purple rain | jasper hale

three

IT WAS ALMOST DINNER time when Valerie finished tidying up her room. Her room back in Arizona was much tinier than the new one in Forks, so it felt a little less cozy, a little less at home. Everything in Forks felt less cozy anyways so it didn't come as a big surprise. Also, a bigger room meant more time spending cleaning it and she absolutely hated cleaning. It was a waste of time.

She had requested her mother to paint a wall: she had wanted a purple wall for her entire life and now she finally got it. Besides her king size bed occupying a big portion of the room, there were fairy lights that she decided to put up literally everywhere and some plants scattered around that she would probably forget to water. She also had some souvenirs back from Arizona decorating the wood shelves. She had tried to decorate her room as close as possible as the one in Arizona. It still didn't feel like home but maybe one day it would: after all, it had to. For at least one year, it had to feel like home.

A plant was already set on her white window sill – a cactus that she had bought in Italy back when she visited the beautiful city with her mother. The window was opened and all the sounds and smells of the forest were now entering her room and she welcomed them; they made Valerie feel more at peace. Right in front of the window her desk was all set with her old, pink table lamp being an important element of decoration along with her laptop. Her old books, some classics and some modern literature, were settled.

Everything was settled.

Everything but her.

Valerie didn't want to cry. She was a bad person, she was sure of that; she had made so many mistakes in her past life that had gotten her in trouble, and one of them ruined her entire life. It was her fault anyway. To make everything worse, Valerie was ready to throw away her last cardboard box when she found it. She didn't mean to find those pictures, she thought she had left them back in Arizona to rot and to never be seen again, but seemingly her mother thought she would want to keep them. She was wrong.

Old polaroid pictures that had been taken in different places and in different occasions were now in her hands. She hadn't seen those in almost three years, and as Valerie held all of those old memories, it wasn't hard to remember why she usually avoided. It didn't help that her red headed friend was with her in every single one of those.

Valerie held the pictures tightly. The first one was taken at the beach when they were 14. They were standing in the beautiful, deep blue waters of Brazil hugging each other tightly; their love, their friendship and their happiness swept through that picture. It was the usual vacation picture, but it was so much more than that: it was about memories that would never come back; it was about a bound that she thought to be unbroken but that had been broken by a sequence of tragic events. They were the bestest of friends and that was a summer that Valerie would never forget. She could bury it deep in her mind like she had been doing for the past years, but the best summer ever that happened three years ago would always hold a special place in her heart.

The other polaroid picture had been taken the same night. They were enjoying their family time together and they were all having dinner at a big local restaurant. It hurt to see so many people that she hadn't seen in so much time and that wouldn't want to see her after everything. The two girls were sticking their tongues out, drinking mojitos and pretending to be grown ups. She missed being a child.

As she remembered every memory, every moment, every laugh and every second of that trip, Valerie realized she was sweating and that the pictures were getting wet from her tears. It was all her fault. She just missed her so much. How was she able to live in a world like this? A world where she wasn't breathing? A world where her best friend couldn't join her and make new memories with her?