with more rain at any time. I decide to head home before I get caught in it.

The kids wave shyly at me when I pass the playground, and I wave back, smiling at them both before tucking my hands into my pockets and following the sidewalk out of the maze of pinetrees back to the road. I mind my own business as I walk, but I can’t ignore the sudden flash of movement ahead once I get a block away from Elizabeth’s house.

A little gold colored Pontiac slings up against the sidewalk opposing me with enough force to sent the duel trash cans sitting there flying into her driveway. I pull up my hood, and tuck my locks of green under the shadows so she could not recognize me.

I watch curiously, pretending to busy myself with my phone, meanwhile, peeking up constantly to see what was going on. Through the emerald tinted glass, I can see something going down, hands being waved, and heads snapping towards each other in what looks like an intense argument.

I slow my pace nonchalantly, peeking over at the car as the passenger door flies open, and an emotionally frustrated Elizabeth bursts from the confines of the car, tears running down her face and her face red from yelling.

“I don’t know what you want me to do!” She shrieks at Reece as he climbs out of the drivers’ seat, combing his hands through his sleek golden hair a few times in frustration, looking like he was ripping out the roots as he did.

“I want you to tell that bitch that you’re pressing charges!” he shouts, “make her scared, make her never want to come back to school again.”

This peeks my interest, so I discreetly aim my phone up at them and start recording video of their public dispute.

“Ash didn’t do this, Reece! I - I can’t blame her for this!”

“The fuck you can’t. You want this relationship to work out? This is the only way. Quit being such a stubborn fucking bitch, Elizabeth, fuck.”

My eyes widen, and I struggle to maintain a normal composure. I really want to throw down my hood dramatically and be like ‘hey bitches’, and show them the recording on my phone, but I know in the dark, mature part of my mind, that I should gather proper evidence should something major come along, and this is most definitely note worthy.

“Go home, Reece.” She growls at him, but quickly cowers as he slams his car door and stomps intimidatingly towards her, towering over her like the grim reaper with an angered glare.

“Don’t tell me what to do, you know what happens when you cross that line.”

She meekly nods and avoids eye contact, looking down like a kicked puppy.

“Tell me you’re sorry.” He cooes in a creepy voice, and more tears run down her cheeks as she refuses. “Tell me.” He repeats firmer.

His fingers twist into frustrated fists, but then he decides against the angry reaction, and sighs loudly, stepping back and scowling at her. “You get a pass this one time. I don’t tolerate disrecpectful crap like this, do you understand?”

She nods again, and he turns to leave. She watches him go, looking like she wished she had someone’s arms to fall into, and it breaks my heart to see. Her grey eyes follow his taillights, and she’d stuck thinking he’s ‘the one’ when he treats her like crap.

A strange aura of protectiveness pressures my chest and I fight against it, moving as swiftly as I can to get home without being noticed by anyone else.

I will make things right, I will fix things for us even if it gets me into trouble. Elizabeth was always someone I was never too sure of, but this doesn’t come down to my opinion on friendships, it comes down to my opinion on myself. If I’m not loyal, then I’m nothing.

Notes

The truth comes out...
Dun dun dun...

Shoutouts!
-BVBOD_Cat
That song matches perfectly! The underlying voices throughout the song reminds me of the Dead Zone forest scene lol. It's so fitting!