Page 64 of Seven Lost Summers
But there’s nothing they can do.
No words. No prayers.
No fucking eulogy is going to fix this.
Bianca’s gone. And we’re walking toward the moment it becomes real… permanent… final.
I don’t want to take another step, but I keep moving, because she deserves that much.
Nothing remains of her but memories. And even those don’t seem safe anymore. Every time I try to hold on to one, it cuts me open. Her laugh echoes in my head, and it seems wrong—too far away, too fragile. Her voice used to ground me. Now she’s only a fucking ghost.
I thought I broke the day Quinn showed up, her face pale, her mouth trembling as she spoke the words that shattered everything. But this is worse. This is standing in front of a white fucking coffin, knowing she’s in there. Knowing that’s it. That’s where she ends. No more late-night texts. No more smirks across the room. No more her.
My chest aches. I want to scream. I want to rip the world apart for doing this to her. For doing this to us. But I stand there. Useless. Fucked up. Broken in a way I’ll never come back from.
Because this grave, the silence, this fucking pain that won’t quit is all I have left.
The cemetery is full of people.
Some I recognize. Some I don’t. Faces blur into each other—dull eyes, forced sympathy, hands reaching out with condolences that mean fucking nothing. Every murmur seems wrong. Every goddamn whisper lands like a slap. No one knows what to say, and even if they did, I wouldn’t want to hear it.
I’m standing still, but it feels like I’m floating outside myself. Everything’s muted, like I’m underwater, the pressure building in my chest with every second that ticks by. My feet are planted in the grass, but I swear the ground could crack open beneath me and I wouldn’t flinch.
Bianca’s mother stands near the coffin, her body shaking as though she’s about to shatter. She keeps rubbing at her eyes, trying to scrub away the grief, but the effort’s fucking useless. There’s no fixing this. No undoing a damn thing. Her sobs tear through the air, and I feel every single one of them hit.
This is what the end looks like.
Not some poetic goodbye.
Not a soft fade.
Just endless pain.
Finally, I lift my eyes to the coffin.
The flowers sitting on top are too fucking bright. Reds and yellows, pinks and purples bursting as though they’re clueless about where they are. The whole display insults me in a way, with how cheerful they are. As if someone thought they could dress death up in color and make it easier to swallow. They’re loud. Bold. Over-the-top.
She would’ve hated them. I can already catch her voice full of that dry sarcasm, laughing and shaking her head. “Who the hell picked these out?”
She’d turn to Theo with that wicked glint in her eye, that grin that always meant trouble, and throw him the line. “Alright, Theo. Hit me with your best line about these tacky-ass funeral flowers.”
And he would’ve done it.
He always did so she would smile. Would’ve said something like, “These flowers look like a clown went on a vodka bender and threw up in a garden.”
And Bianca would fucking laugh. That loud, unfiltered kind of laugh that made everyone stop and stare. Eyes shining, head thrown back, chest shaking as though she couldn’t hold the sound even if she tried. And none of it would matter if Theo’s line was half-baked bullshit—she’d eat the words up anyway, make them sound like the funniest thing she’d ever heard. That was her.
But now, all we have is silence.
Movement pulls at the corner of my eye, and when I look up, I see Quinn. She’s moving toward us, sunglasses on like they can hide the pain underneath. Her cheeks are blotched red, streaked with tears she’s not even bothering to wipe away anymore. Her lips pressed together so tight they’ve turned white. There’s no hiding this kind of pain. I’ve never seen her look so small before.
She stops a few feet away, her arms wrapped tightly around herself, as if she can keep in the pain. Her chin trembles, and I can see her breathing start to hitch.
I lift my hand and hold my palm towards her.
“Come here,” I whisper.
Slowly, she takes a step. Then another.
