Zealots of Canterlot

Chapters

Unspoken
Feel Something
Heathen

Unspoken

Hey, you know what’s better than a wake? Asleep.

Once I’m done typing, I thumb the sleep button on my phone and drop it back into my purse. It’s not my best line of the morning—so far, the frontrunner is “I wonder if his dress has pockets,” in reference to the reverend’s vestments—but it’s punny in exactly the way I know Twilight would’ve laughed at. She’d probably have just blushed at the priestly dress line. That’s how I know that one was especially good.

For lack of anything else to do with my hands, I pull my phone back out and stare at my reflection in the darkened glass. I look great—Rarity made sure we all did, of course. I’m pretty sure that was her coping mechanism. And I guess this is mine: thinking of jokes for Twilight, little silly things I’d usually whisper into her ear to throw her off her game. And then typing them out on a note in my phone instead, because I have to keep reminding myself she’s not here to hear them.

I click my phone back on and start typing again.

Well, I’m certainly putting the “fun” in “funeral,” aren’t I?

I’m really not, in all honesty. I’ve been up since before dawn—I’m not sure I slept, in the same way that I’m not sure I’m awake either—and the gummy film over my eyes migrated to my brain around mid-morning. I haven’t said much more than “hello” and “thank you” to a few distant relatives whose faces I’ve already forgotten, and since then I’ve just been parked in an alcove near the church’s entrance, hunched over my phone, texting away to nobody. Thankfully, word seems to have gotten around from the few people I spoke with; they walked away about half an hour ago, and no one else has come to bother me since.

I can’t decide if I wish they would or not. I figured it’s best to just sit tight and keep typing until I’m sure.

Is it ironic if your phone battery dies during a funeral service?

I know this much: for once, I’m glad Pinkie Pie’s found something to distract herself with that isn’t me. There are a few kids weaving in between grownups’ legs here and there, and the nucleus they’re revolving around is a toddler in a frilly jumper propped up in Pinkie’s lap, giggling at every silly face and noise she makes. Every once in a while, a stubby-legged asteroid wanders into Applejack’s orbit, but she’s too busy watching Rainbow Dash to pay them much mind.

For her part, Dash looks like she stole something and she’s itching to run away with it, constantly tapping her foot and fidgeting with the strap of her purse or the hem of her white-striped black skirt. She’s been spending as much time staring at Applejack as vice versa; I get the sense they’re steadying themselves against each other, even though they never touch. Either way, I haven’t gotten the sense they’d be great conversational partners, which—I’m pretty sure—suits me just fine.

At least Fluttershy’s nearby if I need her, which I hope for her sake I don’t. She’s been at the church’s front doors since they first opened this morning, greeting everyone who enters with hand clasps and tender hugs. Every once in a while, I catch a glimpse of her face through the coatroom separating this reception hall from the foyer—of her effervescent smile lifting her tired, pallid cheeks. She looks like she’s been awake as long as I have, but she’s powering through like she barely feels it.

Maybe she actually doesn’t—she’s probably pulled more than a few all-nighters studying for her vet school GRE. Then again, maybe being around animals so much, she’s just used to this: the muted condolences and the reverent silence that follows. The constant, ephemeral ache in your spine. The helplessness.

I wonder how many pets she’s put down interning at the animal hospital. I wonder how many owners’ hands she’s held.

I don’t type that down, though. Twilight would probably know the exact number. Plus it’s not really all that funny.

When I turn back around and face the rest of the increasingly crowded hall, my eyes immediately catch Rarity’s. I didn’t really meant for them to—I thought she was still restocking one of the trays of cookies on the table by the back wall, or refilling one of the punch bowls, or rotating all the napkin stacks back a quarter-turn to where they were before she messed with them fifteen minutes ago. See what I mean? Coping mechanism.

I guess she’s coped pretty well, though, because she excuses herself from a conversation with someone I probably met already and strides towards me, black heels clicking under a black dress, with her tiny black purse clutched in both hands in front of her waist. My dress doesn’t match my bag at all—clashes horribly with it, actually—but she bravely refrains from comment. I can tell she wants to, though. Even at a time like this, she’s still Rarity. I’ll have to remember to add that to the note once she leaves.

“How are you doing, darling?” she asks once she sits down, her hand sliding over to rest gently on my knee. I glance at her fingernails next to mine in my lap—manicured and gleaming violet, next to colorless and chewed away—before I respond.

“How should I be doing?” I ask back.

Rarity’s lips tighten into an awkward smile. “I suppose I’m not sure either,” she admits as she pulls her hand away to stare at it herself. “This all feels so… unfamiliar. So…”

Pointless, I find myself thinking.

“Out of character,” I finish for her. “She’d absolutely hate this.”

Rarity’s smile splits, and she laughs—softly and quickly, so as not to make light of the occasion, darling. “She would, wouldn’t she? All these people, this pomp and circumstance… I’m sure she’d rather be anywhere else.” She spreads her fingers out against her thigh, drumming each tip for a moment before closing her hand back into a loose fist. “But I suppose we all would, wouldn’t we? And that’s why we’re here. To… be there for each other.”

I can’t tell if she meant that as a dig at me. I know it isn’t. I want to believe so, at least. “Is it helping you?” I ask. “To be here with everyone?”

Rarity’s lips purse again. “Not particularly, no,” she says. “I can’t imagine what it’s been like for you.”

I can’t help it—I laugh. It’s a rough and hollow sound, like chair legs scraping over cement, and it makes Rarity’s eyebrows shoot up and a couple heads turn nearby. Maybe word will get around again: don’t talk to Sunset, and if you do, don’t say that.

“Sorry,” I say, after I swallow hard and spend a moment grinding my fingernails against my palms. “Everyone’s been great. I’m just… trying not to be the center of attention. This isn’t about me.”

Rarity’s hand brushes against the outside of mine. I don’t glance down. I don’t spread my fingers out into hers. “It can be about you too,” she murmurs. “If you need it to be.”

“I don’t,” I say. The words rush out of me a bit too fast; I grit my teeth as Rarity gently tightens her grip. “Seriously. I’m just tired. Everyone is.”

She’s not buying it. I can feel the sympathy radiating off her—feel it prickling on my arms, like sunshine on a burn. Thankfully, I don’t have to grin and bear it too long. From within the crowd that parts to let them through, two figures approach me—both clad in black, one in a suit and the other in a shapeless gown. Rarity looks up, gives me one last squeeze—sends goosebumps rolling down my back—and stands, offering the shorter of the arriving pair a hushed greeting and a hug before departing back to the cookie trays.

In retrospect, I should’ve counted my blessings when it was just Rarity here. In the moment, I open my hands, stand up, and accept a hug from both of Twilight’s parents.

“Thank you so much for coming,” her mother says. She looks as hoarse and beaten down as she sounds. “It’s so good to see you again.”

My tone is warm, but my response is robotic. “It’s good to see you both too. Thanks for having me.”

“Of course we’d have you,” her dad insists, his hand still lingering on my shoulder. “We wanted everyone who loved her here. Especially you.”

I wonder which would be worse: if he really believes what he just said, or if he’s faking it as much as I am. After a moment, I realize it’s worse that I can’t tell the difference.

“We really do mean that, Sunset,” her mom adds. She reaches out and mirrors her husband’s gesture, placing her hand against my other shoulder. I’m pinched between the two of them now. I paint on a smile and try not to squirm. “Twilight was blessed with so many wonderful friends, but you… you were special. You meant so much to her, and I know… even with everything she went through, I know she was truly happy when she was with you. You were so good to her, and to all of us, and I just… if there’s anything you ever need, anything at all, please, you let us know. All right, honey?”

I can feel sweat beading on the back of my neck, and something spiky and black roiling in my belly. I try to keep smiling, but I can’t quite remember how the muscles work—how to keep my expression from twisting into a scowl. In the distance, at the end of a long black tunnel that ends in the summer after sophomore year, Twilight sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose, repeating for the dozenth time that calling her friends “honey” is one thing and calling her girlfriend that is another entirely, Mom.

I feel someone rubbing my arm—the left one, I think—and then the world rushes back into focus. A child’s squeal reverberates across the room. Twilight’s mom is tearing up.

“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry. I know you’re hurting too, I just… wanted you to know we’re here for you. That’s all.”

I nod, bite my lip, bend my face back under control. “Oh no, I’m… thank you, but I’m doing okay,” I tell her. I lift my hands to cover theirs, hoping my clammy palms will distract them from how quickly I pull myself out of their grip. “Thank you both. It’s really nice to hear you say that.”

The lie does the trick—Twilight’s mom leans in for a hug, wearing the same wistful smile when she wraps her arms around me as she is when she pulls away. “I’m gonna go check in with my sister,” she informs her husband, who nods and plants a kiss on her forehead before she edges behind him and walks towards a heavyset woman I recognize as Twilight’s aunt. Once his wife’s out of earshot, Twilight’s dad offers me a grin of his own.

“Sorry,” he says. “Guessing that was pretty intense.”

“It’s fine,” I lie again. “I get it. And I appreciate it, really.”

He nods, sliding his hands into his jacket pockets as he sighs and gazes around the room. For a second, I get the strangest instinct that he’s about to ask me with an accusatory glare what I’ve been getting up to with his daughter. For another second, I feel an even stranger urge to tell him—to let him know exactly where that hand he just held has been.

My stomach churns again, and something hot and painful starts rising in my throat. I swallow it back down as Twilight’s dad turns to face me again.

“We really do mean it, though,” he says. “Anything at all. Doesn’t have to be right now either. Far as Vel and I are concerned, you and the other girls are family.”

His gaze drifts down to the floor, and his hands flex inside his jacket. Contrary to the lightened streaks amidst his wife’s violet stripes, not a single navy-blue hair on his head shows a hint of gray. Save for the sag in his cheeks and the slight paunch in his gut, he looks like he could almost be my age.

“Gotta take care of your family, y’know?” he mutters at the ground.

Looks can be deceiving.

“You’re a good person, Sunset. A great one. And for what it’s worth, you… don’t feel like you have to pretend you’re not upset for our sake, all right? I know what you’re thinking. I’m thinking it too. Haven’t thought about much of anything else since it… since last week.”

I find myself staring over his shoulder, at a space on the wall between his wife and in-law’s heads. They’re greeting Twilight’s brother, who just arrived with his wife and infant daughter. I’ve seen them before. Right now I can’t remember where.

“I just hope you don’t think this is at all your fault. What Twilight… what happened, it… it wasn’t anybody’s fault. It wasn’t her fault. It was a sickness she had, and we all… we did the best we could.”

I know her brother has noticed me—is staring at me—but I can’t tell why. Right now all I can feel is my hand closing into a fist again. All I can see is a vision of myself smashing it into his father’s nose.

“And I think… I hope she knows that. I hope she can see now how loved she was, and… I hope she’s at peace.”

Maybe he can hear what his dad’s saying. Maybe he’s glaring because I’m not listening anymore. Maybe it’s because he wants me to give in.

“And I hope you find peace too. I mean that. I think we all will, in time. It’s just… it’s good to see you, that’s all. It’s nice to be reminded of the good times.”

My hand twinges, shudders, rises—and opens just in time for my palm to land on my girlfriend’s father’s shoulder. I take a deep breath and hold it as long as I can, until the heat in my chest dulls enough to speak past. “It is nice,” I tell him. “And I’m sure she knows.”

He needed to hear that. I can see his relief spilling from the upturned corners of his mouth, welling at the bottom of his eyes. When he hugs me, he rests his hand on the back of my head and grips my shoulder with the other, seeming for a moment like he’s never going to let go. I let him do it. It feels like old times—like old habits, rising easy.

When he leaves, I’m left alone again, wiping the dampness off my palms onto a velvet dress that suddenly feels stifling. Gradually, I notice people moving past me—an exodus towards a corridor that leads to a smaller side room. I guess the viewing’s about to begin. I can barely breathe through the heat. I wish I could do something about it—rip my clothes off and sprint in the opposite direction, naked from head to toe like a full-blown heathen.

Heh. Twilight would get a kick out of that. She’d probably even blush.

As I slip into the shuffling crowd, I reach into my purse and take out my phone again.

Feel Something

I didn’t know this before, but apparently it’s not normal to have a viewing on the same day as someone’s funeral, for some reason. I don’t know why anyone would want to spread them out and prolong this whole thing; I guess under normal circumstances, you have a little bit longer to plan ahead. Maybe if your great-grandma or whoever goes into hospice, you can start planning for time off work, buy train or plane tickets a little early and save some money. Call your distant family members and go, “Okay, we’ve got plans tomorrow, but we’re free after that. Can she die on Wednesday instead of Tuesday so we can make it a long weekend?”

It just seems odd—or it does to me, at least. And it would’ve to Twilight too! Rarity was right earlier, she really would have hated this—not only the service, but even the concept of being buried. She researched this very thing for her freshman environmental science seminar, made a whole slideshow about how much space a buried body takes up, the toxicity and carcinogenic nature of embalming chemicals, how much material waste there is, even how predatory the funeral industry is with service pricing and add-on features.

And yet here she is, in a taffeta-lined cedarwood casket flanked by standing sprays of lilies and white carnations, arrangements symbolic of both youthful innocence and a few hundred dollars in surcharges. She didn’t write a will, and it’s not like a presentation from her first college semester got shared around the family email list—I only knew about because I helped her practice her speech, and then held her from behind as she scribbled new notes, murmuring inspirational thoughts into the back of her neck. So in the end, her parents just did what they thought was right—chemicals, grifters, ignorance and all.

I’m probably the only one thinking about it that way. Probably the only one thinking about much of anything. I’ve had plenty of time for thinking over the last twenty minutes, parked on a padded folding chair watching people parade left-to-right-to-left again past me. The parade will continue throughout the day: from this stuffy room to the main chapel around noon, then out the front doors to the hearse, then a couple miles down the road to a graveyard just outside the town limits.

The casket will lead the whole way, shepherded along by funeral home staff and, for those few seconds between the church and the car, my friends and I. And that, I’ve been telling myself, is why I veered to the side and skipped passing by the casket myself: I’ll see enough of it later anyway. It makes perfect sense—or at least, it does to me.

By now, most attendees to the service have left to find their seats in the chapel, leaving only a few still milling around with me. Rainbow Dash only got about halfway to the casket before she froze in place and had to be led out of the room by Pinkie Pie and Applejack, muttering and swearing and sobbing the whole way. Pinkie stayed outside with Dash, but Applejack’s since come back to lean against the wall between the two exits, arms folded and face set into a stony blank stare. She seems to be waiting for someone else to need her. She hasn’t approached the back of the room either.

To my right, Rarity is rubbing away the last of her mascara into a tissue, and Fluttershy is bending over the casket’s open portion to drop some little trinket inside. I can’t hear what she’s whispering, nor can I see whatever it was she put inside; the first time I glanced that way, the room started spinning and my belly filled with ice, so I’m fine not giving it a second try. Like I said, I don’t need to see what’s in there—don’t see any reason to stare at a wax doll pumped full of formaldehyde and pretend it’s somebody I used to know. Just another part of this whole ordeal I don’t understand, I guess.

In the corner of my eye, I can see Rarity glance over at me every now and then. I think she wants to be my Applejack: someone I’ll cling onto and cry into until we both feel like we’ve done something productive today. That may be fine for Rainbow Dash—she’s always been the waterworks type, even when her pet turtle started hibernating back in high school—but as it turns out, I’m not much of a crier when it comes to someone dying. If it hasn’t happened yet this week, I doubt I’m gonna have much for Rarity to soak up anytime today.

Maybe I should try at some point, though. It wouldn’t help me much, but hey, it might help her.

There’s movement at the archway closer to me—a blur of blue and white. Twilight’s brother enters the room and, with a nod and a squeeze of his wife’s hand behind him, leaves her holding their baby by the entrance as he switches places with Rarity and Fluttershy.

I follow him with my eyes as far as the flower sprays—he’s in a plain black suit and tie, so his ramrod-straight spine is the only visible sign of the military background Twilight mentioned a few times. I know she loved him, but I know nothing about why, and I’m not about to learn now. He’s reached the casket now, and my stomach pulls my gaze back towards his family.

Fluttershy, Rarity, and Applejack are all focused on the baby; her stuttering giggles feel like gunshots in this silent, airless room. She never even met her aunt—not in any way she’ll remember. Someday, her dad will have to explain to her why. I wonder when he’ll tell her. I wonder how much of the truth she’ll hear from him, and how much she’ll find out accidentally from a careless relative or some ill-informed bully at school. I wonder if that’ll be how she learns what death is. I wonder if she’ll sleep the night after.

I didn’t. I was eight. I needed a nightlight for another six months after.

Before Twilight’s brother returns to his wife, another couple joins her—the last ones who will pass through this room today before the service. After greeting the crowd at the entrance and tickling their granddaughter under her chin, Twilight’s mother and father walk side by side up to the casket, the former clutching the latter’s arm like a vice. I watch their shoes—black Oxfords and blue flats—stride past me and stop together next to their son’s glossy brown pair. A few moments pass in silence, and then Twilight’s mom suddenly speaks up.

“Honey, where are her glasses?”

For the first time, I look up at the casket on purpose—fight past the dizziness that starts to flare up in my temples. Twilight’s mom is situated between her husband and son, looking casually at the former like she’s just asked him whether he remembered to get milk at the grocery store yesterday. He’s staring back at her like that store’s been closed for years.

“Did you grab them, or…” she continues. “You know, they might be in the car, lemme go check.”

“Velvet, wait–”

She’s already turned on her heel and started to head for the exit. She makes it two steps before her ankles quiver and wobble and give out on her entirely. Her husband and son react instantly but can’t catch her before she collapses to her hands and knees; a chorus of gasps trail Rarity and Applejack as they hurry over to help as fast as their dresses allow. By the time I realize I should’ve moved too, it’s too late for it to mean anything, so I just stay put, vertigo gluing me to my chair and resonating in my gut.

Aside from the clap of her hand against her mouth and a choked, muffled groan from behind it, Twilight’s mother doesn’t make a sound. She just squeezes her eyes shut and spasms, not reacting to Rarity squatting in front of her or her son’s hand on her back, or her husband wrapping her arms around her and murmuring that it’s all right, she’s okay, he has her glasses and they talked about her not wearing them, remember? It’s all right, it’s all right, you’re all right…

And then, after I don’t know how long, she is all right. With shaking legs and help from everyone crowded around her, she slowly gets back on her feet, leaning into her husband’s arms for just a moment longer before she straightens up fully. After a few more whispered words, Twilight’s father reaches into his inside jacket pocket and produces a pair of square-framed glasses with thick black rims. His wife takes them gently, cradling them in both hands like an injured baby bird, and walks in silence to the back of the room, where she delicately unfolds their temples as she leans over her daughter’s casket.

When her hands rise into view again, she isn’t holding the glasses anymore. She pauses, seems to consider something, and then stoops forward again. I can just barely hear the sound of her lips pressing against skin, and of what she softly says afterward.

“Don’t worry about me, sweetheart. I’ll be okay. You just rest now. You don’t have to hurt anymore.”

Before I couldn’t bear to look at the casket. Now I can’t tear my eyes away. What I felt talking to Twilight’s dad before floods through me again—the same tunnel vision, the same nausea, the same overbearing heat that radiates from my chest out through every inch of skin. The room is fading out white. I can’t help but–

“Sunset?”

Rarity’s standing up again. She’s looking at me. After the second it takes me to blink, everyone else is too.

“Are you all right, darling?”

“Yeah.” The word punches out of my throat before I can even think of what I might say after it. Rarity’s brow furrows. She raises her hand as if she expects to need it again—to hold me, comfort me, lift me up off of my knees. The nausea dissipates. The heat remains.

“Yeah,” I say again, looking her dead in the eyes until she blinks first. “This is just... it’s a lot. Don’t worry about me.”

She’s not listening. Obnoxious motherly concern is plastered all over her face. I grit my teeth and look to Applejack, Pinkie, anyone else for help—but it’s not any of my friends that I get it from.

“She’s fine,” Twilight’s brother says. It’s the first time I’ve heard him speak today—now that I think about it, it might actually be the first time he’s ever said anything about me. “She just needs some time alone.”

I try to protest—the words make it all the way to my throat before they stick there and force me to choke back a gag. Rarity looks helplessly back and forth between me and Twilight’s mom, and her husband seems ready to argue too. His son keeps him silent with a word and a pointed look.

“Dad.”

He glances at his mother, then inclines his head towards the room’s exit. After a moment’s pause, everyone relents at once. Rarity guides Twilight’s mom silently away, and one by one the rest of the crowd files out behind them.

Twilight’s brother is the last to leave—but before he does, he turns around and looks at me until I look back. His eyes pierce all the way to the back of my skull—unblinking, unwavering, and utterly unreadable. Before I can think to ask him what he wants, he vanishes, and the sound of a door closing leaves me completely—finally—alone.

With her.

Fuck.

For a good while, I stay put. A fleeting glimmer of hope hypnotizes me for half a minute—a fantasy that if I just sit here and wait long enough, someone will come in to move the casket and I’ll have an excuse to leave. After that fades, I try convincing myself to just leave anyway—walk out the door, thank Twilight’s family for their thoughts, and manufacture an excuse to slip out a side exit and go drink myself stupid someplace in town. Finally, I just resign myself to making the attempt—going up to the casket, saying something profound or cathartic or weepy, and just getting this whole ridiculous ceremony over with so I can go home and scream until I pass out.

Actually, that last one’s about my only option, now that I think about it. No matter what I choose, I can’t lose control here. Not at a godforsaken funeral.

Fine, then. I’ll go through the motions. I’ll make everyone else feel better. I put my hands on my knees and push myself up from my chair, and I take a deep breath and square my shoulders and walk up to the casket and look insi–

It’s her.

I thought she’d look fake. I thought her skin would be pale, her clothes too starched, her lips… at worst, I thought she’d look asleep. Isn’t that what everyone says? The dead look like they’re sleeping, like they could sit up and talk to you again once they wake up. But this thing in the casket, this… it’s her. She’s real. She looks horribly, horrifically real.

She looks dead.

She’s got her bangs hanging over her forehead just like always, and her fingernails are trimmed and her glasses are perched on her nose. And her geode necklace is arranged just so above her collarbone—above a bone-white kerchief she never wore in life, a tasteful cover for the bruises the embalmer couldn’t obscure. And there’s a little trinket next to it—a grass-woven star with seven identical points.

And it’s…

And she’s…

The vertigo’s back, and with it the nausea, and with that the pulsating, searing heat that I’ve been trying to stamp down all day—all week—for months and months before this god-awful pageant I have no choice but to sit through. And now there’s no one left to force me to stay focused, make sure that I keep saying I’m fine. That I keep the lie going. That I keep holding everything—everyone—together.

“What is wrong with you...” I whisper through clenched teeth.

I can’t hold onto it any longer.

“... what the fuck is wrong with you, Twilight?”

I don’t realize I’m shouting until I hear the echo my voice creates in this empty room. Someone outside probably heard me. Too bad if they did. I’ve been bottling this up for most of a year. It’s not going back in now.

“What wasn’t good enough for you? Huh? What more could you have done, have… wanted from life? You had everything going for you. Everyone was rooting for you, everyone loved you. And you couldn’t… what, you couldn’t handle it? You couldn’t handle being smart and talented and the darling of the whole town? You just fucking quit?”

I’m seething at the casket, hissing every word through a throat that’s already seared raw. I feel hateful, depraved, disgusting, disloyal—but it’s good. Finally, for once in years upon years, God it feels good to just fucking yell.

“What are you gonna say, you’re… you were depressed? You… that’s it? That’s all you got? Your brain, your big, beautiful brain just… it just broke, right? And that was that. Wasn’t worth fixing, wasn’t worth fighting… never even told us. Never told me. I had to find out from the fucking cops last year, and now…”

Memories are flooding through me—campus police knocking on my door three weeks into our senior year of college, learning that the only person I’d ever truly loved had engaged in “suicidal ideation,” realizing with dawning horror that she’d never even told me she was depressed. All the times she told me she was tired, she was stressed, she was distracted and had a lot on her mind. All the times I believed her. All the times I trusted her.

The time she pulled her lips away from mine after high school graduation and made me promise—made me swear to her—I would never use my geode to read her mind. She wasn’t mad, she said, just uncomfortable with the concept. I kissed her back. I kept my promise.

“Bullshit.” I don’t say the word—I spit it. “God, this is… this is fucking bullshit, and you knew it. You knew what this would do to us—to everyone who cared about you! You could not possibly have not fucking known!”

She really couldn’t have. I made sure of that. I gave all of myself to keeping her alive—keeping my promise to her. And she goes and does this. She betrays me.

“This is all on you,” I tell Twilight—straight to her serene, expressionless, hideous fucking face. “All of this. All the people you hurt, all the lives you’ve broken… your fault, Twi. You self-centered, ignorant, idiot fucking child… you kept it all bottled up, you couldn’t deal with your own shit like a goddamn adult, and that is not my fault!”

I pause to take a breath—to wipe my face and pull my hair away from my eyes. At some point, I blindly wandered back over near the chair I was sitting in before. My whole body shudders with the effort of not picking it up and slamming it to pieces against the wall.

“You probably would blame me, though, wouldn’t you?” I mutter. And then I can’t help it—I laugh again. “For… abandoning you. Because I’m the bad guy, right? I’m the one who tried to help. Took you to therapy, got you meds, had the girls bring you cookies and throw parties and show you every day how loved you were. Lost sleep, lost… months of my life, because the only thing I could imagine wanting was for you to be happy. For you to be as happy as you once made me.”

I’m back in front of the casket again. My chest is starting to hurt. I’m not finished emptying it yet.

“And then one time—one time—I tell you that I’m exhausted. I just need… I just need a break. And I need you to finish what I helped you start, and I know you can do it and I trust you to do it, but I can’t do it for you. I couldn’t. No one could. And you look me in the eyes and you hug me, and you say, ‘You’re right, Sunset, thank you, I promise I’ll get better for you.’ And then you just… fucking quit.”

I link my hands behind my head, shut my eyes, suck in a slow breath through my nose. It doesn’t help. I snap my eyes back open and feel my face contort into a sneer.

“Yeah, it’s all my fault. That’s what you’d say if you could talk right now—which you can’t, because guess what, Twilight? You’re dead. You’re gone. Forever. And I’m still here, still trying, still dealing with it and living with it and screaming at a fucking corpse!”

The words leave my lips, and then gravity leaves the room. I double over, cover my mouth, drip sweat and snot onto the carpet as I fall to my knees and focus everything I have left on ensuring my heaving stays dry. Seconds pass—the earth shakes—and then the tension drains from my shoulders and takes the rest of my strength with it. I roll backwards onto my haunches and then sit down, propping myself up with quivering arms and letting my head loll back and my hair hang in a stringy, frizzy mess.

I take a breath, and let it out. The doors are still closed. No one’s come in to stop me.

“Found your diary, by the way,” I tell Twilight. “The one in your desk drawer? Stole it, technically. Your parents still won’t go in there. But I had to. Because I needed to know.”

I sit up, wrap my arms around my knees, stare up at the casket with my face burning and my eyes starting to sting. “And I do, now. I read everything. What really happened last fall. How you tried to hang yourself from the fire alarm but couldn’t get the bedsheet knot tied right. How much it hurt to have the cops show up, to have to call your parents… to disappoint me. Because that’s what I was, right? Because of course that’s what your girlfriend would be when she found out you were drowning in all this and there was nothing she could do to help—fucking disappointed.”

The last word is enough to get me on my feet, if only so I can pace in a circle with my hands on her hips and increasing shallow breaths echoing in my chest. “I read what you wrote after that too. About how it hurt too much to tell us how bad it was. How the worst part of all of it was sitting in that counselor’s office staring at the phone, listening to your mother cry. You promised yourself you wouldn’t tell anyone next time. You wouldn’t put us through that… be such a burden. Next time you’d just do it.”

I stop pacing. I cross my arms over my chest and stare at the ground.

“And you did. Didn’t even leave a note. Checked the whole notebook, your whole room. Nothing.”

I look at the casket again.

“I have nothing, Twilight. I have no idea why you did it, and I never will. I will spend the rest of my life not knowing.”

It’s her cheeks, I realize. That’s why she still looks real. Whoever embalmed her covered them with makeup, added a little blush, made them look as lifelike as possible. I only noticed now because they’re starting to blur, because every second I spend staring at them blunts the rest of my vision even more.

“That’s on you, Twilight,” I say to her—like I’ve said to myself so many times, and no one else. “Not me. Not me.”

I’m right. I have to be. I’m not the one who killed myself. I’m not the one who hurt people.

“I burned it. Your diary. Took it to the woods, where we used to camp out back in high school. Watched it until the embers went dark… made sure it was ash. Your parents won’t know either. I’ll never tell them. I won’t do to them what you did to me.”

I’m the one who did the right things. Who did the best she goddamn could.

“Guess I’m just as bad as you.”

And it wasn’t enough.

It wasn’t enough to just be there for her. It wasn’t enough to take care of her, to help her every way I could, because eventually I couldn’t anymore. I burned out. I wanted out. I never even told anyone else we were on a break, and neither did she. I just thought it was what I needed. I thought she’d be fine. I thought, I thought, I thought.

I guessed. And I was wrong. And I know exactly whose fault it is.

“I don’t want forgiveness,” I hiss. “You don’t get to do that. You will never give me that, and I don’t care if you would. You’re a memory. You don’t get to be part of whatever life I have left.”

My fingernails dig into my arms, then my neck, then the skin under my eyes.

“I would’ve come back,” I tell my ex-girlfriend. “I swear to God. I just needed you to try. I needed you to…”

As it falls from my face, my hand brushes over my necklace—over the little crystal pendant that matches hers in all but color. My fingers close around it, and suddenly the heat is back—flaring, roaring, suffocating. With gritted teeth and a snarl, I yank the pendant off my neck—there’s a pinch of pain as the clasp breaks, and the sound of metal pattering against carpet as the pieces bounce off the floor and out of sight. I want to destroy it. I want to crush it under my heel. I want to throw it into the casket along with everything else I never want to look at again.

In the end, I don’t do anything. I just stand there and stare at Twilight’s glasses, and the geode pulses in my clenched, shaking fist. I’m out of energy. I’m out of things to say.

And I’m still alone.

Heathen

I spend the rest of the service in a fugue, numb and blind to everything but momentary flashes of sensation: a glimpse of Rarity’s nervous gaze, a snatch of the reverend’s sermon, Twilight’s weight on my shoulders as we carry her out to the hearse, the sun in my eyes as I watch her sink into the ground. All of them only stick out because they remind me of the past—of her chewing on her lip the first time I saw her naked. Of her diary smoldering in a gap between the pines. Of carrying her home on my back when she got too tired to walk. Of my phone dropping from my hand when I finally heard the news.

I wish I had something else to say, some comfort to offer the people she left behind, some assurance they wouldn’t have to remember me this way too. But I’ve got nothing left. I spewed it all out in that viewing room, and what remains of me is hollow and frail—the same as I’ve always been, just with nothing artificial to fill in the gaps.

I’ve been like that since high school: desperate to make up for past mistakes, always making sure I was there for others even if it meant I hurt myself. And now I know what happens if I fail, even for a moment. Now I know what I’m doing to everyone by not being able to keep up the lie.

If anyone heard me yelling earlier, they don’t say so. I wish they would, though. I wish someone would just scream at me back, angrily ask me to leave with tears running down their cheeks. That’d be dramatic enough to satisfy me, right? Painful enough to match the mess I helped make. At the very least, I wouldn’t have had to tag along to this afterparty.

I mean, that’s not what it is, really. I’m sure there’s a fancy name for it like there is for every part of a funeral, but what it boils down to is all the attendees gathering back at the church for a potluck dinner, and everyone inside seemed to be having a good enough time when I left a few minutes ago to sit outside on the front steps and stare at my namesake. So it’s not called an afterparty, but it basically is one. Which is weird. I’m almost positive it is.

I feel like I should take out my phone and type that down, but moving my arms off my knees seems like way too much trouble to bother with, and on top of that my hands are already full anyway. I’ve been fiddling with my pendant all day, wrapping the broken chain around my fingers and batting around the geode still dangling from its midpoint. Looking at it now, I think again about pulling the chain tighter. I wonder once more if Twilight’s head went numb like I know my fingertips would.

I’m still wondering—still lost in idle, errant thoughts—when the church’s front doors swing open and I hear the shuffling of new shoes on concrete. Twilight’s brother walks down one step, then two, then heaves out a sigh and sits down next to me with his jacket still buttoned. Maybe that’s what forces him to sit up straight—or maybe that’s just how all military people sit morosely on stoops. I wouldn’t know. I barely know him, even after a half-dozen shared holidays and family reunions. He was always focused on his own family. I was always focused on Twilight.

At first he says nothing, only reaches into his jacket and pulls out a lighter and a small cellophane-wrapped box. Once he gets the box open and stuffs the wrapping back in his pocket, he pulls a cigarette out and clamps it in his lips to light, taking a long drag before blowing out a cloud of blue smoke and, at long last, unbuttoning his jacket so he can lean forward to rest his elbows on his thighs.

“Haven’t had one of these since basic,” he says, staring at the tiny ember pinched between the fingers of his left hand. A moment later, he turns and offers me the cigarette pack—which, I can see now, is completely full but for the one he’s smoking. A hundred other voices fill my head—high school videos about the dangers of smoking, TV ads about cancer rates and gingivitis—but most of all I hear Twilight complaining about the smell of her brother’s coat at Christmas, see her wrinkling her nose and begging me not to ever be gross enough to take up the habit like he has.

I reach out, take a cigarette from the box, and put it up to my lips. Once Twilight’s brother flicks his lighter to life, I lean towards his hand and puff until I can taste the smoke in my mouth and feel the nicotine start to buzz on my tongue. Distantly, I know I shouldn’t be doing this. The knowledge makes my next drag even deeper.

“I guess you’re Sunset,” he says as I exhale.

“I guess you’re Shiny,” I say back to him.

For a while, we just sit and smoke together, watching the wispy haze we create rise up into the darkening sky and dissipate among the streaks of sun-tinged clouds overhead. When he speaks again, it takes a moment before I realize he means for me to listen.

“She called me,” he says quietly. “After you two broke up. She was upset, she cried a bit, but… she knew you loved her. And she loved you. She wanted to get better for both of you.”

I inhale quickly, muffle a cough as the smoke seeps a bit too close to my lungs. “I don’t need to hear this.”

“Yeah you do,” he says without looking at me.

“I don’t need you to make excuses for me,” I growl back.

He takes a pull himself, then taps his cigarette with his index finger to shake off the gathering ash. “No, you don’t,” he agrees. He raises his hand again as if to suck in another lungful, then lets it drop as he stares off across the parking lot towards the treeline in the distance. Another several seconds pass before he continues.

“She was getting better after you left. That’s what I can’t shake. Would’ve sworn she was. She was going to therapy, enjoying the weather… she seemed happier. I thought, ‘It’s actually working. I’m getting my sister back.’”

He inhales, looks at me, exhales out of the side of his mouth. There’s a pitiful look in his eyes—something like loathing, but filtered through fog he worked hard to create. “That’s the worst part, isn’t it? All you can think about is how you felt. How much you wanted to believe it was over.”

He turns away. I keep staring at him. The light in my cigarette is dimming, but I can’t gather the strength needed to lift it to my mouth and stoke the flame inside.

“And then last week, she calls me again,” he says. “She thought she nailed her job interview, but she didn’t get the offer. I tell her it’s okay, happens to everybody, she’ll nail the next one and it’ll be an even better gig. And then I ask her, ‘Hey, are you sure you’re okay?’”

He takes a puff, and the smoke comes out of his nose in staccato spurts. For the first time, I notice his hand trembling—the tension in his shoulders and down his entire spine. “‘Are you sure you’re okay?’” he repeats, a sour, stinging bite in his tone that hits me like an echo—like a recording of me screaming at no one a few hours ago. “‘Yeah, Shiny, I’m good,’ she says. ‘Thanks for checking in.’”

He stares at his cigarette, then drops it—lets it roll near his shoe to be ground out under his sole. “And then she hung up. And she was gone.”

The words tumble out of me thoughtlessly—an old habit, dying harder than ever. “It wasn’t your fault.”

He glances at me, and it’s like I’m back in the viewing room—it’s the same piercing stare, the same quiet acknowledgement of something he learned the same way I did. That he’s been learning, all this time.

“Might’ve been,” he says with a shrug. “Might’ve been something else. She got a C on a midterm the week before, apparently. Think she lost an earring that morning too. Maybe the moon was in the wrong house, or some magical monster hypnotized her, or something else, something else, something else…”

He stares at me—looks straight through me again, the way he must’ve done with cadets and children alike, and maybe with Twilight too. Instead of heat, a biting chill grabs hold of my chest.

“We can’t spend the rest of our lives wondering,” he tells me—as if it’s that easy. As if he doesn’t know it’s not.

“How can I not?” I whisper. I don’t want to ask, but I can’t stop myself. “How do I get over this?”

“We don’t,” he replies. Over his shoulder, the sun has nearly set. “We live through it.”

It starts as a whimper, and then a groan, and my hand’s clamped over my mouth and my eyes are screwed shut, and it feels like every part of me is exploding outward at once. The cigarette falls from my fingers, and my first hiccup dissolves into a hacking cough, one that morphs right back into a shuddering, sopping attempt at a breath. I didn’t want to do this—to let myself fall apart like this—but it’s far too late to stop it. I fell apart this morning—a week ago—months and months before I ever let anyone know—and now this is just an aftershock, just one of many times to come in which everything I haven’t let myself feel will bring me to my knees and tear me apart.

And the whole time I’m sobbing, the whole time I’m breaking down next to him, Shining Armor doesn’t touch me. He doesn’t shush me, he doesn’t put a friendly hand on my shoulder, he doesn’t lean in close and murmur in my ear that it’s all going to be okay. But when I let my hand drop and clutch blindly for his, he grabs hold of it, squeezes back, and doesn’t let go. It’s almost nothing, the smallest possible gesture—and the longer it continues, the more it counts for.

Eventually, I recover—or maybe just get dehydrated—enough to look back up and loosen my vice grip on Shining’s hand. He’s polite enough to refrain from rubbing circulation back into it for the moment, but he seems like he knows he did what he needed to do—what I needed someone to do for me. Not hug me or hold me or assure me it was fine to be upset—just be there, somewhere nearby, and not worry about me like I usually would about them. In retrospect, I wish I’d been less distracted at all those reunions.

“Thank you,” I say to him as he gets up to leave. “For letting me get everything out.” I’m not just saying that for what he did now, but what he did earlier as well. It took a while, but I’ve finally figured out why no one came bursting into the viewing room to shut me up earlier, and why they gave me so much space afterwards as well.

“All I had was a photo album when I got it out of me,” he replies. “Figured you could use the real thing.”

His feet staggered between two stairs, he wipes his hands on his jacket and then extends one down to me. “There’s plenty of food left in there if you’re up for it,” he adds. “And word to the wise, my aunt’s mac and cheese is crazy good. You can’t be sad when you have mac and cheese.”

I smirk up at him—for the first time today, it doesn’t hurt to go through the motion. “They teach you that in the army?”

“Second day of basic. First day’s lesson was ‘Don’t die.’”

I snort—I can’t help it. Of all the things to say at a fucking funeral. But God help me, at least someone else said it. At least I’m not the only one trying.

I reach out and pull myself up by Shining’s hand, and I’m about to follow him back inside the church when it occurs to me how aghast Twilight would’ve been at that joke. On instinct, I reach into my purse for my phone, but when my fingers brush against its plastic case, I stop again. She would have loved those kinds of lines—at least, she’d have hated them in the right kind of way. But Shining was right, and I was earlier too: Twilight’s just in our memories now, and good or bad or anywhere in between, I shouldn’t get lost inside them.

I mean, I inevitably will, of course. I have been all day, and I still am now. My fingers still itch to type out all the things I’d say to her—good and bad, and everything in between. But I don’t have to do it now. Right now, and tomorrow, and for every day after that, I can let myself feel what I need to, and tell my friends what I need from them to let those feelings process.

And in the meantime, I really need to feel some food hitting my stomach. Fuck me sideways, I’m starving.

I pull my phone all the way out, but only to hold the button on the side until it flashes a manufacturer logo and turns off completely. Once it’s back in my bag, I wipe my face one last time and ascend the rest of the steps. I follow Shining Armor inside, reassure Twilight’s parents that I’m doing better, accept a fumbling and exquisitely damp hug from Rarity and the girls, and finally shovel as much mac and cheese out of the last remaining pan as I can fit onto a paper plate.

And you know what? Shining Armor was right about one other thing too: holy shit, this stuff is good.