The Golden and the Tarnish

Chapter 3: Tarnished Grief

(12 years later)

Did you know that people don't die once? They die twice. First their soul dies, then their body. It's a complexes thing. But let me simplify this. I am dead.

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(Earlier that Day)

"Do you know what 'Strenuous' means?" I ask Ponyboy. He looks up from his spelling workbook and gives me a pondering look.

"It means...like energetic." He replies. I watch him write in his spelling book with careful penmanship that only someone like him can write.

We continue to do our homework, which wasn't much for either of us. When we were done, I took out my notebook and sketched out somethings that would randomly come to my subconscious. It felt amazing just letting my subconscious just take me into the deepest parts of my mind.

For some odd reason, I drew a payphone with a woman leaning next to it. It was a random drawing and the woman looked a lot like my mother. It wasn't my best work, but that didn't stop me from showing Ponyboy my drawing.

He passes me his journal and I read what he wrote. Most of time, we would switch our notebooks and look at each other's work. He was an actually good writer, and I was a satisfactory illustrator. I read his recent work and smile at what he wrote:

'The brunette girl sat in forward-facing me, biting her pencil in concertation. Her eyebrows creased as she sketched in her notepad in long strokes. Anyone would call her unworldly, the deep look in her oddly coloured eyes and intense guises that can bring anyone to their knees. As she continues her sketching, her dark hair flows down her shoulders.

She continues to draw but starts to get distracted-'

"You do you mean I start to get distracted?" I ask him. He looks up from my notepad and shrugs.

"I don't know where I was going there." He replies. "It wasn't my best work."

He looks back at the notepad and a small smile stretches over his thin lips. I never really notice how bowed his mouth was. When he was serious, it made him look like a china doll, with his big eyes that seemed to engulf his olive coloured face.

A sudden ringing noise breaks my trance from the brunet boy and I look away from him. I barely registered the fact that the telephone was ringing and took my notepad away from Pony. He gives me another smile before standing up.

Probably to get the telephone.

"Curtis residence." He says professionally. Usually, I would scream something nuisance to get the person on the phones attention. But instead, I kept my mouth shut and place my things in my bag.

"Annie, it's for you." Pony calls out.

I stand up and take the telephone from him tenderly. Lifting up the heavy telephone and speak into it. "Hello?" I call out into the plastic contraption. Isn't it odd that people can speak between each other through some metal contraption and not be in the same area?

It's amazing.

"Sweetie?" a sad voice says from the end of the line. "It's Mommy."

She didn't sound that much like my mother. This person sound sadder and more serious than I've ever heard my mother speak. I felt unsettled about the fact that she sounded like she was crying.

"Yeah, mom. What's wrong?" I quickly ask. Hearing her sniffle, I wrap the cord of the phone around my finger and clutch it tighter.

She sniffles a little bit longer and sobs behind the phone. My heart halts from the sad sounds my mother was making. The urge to reach through the phone and wrap my arms around her was almost unbearable.