The graveyard was quiet in the way only graveyards know how to be—too quiet, as if the very earth had stopped breathing out of respect. Or guilt. The wind moved through the leafless trees like a whisper too afraid to be heard, dragging dried leaves across cracked stone paths and old, iron gates left slightly ajar.
The late afternoon sun filtered weakly through clouds the color of ash, casting everything in a dull, grey hue. Shadows stretched long and solemn. Arthur walked through it like a ghost who hadn't realized he'd died. He was limping slightly, his left foot dragging just a little with every step.
His jacket—black, too big for him, and clearly once soone else's—hung open and stained, one sleeve torn clean at the elbow. Blood marked his hands, dried dark at the edges, still wet and glistening on his knuckles. It sared faintly across his collarbone and down the side of his neck. But he wasn't in pain. Not physically. He didn't flinch. Didn't wince. Didn't slow. He just walked.
Row after row passed. Ti hadn't touched this place kindly. Moss clung to everything, tombstones leaning like old n with bad knees. Nas faded. Dates blurred. But he didn't need to read them. He knew the way by heart.
He stopped in front of a grave. It wasn't the grandest. Not the smallest. A simple rectangular stone carved cleanly, with a single line beneath the na: Emma. She laughed when no one else could.
Arthur stared at it for a mont. Then he slowly sank to his knees. The gravel bit into his legs through his torn jeans, and the cold seeped in, but he didn't move. His hands rested on his thighs, the blood starting to dry now, flaking at the edges. His head lowered slightly.
"Sorry," he said, voice barely more than a breath. "I'm late again."
The wind didn't answer. Of course it didn't. His eyes, sharper than they had any right to be for a boy of fifteen, remained locked on the stone. There was sothing old in them—sothing wrong. Not tired, not hollow. Just... distant. Like the rest of the world was still trying to catch up to wherever he'd gone.
"It's not my blood," he said after a mont, almost conversationally. "Don't worry."
The silence held its shape. Not heavy, not light. Just present. Like it was waiting.
Arthur looked down at his hands, flexed them once. The mory of fists and pavent and sothing cracking underneath still burned in his joints.
"A year," he whispered. "It's been a year." And yet, the weight hadn't shifted. The ache hadn't softened. The cold never really left. His fingers grazed the grass at the base of the grave, brushing away a fallen leaf. "Feels like yesterday."
He pulled a small, carefully woven crown of wildflowers from inside his jacket. The blooms were crushed in places, petals bruised, but still vibrant against the monochro landscape—blues and purples and yellows that seed to defy the very air around them. He'd spent hours finding them, picking through patches of weeds at the edges of abandoned lots, behind chain-link fences, in the cracks between buildings where nobody bothered to look. Places where beauty shouldn't exist but did anyway. Like her.
A mory surfaced—Emma on her tiptoes, reaching up to place a similar crown on his head. "Every king needs a crown," she'd said, grinning that crooked grin that made the world tilt on its axis. "Even the king of nowhere."
The pain that lanced through him at the mory was almost physical, like being gutted by sothing dull and rusted. He doubled over, one hand pressed against his stomach, the other clutching the flower crown so tightly that stems broke beneath his fingers.
"You were the only thing that made sense," he said, forcing himself upright again, setting the crown atop her stone with trembling fingers. "The only color in all this grey." His voice cracked on the last word, sothing splintering behind it.
His hand lingered on the stone, tracing the letters of her na like they were braille, like if he touched them enough tis, they might spell out sothing different. Sothing better.
"Every day was just... existing. Before you. Get up. Eat sothing. Go to school. Get hit. Hit back sotis. Co ho. Try to sleep." He swallowed hard, his throat working against words that tasted like bile. "Then you showed up with your stupid jokes and those books you were always carrying, and suddenly there were... possibilities. Like the world had more than one door, and you had all these keys."
The tears ca then, silent and hot down his face, carving clean lines through the dirt and blood. He didn't wipe them away. Let them fall. Let them mark him. Let them be the visible evidence of what was tearing him apart from the inside.
"I wanted to kill them all at first," he confessed, the words torn from sowhere deep and festering. "Everyone who was there. Everyone who watched and did nothing. I know who they are. Every single one. I see their faces when I close my eyes." His hands curled into fists. "I wanted them to hurt like—" He stopped, swallowing hard. "But I heard your voice. 'Violence makes the world smaller, Art. And it's already too small for most people.' So I ran. I hid. For a whole year."
A bitter laugh escaped him, too sharp for his young face.
"Pathetic, right? Can't even avenge you properly." He gestured vaguely at his battered appearance. "This wasn't... I didn't go looking for it. So guys recognized at the convenience store. Followed . Thought they'd finish what they started." Another bitter laugh. "Guess they didn't expect to fight back this ti."
His shoulders curled inward, making him look even smaller in the oversized jacket. The wind picked up, whistling through the graves, sending dead leaves skittering across the ground like tiny, frightened animals.
"So nights I stand at the edge of the bridge. Just stand there. For hours. Watching the water. Wondering if the fall would hurt. Wondering if I'd see you after." His voice was very small now, like he was confessing sothing shaful. "Mom hasn't been sober since it happened. Dad's gone. School gave up on . Nobody's looking for anyway."
He reached into his pocket, pulled out a folded photograph. The edges were worn soft, the creases deep enough that the image was starting to wear away along them. He unfolded it carefully, like it might crumble to dust in his hands. Emma smiled up from the paper, arm slung around a younger, cleaner version of himself. A version with eyes that hadn't seen what his had now. A version who still believed in things.
"I forgot what you sounded like last month," he whispered, his voice breaking. "Tried to rember that stupid song you were always humming, but I couldn't—" He cut himself off, choking on the words. "I'm forgetting pieces of you, Em. And I can't... I can't lose any more of you than I already have."
Arthur's gaze drifted upward, to where the first stars were beginning to prick through the darkening sky. His hand reached up reflexively, fingers stretching out as if he could grasp them, pull them down to where he was.
"Rember when we used to lie in the field behind your house? Count the stars until we fell asleep?" His fingers closed on empty air, then slowly lowered. "You said we were made of the sa stuff as them. Star dust. That when we die, we go back to being stars." A shuddering breath. "Are you a star now, Em? Are you watching?"
The tears were coming faster now, his breath hitching on each inhale. "Because I'm still here, and I don't know what I'm supposed to do. Every morning I wake up and for a second—just one second—I forget you're gone. And then it hits all over again, and it's like losing you brand new every single day."
He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, hard enough to see flashes of light behind his eyelids. When he lowered them, his eyes were red-rimd but dry, like he'd burned through whatever moisture his body could spare.
"You want to know why I don't do it?" he whispered to the stars, to the grave, to the mory of a girl who had once made the world make sense. "Why I'm still here, being a piece of shit who got you killed?"
The accusation hung in the air between them. It wasn't new. He'd been carrying it for a year, this certainty that if he hadn't asked her to et him that night, if he hadn't been too scared to walk ho alone after the threats, if he'd been faster, stronger, braver—she would still be here. The weight of it had hollowed him out, scraped him raw from the inside.
His hand fell back to his side, empty.
"Because I don't want to be sad anymore." The confession hung in the air, raw and honest. "After everything... after all this... I still just want to be happy." His voice was very small now. "Is that awful? That even now, I'm that selfish?"
The stars offered no judgnt. The grave remained silent.
"I keep thinking about what you said that ti I got suspended for fighting. When I was sitting in your kitchen and your mom made us hot chocolate with those little marshmallows." The mory was so vivid he could almost taste the sweetness on his tongue. "You said, 'Being angry is easy. Being happy when everything's shit—that's the bravest thing there is.'"
He picked at a loose thread on his jacket sleeve, wound it around his finger until the tip turned purple.
"I'm not brave, Em. Not like you were. But I'm trying to be." He unwound the thread, watched the blood rush back. "So days I think maybe that's why I'm still here. Maybe that's the revenge—to be happy anyway. To not let them take that from too."
The light was nearly gone now, the graveyard sinking deeper into shadow. Soon it would be fully dark, and the caretaker would co with his flashlight and his keys to lock the gates. Arthur knew he should leave, find sowhere to sleep for the night. The abandoned building near the train tracks, maybe. The vestibule of the church if it was raining.
"I'm still just a kid who wants things to be okay," he said, the words barely audible. "And I don't know how to do that without you here."
He stood slowly, joints stiff from kneeling too long on cold ground. The flower crown sat atop Emma's gravestone, a splash of life against the grey stone. Arthur touched his fingers to his lips, then to her na.
"I found a place," he said after a mont. "An old apartnt building they're going to tear down next year. The guy who watches the place lets stay in one of the rooms if I help keep the junkies out. It's not much, but... there's a window that faces east. I can see the sunrise." Sothing that might have been the ghost of a smile touched his lips. "You would've liked it."
He brushed a smudge of dirt from the top of the gravestone, adjusted the flower crown so it sat more securely.
"I brought your books. The ones you left at my place. Reading them makes it feel like you're still... like I can hear your voice." He shoved his hands in his pockets, hunched his shoulders against a sudden gust of cold wind. "I'm on the last one. Not sure what I'll do when I finish it."
The first drops of rain began to fall, pattering softly against the stone and the leaves and his bare arms where the jacket sleeve was torn away.
"I should go," he said, though he made no move to leave. The rain fell harder, plastering his hair to his forehead, running in rivulets down his face, washing away the blood and the dirt and maybe, just maybe, so of the weight.
He tilted his face up to the sky, let the rain hit him full force. And for a mont—just one brief, fleeting mont—he could have sworn he felt her hand in his, heard her laugh on the wind. The sensation was gone as quickly as it ca, leaving him alone again. But sothing had shifted, so imperceptible tectonic movent beneath the surface of his grief.
"See you next week," he said, and his voice was steadier than it had been all evening. "I'll bring new flowers. Maybe finish that book."
And then he turned and walked away, a boy-shaped emptiness moving through shadows growing longer by the minute. But as he reached the iron gates, he paused, looked back at the small stone now barely visible in the gathering darkness, the flower crown a dim burst of color against the grey.
And for the first ti in a year, Arthur thought that maybe—just maybe—he might be able to keep his promise to her. To find a way to be happy. To be brave in the way she'd always believed he could be.
It wouldn't be today. Probably not tomorrow either. But soday.
He raised a hand in farewell, then slipped through the gates and into the night, the rain washing him clean, the mory of stars guiding him ho.
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