The Girl He Left Behind ✔

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33 | thirty three

Stacey felt a hollowness inside as she put on her black dress. It stopped at the knees and was long sleeved. It was loose and not fitted apart from briefly at the waist. She looked down at her destroyed makeup and sighed, turning around and leaving the bathroom without a drop of makeup on her skin.

Scottie was waiting in his small, red car outside and Stacey walked straight out the door, not saying a word to her parents who didn't say a word back.

She slid into the car and shut the door, letting the silence wash over her.

"You ready?" Scottie asked and Stacey clenched her eyes shut, giving a curt nod.

"Ready."

***

Walking into a church filled with people that had loved Kim was quite possibly the hardest thing Stacey had ever done.

Kim's parents were sat at the front and Stacey decided to give them space and not see them. They were never too fond of Stacey, especially since she was the one to find their daughter's body.

Scottie was close behind her and she made her way down the aisle, sitting a row back from the front on the opposite side to her late best friend's parents.

Some people were crying and some people had sympathetic looks on their face as they wandered around, talking to family and friends.

Stacey almost felt like an outsider.

She felt a hand on hers which she didn't realize had been in such a tight fist and that her whole arm was shaking.

"It's okay," Scottie whispered. "It's okay."

Stacey nodded slightly and slowly let her hand relax and lie flat against her knee.

The service went on for a while and Stacey watched with a lump in her throat and a sadness in her chest. Scottie's hand didn't leave hers and for that she was thankful. He was the only person in this whole room that she could fall back on.

The only one.

"Now, Stacey Williams will be saying a few words about Kim."

That was her cue.

And so, numbly, Stacey stood up in the silence and headed towards the podium at the front of the church. She had no paper in her hands to help her. She just had a fucked up mind and heart to play with.

Stacey turned and looked out at everyone that stared unnervingly back.

So Stacey leaned forward slightly...and spoke.

"I knew Kim for a few years," she said, her voice soft but seconds from cracking. "And in those years of knowing her, she was one of the best people I had ever met. A-And I could stand here and list off a hundred words that best describe her but then I don't think I would be doing her justice. Because I don't think that there are words out there that can sum up Kim. Kim was, to put it easily, just Kim. She was everything you could expect from a person and so much more. But at the same time she was misjudged - misguided. She was stereotyped. And in some cases, I guess she was hated. People didn't understand her and they jumped to conclusions.

"Humans make mistakes and Kim was the most human of all of us. She made mistakes and she regretted and she forgave. And she made one mistake that cost her, her life. She made a mistake that was used and manipulated to hurt her. And it worked. It did hurt her. But Kim..."

Stacey took a deep breath, her eyes full of tears as she looked down at the ground.

"Kim was my friend. And I knew that she wasn't any of those words that so many people told her she was. She went through hell and she was pressured into nearly everything. She was used just like many of us. But she didn't let anyone know. That's how strong she truly. Kim was beautiful and real and human. And she had a whole life to live. And now she doesn't. Now she leaves on her own terms and...and I'd like to think that that's what she wanted; to have the final say."

Tears poured out of Stacey's eyes and she looked through a blurred vision at the rest of the church. "So all of this is in dedication to the girl who told me one day she would make a great muse for a story on a problematic teenager," Stacey's voice finally cracked. "And it just took me too long to realize what she meant."

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