Just Kidding | ✔️

Chapter 66: Anywhere But Here

~above is a good song to listen to with the chapter

♡

RILEY
It was a week ago, today that the soul and ball of light known as Kyla Daniels no longer existed in the world. She is gone but never in our memory. Everyday seems so gray and cold now. It rains almost every solitary morning, only at night does everything quiet down.

Her funeral was beautiful, filled with flowers and farewells, people that may have barely known her and others who knew her all too well.

School is still carrying on, but when you spend years with your best friend by your side then suddenly she isn't, well it tends to makes school unbearable. I still have Chloe at least.

Poor Chloe. She is just as much of a mess as I am. After the funeral she couldn't help but sob in her car for hours on end as I held onto her tightly. Chris is her guide nowadays, telling her to breathe and eat, to sleep. Still, she's nothing more than gone.

Although the person who I should really say is gone and broken beyond fixing is Cooper Rhodes. The now emotionless man, detached from the world and his feelings, has been missing from school since the day of Kyla's funeral. Well until today. He steps into the colorless hallways as pale and dead as any living human being can be.

Watching Cooper slowly drain of life is a sight I never thought I'd have to see, it's a sight I almost can't bear.
I know how much he was devoted to Kyla; what lengths he would go through just to protect her, but now he's let her slip away.

Who knows if Kyla's request for him to move on will stick because as of right now I don't think he will ever love another quite like the way he loved Kyla Daniels.

No one ever will.

I think it is finally safe to say that the bad boy, almighty player and most successful heartbreaker there has ever been. . .has finally broke.

Everyone has:

Bryce.
Dawson.
Cameron.
Blake.
Chloe.
Aaron.
Matt.
Mrs.Lenard.
Me.

Kyla had been the one piece, the one living and breathing being that held us all to one another. Now she's just gone and none of us are sure how to cope without her. Especially Cooper and Blake. I've noticed them hanging around one another more than they ever had. I have a theory they helped Mrs.Lenard in orchestrating the memorial for Kyla that's been placed in front of the school.

It's a small statue of a beautiful angel that rests beneath a shady tree. It smiles at the people who walk where she once walked, reminding us all that she was here.

Kyla disappeared so fast that I still replay the last days of her existence in my head, remembering what it was like to live in a world with her. Imagining our younger years, the pain and heartbreak, the joy and the adventures.

Hoping someday, I might just see her again.

I somehow find myself standing in front of the small statue. The flowers I continue to lay by her memorial never seem to wilt but still I find myself replacing them each day until I'm forced out of this godforsaken town.

"So it's you who places these flowers. I should have known." Cooper chuckles, appearing next to me. Once I look up to meet his solemn eyes I notice that the clouds above begin to part ways for the sun and the remnants of rain are all that's left to remind us that yesterday's storm has now passed.

"She deserves so much more than flowers and a stone in her memory, but for now that's all we can give." I sigh. Watching as Cooper comes to stand by my side, hands shoved into the pockets of his denim jeans.

"She deserved a lot of things. Being stuck in this town wasn't one of them." He temporarily shuts his eyes. Then in the next second I watch as Cooper gazes up at the sky to whisper. "Always." He lost the forever the day Kyla left, but he never lost the always and I'm certain he never will.

"Come on," Cooper suddenly spins around to face me. "Let's get out of here." He slings an arm over my shoulder and leads me alongside him towards his car that continues to remind me of the first day of school when Kyla noticed his vehicle parked alongside mine.

"Yes please," I nod gratefully, listening to the trees rustle in the wind, imagining Kyla looking down at us from above. The clearing in the clouds parts until the sun pours down on us and I know. . .it'll be okay, "anywhere but here."