Alice Woodward has never felt more out of place than right now.
Sure, growing up in Hatchetfield warranted feeling like she was an alien sent from outer space to infiltrate planet Earth — that kind of came with the deal, having a pretty room and her dad’s old cat who loved to cuddle, but being an involuntary outcast most of the time.
But here, at Hatchetfield Cemetery, the feeling of not being supposed to be there sucks at the bottom of her stomach.
Ethan Green was buried today. (“At least, what remained of her,” her dad said while they were eating breakfast, and the complete nonchalance he said it with almost made Alice flip the table and scream in his face until her voice failed.) In the plot that was meant for her parents, with a simple headstone, her photo on the ground in one of these cheap–fancy silver frames from Target.
And Lex Foster is sitting on the ground in front of it.
Alice shuffles closer, letting the cold early December air smack against her face. It’s already snowed this year, but it was before Thanksgiving, so now it’s mostly just wet and freezing cold, with rotting leaves and dead grass.
Just like the entire Hatchetfield feels like after the Lakeside Mall tragedy. Dead. Empty. Rotten.
(Something has been telling Alice, since she started driving home from Indiana, that it was not an accident, like all the media claimed. Nothing like that is ever an accident in Hatchetfield.)
“Alice?” Lex’s voice is rough, raw, and it makes Alice want to throw the flowers onto the ground and run as fast and as far as her legs will carry her.
There’s something in Lex’s voice, in the quiet of the winter evening, in the smell of ash still in the air after the mall fire.
It was a bad idea, since the beginning. Her mom was right, telling her to never come back to this godforsaken town, and yet here she is — next to a guy she would make sure to stay away from in high school.
“I brought flowers.” She says, unsure, and puts them down — next to the headstone, spelling out in overly cursive letters, ETHAN MARIE AVA GREEN, 11/09/2002 — 11/29/2019, a black and white picture of her smiling brightly on top of it — on the ground.
It’s a bouquet from the flower shop in Clivesdale; simple baby’s breaths, pink lilies and orange–purple chrysanthemums, put together with a pretty white bow. The cashier told her it's perfect for a funeral, and that she's sorry for her loss. The colors are a little dim under the dark clouds, the atmosphere of Hatchetfield that’s tightening the noose on Alice’s neck more and more with each time.
“She liked baby’s breaths.” Lex mumbles into his hands, still not turning to Alice. His hair's hanging down in oily, frizzy clumps, a dirt halo around Lex’s face, and he almost looks like he’s praying to Ethan.
Ethan, who smiles at them from the photo placed on the ground. From the gravestone photo. It’s double the same smile, double the same crinkled eyes, double the same shaved side of the head, double the black flower tattoo there, double the shitty, peeling faux leather jacket that’s been through more than Alice’s college suitcase with all the flights and rides in the trunks of cars.
“I’m sorry this happened.” Alice’s tongue is heavy where the words tumble awkwardly around it.
Lex waves his hand. It’s floppy, and he still seems out of it, the way Alice would answer her Reporting Ethic professor in the first class of every Monday morning.
“It’s okay.”
“It’s not.”
Lex’s head snaps to Alice. Eyes widen, just momentarily, but enough for Alice’s mind to snap a mental picture of the split second they’re vulnerable. Big and brown and swollen, red where they should be red.
A shaky sigh leaves him, and his head lolls back down — staring somewhere between the grass, Ethan’s photo, and an indescribable dark mass of grief.
Alice, as cautiously as only a Woodward can, sits down next to Lex. She makes sure their knees don’t even have a chance of touching when either of them moves, and busies her hands with fixing the pins on her bag, just to pretend that she’s doing something and not make Lex surely even more uncomfortable.
Lex breathes for a few more moments. Short, clipped breaths, but somewhere between Alice thinks she might be hearing the beginnings of words she’ll never fully hear.
And then the wind picks up, and the dam breaks.
“Everyone told me that it will be alright, and it’s not,” his voice breaks on the last word, like his throat is closing around the things he’s trying to not let out. Once his eyes snap over to Alice’s, full of panic and pain and something hurting so deep, she can’t help but brush her hand against Lex’s. Gently, like she would approach a wild animal.
Lex crumbles even further, whole face scrunching up in a choked sob. His hand shakes where it’s pressed so fucking painfully carefully against Alice’s. “It won’t be fucking alright, she’s not here, she’s—” his other hand ends up on his face, frantically trying to calm himself down before even more words fall out.
And the hand next to Alice’s moves, and it’s in her hand, and it squeezes with such franticness and panic and pain it’s like Lex is reaching right into her ribcage and squeezing her heart.
Alice squeezes back, and Lex’s shoulders jump up before dissolving into even more heart–wrenching sobs.
“She’s dead, she’s goddamn gone, and—”
And he’s suddenly moving, and Alice flinches for a split second before gathering Lex closer to her. Almost to her chest, curled up in a fetal position, like she would gather her roommate’s cat. Gently enough that he can back out, if Alice read the situation wrong, but tight enough to make her intentions clear.
And he’s still mumbling, sniffling, sobbing, everything pouring out of his diaphragm. Alice is shaking with the force Lex’s entire body is trembling, completely out of his control as he cries.
“I can’t, even, fucking, give her the funeral she deserved—”
Lex’s head ends up in Alice’s jacket, where her neck meets the clavicle. He’s quiet for a few moments, sans the sobbing, and Alice brings up one hand to card through the hairs at the bottom of Lex’s scalp, just where it meets his neck.
“She wanted to die after me and Hannah, so— so—” his throat closes up with a wet sob and a hic, tears caught by Alice’s jacket,“so she could make sure we had good e–nds.”
Alice hums lowly, until the unspoken words become a purr in her chest. Lex’s tears are boiling hot where they slip between Alice’s jacket and sweater, hitting her skin — and it’s like all the rage and unfairness is falling out with them, making them as hot as freshly boiled water.
A few moments pass, and just like a tsunami, Lex’s cries recede too.
“I’m here.” His voice is rough, raw, and fucking exhausted. “I should be with her.”
She doesn’t want to know about the implications of this. She does fucking not.
“I’m so fucking tired.”
Alice doesn’t reply. Just keeps brushing her hands on Lex’s back, through the tangled, crusty mess of his hair — clearly, he tried to do something with it, just to look nice for Ethan, the one last time, but gave up halfway. Like he’d stuck a comb into it.
As if he’s reading Alice’s mind, Lex goes,
“You know Ethan used to wash my hair?” He snorts, tiredly, into Alice’s jacket, but continues. “I fuck my hair up with dry shampoo all the time, and it’s always fucking sticky and clumpy, but she—” his voice cracks briefly, but he pushes on,“she would pretend to be mad about me not taking care of myself, or whatever, but— but she was so fucking gentle. Always.”
He’s silent a good few moments. Alice even thinks that maybe, just maybe, he’s passed out, knocked out cold with the exhaustion, but then Lex perks up again.
“I miss her.”
Alice nods, breathing out softly, smoothing the crinkled fabric of Lex’s suit. It’s too big on his shoulders and smells chemically, like the cheap detergent the dry–cleaner’s downtown uses.
“Yeah.” She doesn’t say me too. It doesn’t feel fit. Ethan didn't wash dry shampoo out of her hair.
Lex swallows. Alice feels his body moving up and down slightly with the force he has to use.
“When does the guilt go away?”
Her lips part, and a lump grows in her throat as she shakes her head.
He’s asking for goddamn help, something that’s so fucking hard, and Alice is the last person he should be asking for it. (But it’s not like she’s going to let him down, is it?)
“It’s been just a week, Lex. You’ve got to let yourself live with it for a moment. It’s too early.”
He looks up at Alice — and fuck, that pitiful, sad, small look in his eyes makes her heart race and clench at the same time.
“When does it go away?”
The it won’t almost breaks out of Alice’s throat on it’s own accord. It never leaves, it never ends, just sits deep enough in your stomach to make you think you’re past it. Then it comes back in the worst moment, when everything is falling apart, and you don't think it can get worse.
“You will carry her around with you forever, Lex.” She didn’t mean for it to come out so fucking depressing, but that’s all she can think about. How she's been carrying her for such a long time, for years now, and it doesn’t hurt like a blood draw now — more like twisting her ankle and walking on it, but it still does.
“She’s painting this sunset for you.”
Lex exhales frustatedly.
“Oh, shut up with the therapeutic quotes.” Lex rasps, but there’s a soft undertone to it. “...she was absolute dogshit at drawing.”
“Yeah?” Alice hums.
“Yeah.” Lex snorts wetly, peeling away slightly from the damp fabric of Alice’s jacket. “The most she could do was a fuckin’— stick figures on the card for Hannah’s birthday.” He leans away even further, now almost looking Alice in the eye. “She would try to spell out her favorite band’s name if she could paint a sunset.”
Alice doesn’t miss the quiet “or mine” added after this. (She’s fairly sure, from the few interactions she’s had with Ethan back in the alive days, and from this conversation, that she absolutely would try her hardest to spell out LEX in the sky if she had the chance.)
Now, the picture of Ethan seems to be smiling at the sunset — red and orange, and it’s almost like she’s about to walk out of the photo, dust herself off and bounce off the hill the cemetery is on. It’s like she’s still, somehow, out there, waiting to be seen.
And then it starts lightly raining. Almost unnoticeably, but both of them interact immediately.
Lex groans and leans away from Alice, pulling himself up to a standing position. Alice silently mourns the loss of Lex’s warm body over hers as she gets up, feeling the cold rain on her thighs.
Lex is standing still, suddenly in that weird faraway state of mind once again — and, once again, staring at Ethan’s picture.
An idea pops up in Alice’s mind. Yes, maybe it’s completely selfish, or unselfish, depends on which way her mind will speed off once she stops having to analyze her every word, but she pulls out her umbrella — cat–themed, light brown and with little colorful pastel cats — and places it over Ethan’s headstone.
(She looks over to Lex before setting hands on Ethan’s picture. When she doesn’t see, or hear, any protest, she moves it so it’s protected by the umbrella too.)
As Alice backs up back to Lex, he bites his lip and looks up to Alice — smiles ever–so–slightly.
“Thanks.”
“No problem.” Despite her better consciousness, she fires off into the rain,
“You’re better?”
Not alright. Better.
Lex sniffles wetly, wiping his nose on the sleeve of the rented suit. It leaves a light stain, but it’s immediately washed away by the rain.
“Yeah.” Lex says, hanging onto the word, still looking at Alice. “You?”
She ducks her head downwards, a smile — and the red, bonfire–feeling blush too — creeping onto her face.
“Me?”
“Who else do you see?” Lex snorts and Alice smiles to herself, head low.
“Fine.”
Lex is silent for a few moments, Alice with him. She brushes her increasingly wet hair backwards, feeling the rain hit her face time after time.
“You have mascara down your cheeks.” Lex’s voice suddenly sends a shock through Alice.
“I do?” Alice touches her cheek with a thumb, and it comes back completely black. “Oh, fuck.”
“It’s okay, it’s okay. I don’t mind.” He says, dismissively, but Alice can still feel his burning gaze on her face. The mascara tracks, her mind prompts. You probably look like a wet clown. “Thanks for coming.”
“It’s no problem.” Lex cocks his head to the side, hair — in wet clumps, but still frizzy, with whatever power it possesses — flopping along with it. “No, really. We kind of knew each other, from the Smoke Club, and I was in town anyway for my mom’s surgery.”
“Thanks, anyway.” Lex half–mockingly, half–honestly says, and Alice barely restricts herself from instinctively slapping his shoulder, instead simply rolling her eyes. “For making me laugh.”
“It’s what I do.” She shrugs, putting hands in the pockets of her jacket.
“Now you sound just like Mr. Houston.”
“Oh, quit it.”