on the two-week anniversary of tragedy, ava is given her reminder call. ╱ @nkovalsky
i don’t want to. it’s an obligation, ava. please. she’s dead. she’s dead, and i - we know. we know, it’s hard, darling girl. no one is saying it isn’t. i just want to stay home, can’t i stay home? it would be good for you to get out, really, love. don’t cry. dress up, have a glass of something nice. and beside, you promised, didn’t you ava?
ava promised, so ava performs. if you watch her, she’s really very good at it. she plays it like a postcard, a beautiful view to be passed around with only a handful of words on the white space on the other side — something witty and charming, something you chuckle over when tell your neighbour about it later. she watches how many people she makes smile and counts them on the inside of her hand, nails tapping into palm until she’s made matching fists several times over. when they offer condolences and her eyes tear up and her throat is fitted with a warm aching coal, she straightens a finger in subtraction, nodding disjointedly through her thanks. poor thing, they say behind their hands.
she plays her game and throws herself into the corners of each hour to make it all go faster, and it’s going well up until it isn’t. it’s funny, how little it takes to upend everything. sometimes the world ends with a whimper of a bang.
the white-tailed waiter beside her drops his silver platter and a dozen crystal glasses with it, broken glass skittering around her like an unpainted mosaic, but it’s the noise of the crash that rises up and over her, shoulders jerking upward and cry lifting over the din like she’s been wounded. like it’s a gunshot in the dark.
ava is aware, peripherally, that she was too loud. the hush of the room has drawn out too long, beats of silence that should have surrendered to the night already for a simple mistake. but they’re watching. they’re all looking at her, she can feel it. they’re always looking at her; there’s never anyone to go. but she can’t look at them because all she sees is taylor drowned in blood.
she turns toward the draped table, facing toward the food and china finery and away from the crowd, all of it smearing together as her sight blurs. hands press flat into her face as tries to cover the pain, the heel of her hand against the red of her lips as if to blockade the soft noises that find their way out anyway. as if to force back down the heart making its way up her throat and through her eyes, wet little beads at the corners. she’s so hot. there’s something unwanted sitting on her chest. the bones of her shoulder blades stretch forward and back under her skin, the wings of a nervous bird. please. please. not now. please. i can’t. i can’t keep it down —
