I stand slouched over the fencing on the verandah , the breeze pushing my hair behind me as Dina stares in the opposite direction to me . Dina looks so different, her hair is short and sits on her shoulders , she is wearing a beige shirt with a green stripe across her chest along with a pair of black jeans that look a little too big and she isn't wearing any shoes , she has a yellow bandanna wrapped around her dark brown hair . I take a breath and turn my head to stare into the distance. 'Your here?' I Ask Dina calmly , 'no I've been uh cleaning the house out , I moved Joel's stuff to your shed ......I just thought if we had a new group come into town they could use the house' Dina replied. I stare up and down at Dinas clothes , they are dirty and her hands have dirt all over them , she has cobwebs on her shoulder. 'How long have you been here?'i ask firmly , 'a couple weeks' she replies . I look at her still seeing the girl she was when I met her , the girl I raised a child with but the look in her eyes, the look in her eyes scares me , I have to make it up to her , somehow. 'Let me ....let me fix this place up , you can go see Jesse's parents, get yourself cleaned up . I can have this place fixed up in a week , for .....us' I say holding Dinas right hand in mine . She pulls her hand away and shakes her head, our eyes meet as Dina softly says 'that's not fair Ellie, you can't come back and expect everything to go back to normal after leaving, that's not how it works ' .I look down and my hands and back at her , 'You know i had go ' I whisper .Dina stares at me with a look of disgust, her eyes narrow and as if she is staring into my soul, 'You didn't have to do anything, you chose to leave me! , you chose to leave jj!!!' she yells at me taking a step towards me . She looks furious , I have never seen her like this . 'Joel died Dina! I watched him die! , you weren't there! . I couldn't sleep! , I couldn't eat! If I hadn't have left I wouldn't have survived anyways!' I yell back at Dina , causing her to step back and look even more furious that before , this causes us to begin yelling at eachother , back and forth . I can't even hear what she is saying it's all muffled under my own voice. Like an uncontrollable fire i yell at her over and over again until I hear the door open . A man . His hair is long , and he looks like he's 25 maybe a little younger , he's holding jj, my jj. 'Is everything ok?' the man asks looking at Dina , then she touches his left arm , not in a way a friend would not in a friendly way , it's like there is tension , a tension I can't really put my finger on , almost as if I was familiar with it. 'Were fine' she says with a smile , she looks into his eyes like how she once looked in mine. and that's when my heart dropped, the slight head tilt to the side and she's batting her eyes at him , just like how she used to look at me . That look of hers used to make me feel butterflies in my stomach even when I was have a really awful day , the head tilt would confuse me but make me more and more drawn towards her , and now....now she's looking like that for someone else .
Someone else. I used to believe I would grow old telling stories about Joel to JJ . About how clumsy he was when he tried to cook for us , about how he would use the skin of orange peels to make his meals bitter because he felt bad for chucking out the orange peel , how he would stay up with me every time I had a nightmare he would watch movies with me about normal world things and drink his homemade juice he made which was terrible but it tasted like home. Now I can't tell jj that. why crowd my mind with an illusion of growing old in a world like this right .
I meet eyes with Dina , I turn to walk down the steps , she quickly grabs my arm and softly says 'Ellie I....I couldnt. Ellie I thought you were dead. I'm so sorry I didn't know that you were-' I interupt by saying 'no Dina I'm sorry'
I walk down the steps as the wind blows my hair in my face.
As I walk away.....
