...our hands bloodied and tired...

~

"Were you here a lot?" Lydia asked.

I slowly inhaled the air of autumn leaves and the smell of October, tinted with the water's cool scent.

"Really any free moment I had I was either in my room drawing or laying out here in the grass. I guess you could say it was my secret hiding place, where I could sneak away from the world and sometimes from myself."

"Why here?"

I pointed at the trees and then at the gorgeous sky. "Have you looked around?"

She giggled. "That's fair."

The leaves crunched nearby, and a few light pairs of footsteps approached.

"You know you'll get leaves in your hair," teased a voice that made my heart stop.

"I don't mind," I said with a smile. My voice was much younger.

I could hear her shrug as she came to lay, her eyes looking in mine.

Edgar and Yoru both lay as well, though they seemed a little weary of being covered in leaves. Not that that's something I could ever relate to.

The view of the sky with the autumn colors in your peripherals... it's worth getting a little dirty.

"So are these the birthday plans for Gabriel?" Edgar judged.

I paused for a moment. "What would you like to do?"

Yoru and Edgar both laughed. "Oh my gosh these really were your plans," said the former.

I frowned. "I'm- I'm sorry. What do you want to do Gabriel? I can ask my dad to get you a cake."

"It's alright. I didn't come here to judge you. I just wanted to say hi. And I'd rather not have to be home anyways."

I thought again. "That didn't answer the question though."

She didn't respond, and I looked over to see a flustered face.

"Come on, let's get you a cake."

"There you go," Yoru cheered.

Gabriel stammered. She and I were alike in that we hated gifts. So we got a kick out of giving them to each other and seeing the other's reaction.

So, without spending much time in the leaves, we moved on to my house. I entered and called out, "Hey Dad!"

There was no reply for a moment, and my mom emerged from the top of the staircase.

"He's working overtime. What's up you guys?"

"It's Gabriel's birthday so we wanted to get her a cake, so I wanted to ask Dad to take me."

She frowned a little in apology. "Oof, sorry kiddo. Your Dad's got the car so unless you wanna walk, you're a bit out of luck."

"Hmm."

"Really it's okay, we can just hang out here," Gabriel pleaded.

"Or," my mom began, ignoring her entirely. "I think we have the stuff to make a cake instead."

~

About 2 hours, a counter full of flour and bits of dough and sprinkles, 3 cake-ingredient-covered children and a mom, and a partridge in a pear tree later, we pulled a cake out of the oven.

I say "a" cake because it's barely recognizable as a cake, or really anything edible at all.

My mom put the steaming amalgamation on the counter, and we all stared at it for a good minute.

"It's horrible," Mom and I both said at the same time.

It was sunk in the middle and brown at the edges where it should be yellow.

"You're supposed to be a baker, Mom," I complained. "Are you even a mom?"

"Listen kid you picked the wrong woman to crawl out of if you were hoping for a baker."

"I'm sure it tastes great," Gabriel intervened quietly.

"Well you guys are welcome to find out," Mom offered, not wanting to dare a taste at the abomination she'd had a hand in making.

"Okay!" Gabe delighted, oblivious to the sarcasm.

Edgar and Yoru shrugged, and everyone decided to rinse their hands off and try some cake. After all, we made it, and it would be a cardinal sin to not try some. At least I'm pretty sure that's how it works.

Gabriel was first to try it. It was her cake after all.

She took a bite and a tear slid down her cheek.

"I warned you it would taste bad," Mom said, slightly confused.

Another tear followed from her other eye, and now I was confused. Gabe chewed and swallowed her cake and a few more droplets fell from her eyes.

"It tastes great," she barely mustered out.

Edgar, Yoru, and I were all speechless.

My mom came in clutch then for sure. She came towards Gabriel and scruffed her hair in a light and friendly way.

"Happy birthday kiddo."

We all tried some cake after that. Turns out, it wasn't so bad.

~

"You seem like you had a lot of good friends then," Lydia said. I was laying again, this time in water.

It was only 2 or 3 inches deep. Everything else around me was pure white, aside from Lydia sitting in a chair.

"I did. But things weren't always that nice. Nothing good lasts forever, you know?"

I spoke this time as the same young me from the memory I just had, my voice squeaky and high-pitched.

"What do you mean?"

"Gabriel wasn't always around. And before her, it wasn't so glamorous."

The water was lukewarm, and kind of comforting. Even though I wasn't floating, it felt like I was - drifting away in my consciousness like I was taking a tour through my past.

"Take Charlotte, for example."

I blinked, and suddenly I was flying backwards with a sharp pain in my chest.

"And stay down, maggot!"

That was his favorite line.

A fake man surrounded by fake people wore an all-too-real smile as he turned and walked away from me, cackling while his group of asshole friends made faces, then followed their fearless leader.

Laying there on the cold, hard floor of the musty, creaky elementary school, just like I did almost every day, I thought one thing: I really hate these people.

I just kept laying there. There wasn't much of a reason to get up. And it's kinda hard to stand when you've - quite literally - been kicked down.

Not much later, the teacher walked in. She saw me on the floor and scolded me harshly, to which I gained only more laughs and mockery considering everyone else was in a desk by now. I swear she had it out for me in particular.

I mean I can't say I blame her considering how long I spent in class reading or drawing rather than learning. Elementary school me didn't have his priorities straight (but it's okay, nothing changed.)

She began the day with math, something about polygons and this and that. It didn't take long for my sketchbook to find its way on top of my worksheet.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

I was definitely no star artist at this point in time. My dad got me a sketchbook as a birthday gift because I didn't ask for anything and he didn't know what to get.

I simply saw it as something to learn and try, and it was a fantastic time killer, so I burned through one book and he got me another, and that's what I was working in now, trying to draw a girl from a book I was reading.

Again, I was no star artist, so it didn't exactly look good, and I was hyperfocused on getting her hair right and fervently erasing every few seconds.

So I jumped and gasped a little when the notebook was snatched from off my desk with my pencil still on it, which left a thick, bold line all across the page.

"Mrs. Ducaire! Vincent's drawing again," a prissy voice shouted, the kind of voice that makes you want to puke... in its owner's face.

The teacher paused her help with another kid across the room and made her way to us with some pep in her step. Of course, heads all around the classroom turned, hearing the high-pitched, rotten whine of a voice that pig-tailed Charlotte had.

She reminded me of the one brat from Willy Wonka. She even had the rich dad to boot.

Charlotte held the book up and in front of her sideways, inspecting it while keeping it at a distance like it was poisonous. She looked at my drawing like it was disgusting, and one of the pages fell from her grip, revealing something I drew last night.

All the blood left my head and I thought I would faint as she choked back a laugh and covered her mouth with her fist and her face turned red.

She was at the front of the room and everyone could see it. Mrs. Ducaire took the sketchbook while Charlotte lost her ability to hold it in and burst out in a fit of laughter, to which everyone else followed suit.

"Interesting... self portrait," the teacher commented, placing my book in a drawer of her desk. It was a drawing of me as a superhero. Wasn't even a half bad drawing either.

Only issue is the hero was from a cartoon I was way too old to be watching. The teacher tried to calm the class down but it was far too late. The laughter circled the classroom for an agonizingly long time, and I sunk into my seat.

Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, Charlotte's best friend Angelina grabbed the worksheet off my desk and looked it up and down.

"Huh, that's weird, I can't see the answers on your worksheet," she mocked, and a few more people chuckled at that too.

I wanted to just smash my skull open on the desk, but unfortunately that takes more strength than I probably have. So I get to suffer instead.

And that was Charlotte: the first 7 years of school for me.

The next day I showed up to school to find a child's toy on my desk - one of the hero I drew myself as.

She would make fun of me for anything she could find to make fun of someone for. Both my parents worked but we were still way too tight on money, and once, our car broke down. Of course, small town life, it didn't take long for a student to hear their parents talking with mine about it or something to that nature, because I got hell for that.

Or when I got a nasty hole in my last pair of jeans which were already highwaters. That was a fun day. My parents couldn't buy me a new pair until their next paycheck which was at least a week away.

So of course I showed up to school with a hole in my jeans in the middle of winter.

Charlotte stuck her whole hand in the hole, then her eyes grew wide with horror as though I was going through something unbelievably tragic, and she gave me a fake hug, saying, "I'm so sorry, Vincent."

As soon as she finished that, she frantically brushed herself with her hands like she'd been covered in spiders.

"Might wanna go clean up after touching that," Angelina stepped in and said to Charlotte like it was a serious matter and she'd contracted a life-threatening disease from touching me.

"Definitely," she replied with mock panic in her voice. "Actually, why don't we just clean up the source itself!"

Her face lit up even further, genuine wonder creeping into her voice.

Before I could even respond, someone hooked their arms under my elbows and dragged me back so I lost my balance, and then the two girls grabbed my feet, which exposed my faded and heavily-used shoes whose seams were barely holding together. The third person was Keith, I could tell by his snickers and cackling.

I kicked and struggled, but it didn't do me any good. I was being carried through the halls by my three worst nightmares as they laughed maniacally and swung me from side to side, singing stupid made up songs about cooties and germs. Their eyes seemed to turn red and their faces dark and twisted, like the very creatures of hell had come to torment me.

They brought me into the girls' bathroom, opened up a stall, and even though I clawed at the bathroom doors and the stall door to stop what I knew was happening, it didn't do any good against three people, no matter how hard I thrashed and screamed.

The trio nearly doubled over laughing as I was held upside down and dunked into the toilet deep enough for the top of my head to touch the bottom of the bowl, and not gently either. The water was freezing, and in all my panic, I breathed some of it in, and freaked out even more as I struggled for air.

I was squirming like a fish, desperate for a breath of air and to get the water out of my wind pipe, but they just kept holding me there, then flushed the toilet with my head still in it.

Just as I nearly passed out, I was finally brought back out and dropped on the hard floor, hitting my head with a thunk and dripping water all over myself and the white tile. Keith, Angelina, and Charlotte all danced off, their demonic laughter echoing through the halls and my mind.

I was left there still struggling to get a proper breath as I still felt like I was drowning, my hair and face still dripping in toilet water while I was busy choking it out as well.

I didn't have the energy to even get up. I didn't wanna walk home in the cold while soaking wet like this. Someone else came in the bathroom a few minutes later and laughed at me for being in the girl's bathroom and laying on the floor.

That was probably rock bottom. Or at least that's what I thought was rock bottom at the time.

~

"I think that's a little selfish, though," a different voice spoke. This one was Gabriel's. In this endless white plane of nothingness, there was now a swingset. She sat on a swing, kicking her feet as she looked at me. "To be so upset about your past when you never did anything to stop it from happening."

I ignored her comment.

Whatever was happening, whoever she was, and whyever I was here, I wasn't enjoying going down memory lane. Remembering one bad thing only leads me to remember another twice as bad.

Like the day we made Gabriel a cake and she cried. My dad wasn't working overtime. He wasn't working at all. He died at his construction job because of an equipment malfunction - on the same day as Gabriel's birthday; she, my mom, and I all found out at the same time.

After that, Gabriel hated her birthday because she just felt like it was a reminder to my mom and I of his death.

I remember my mom falling to her knees as her breath was stolen from her and her face drained of all color, then how she screamed and cried for hours that night. I remember feeling helpless and confused. I'd just said goodbye to him that morning and he was fine.

If only I'd have known how long that grieving path is.

Gabe said she didn't like her birthday anymore because she felt bad for us, but in truth, my dad was more of a father to her than her own dad.

I remember the first time I saw her. She came around a few months into 5th grade. The teacher introduced her and she sat down at the only open desk, which was right next to me because the person who normally sat in it was gone that day.

She had bruises in the same places I did, just not from the same places I did.

So our friendship began on that. She asked where mine came from on the playground, and after that we broke off and did our own thing in our free time, and she started coming over more and more after school.

Of course, my mom was more than happy to welcome in a new honorary member of the family - even though she barely had the money for just the two of us.

I guess we got along at first because we were both bottom-feeders in every aspect of life, so we understood each other.

She became like a sister to me. My best friend and more. We were never in love, not in a romantic way, but love had nothing on the relationship between us back then.

"Hey Vincent!" The small, young voice of Gabriel's cheered from behind me as she tried to catch up to me. "Hey slow down would ya?" She put a hand on my shoulder as she tried to catch her breath.

"Watcha need?" I asked nonchalantly.

"Hold on. Stop here, at the bridge." The both of us stood next to my favorite bench.

When she stood there expectingly for a while, I got the feeling she was waiting on me to say something.

"What is it?"

"Have you forgotten, silly? Today is your birthday!" She wrapped her arms around me, and then handed me a small, wrapped box.

"Open it."

I delicately tore the wrapping paper, and was left with a neat, black, very tidy-looking box.

I opened the box, and immediately, I threw my arms around Gabriel. I felt multiple tears slide down my cheek.

"Where did you get the money for this?"

"My life's savings. Everything I've ever earned. See? I got one too. Now we can never be separated." She gently took the box from my hands and wiped away my tears. She lifted up a beautiful silver necklace that had an ovular emerald gemstone that sat inside a socket.

She placed it around my neck, and I noticed an identical one around her neck.

"Now, flip the gemstones around." I did as she said. And there, engraved on the back of both of our necklaces were both of our first names, and then a small line of text that simply said: "Even a ghost needs a friend."

But, even more, was that they could open. When I opened the tiny little compartment, it contained a very small photo of the both of us standing at this bridge in the fall.

She then planted a kiss on my cheek, and spoke softly. "Now we'll never be separated."

I leaned towards her face, and kissed her on the lips instead.

"Next time do it on the lips," I smiled warmly. She returned the same smile, and blushed just slightly.

"Thank you so much." I felt this time a happy tear slide down my face. "Thank you."

We were inseparable. I gave her a home and an escape from a life where her mom was dead and her dad beat her and forgot to feed her most days, and she gave me protection. She stood up for me at school, and for a little while, I felt like I could come to class like a normal human being.

"Man you really are a nerd," Keith laughed a sickly laugh as he dumped out my backpack in the middle of the wet grass. "What even is half this shit?"

And for effect, he kicked me again and I stumbled backwards. I swear I tasted blood.

"Stop that!" Gabriel shouted as she ran to my side, helping me up off the ground. She wasn't young anymore.

"Look who's here to save the day!" Keith sarcastically remarked. "How pathetic. I thought I told you to stop hanging around such a worthless piece of garbage."

"You don't own me," she spat. "Now leave him alone. You're the petty one here for picking on him!"

"He's so weak and cowardly. He's practically begging for it."

"That doesn't give you the right to pick on him!"

He got close to her face. "Now listen here you little shit. Do you wanna keep up like that? Think you're all tough??"

She nodded in fear.

It wasn't until we were safely sitting in my room that she bawled her eyes out over my bruised shoulder. The only thing that I could do was hug her back and try to comfort her.

"How do you do it, Vincent?"

But she didn't know how to deal with what I dealt with at school. Her standing up for me caused more rifts for the both of us. Not that I ever blamed her for doing the right thing.

Which is why when she killed herself... I couldn't help but feel like it was my own fault...