Breaking the Surface

Chapter 6: Loss

Ember hated to do this to her friends. She had to chose between what she loved and aspired to do and her best friends. Her mom always told her that life wouldn't be life without hard decisions and love wouldn't be love without hardships.

She wanted to punch a wall, but she put on a smile for her friends, they were only getting slushies. Louis was beside her and a gust of wind blew his scent past her nose. He smelled of hickory and a warm fire, he smelled of laughter and s'mores.

She laughed at the thought. She would miss them, sooo much. She would miss Cypress, her buddy, her girly friend, they would stay up late and talk for hours.

They would message each other all night, go on walks in the park, and watch YouTube together, and talk about really deep stuff. They would even work on schoolwork together, but they also let Louis copy off their answers, and helped him pass classes, and on Fridays the three would get out the flashcards.

Louis would take Ember to the edge of the town and point out the sharks and Angel-fish that swam by. He would skip stones with her in the artificial lake by her house. He would buy the two all the stuffed animals at the carnivals, but he secretly bought Ember all the fluffy ones like she liked. He took them to the Animal Storage Unit and they all cuddled with the puppies and kittens, and the soft, cute animals.

Louis and Cypress were her favorite people, and she hated to admit it, but sometimes she wished Cypress wasn't there, sometimes she got in the way. Louis was just the kind of person you couldn't get enough of. The kind of person that after he died, if you had had a thousand years with him you would still swear it hadn't been enough time.

But other times, Louis was ignorant,  and didn't understand, sometimes she wished he wasn't there to confuse everything. Cypress was a good person, she was good in school, she was pretty, and knew what she wanted in life. When others ran away from life, she plunged right into it. Louis wasn't like that. Louis enjoyed life as it came, he never really planned for the future.

He tried to laugh as much as he could because, "You always cry on your first day in this world, why not laugh on your last?" at least that's what he would say. He didn't like to waste time on the bad parts of his life because he had spent too much time on the bad parts, when he was little after his mom had died. 

His mom had died of breast cancer when he had just turned 7.  Louis had been devastated, after the cancer was cured a year later with a new experimental drug, Louis had been furious with the world. He had just spent so much time like this, hours of days, months, and years on the bad parts of life. He had moved on, but now he never wanted to go back.

Cypress was sort of left out of this area of  a part of Ember and Louis's lives, she had been their friend, that's especially when she got closer to Ember. Louis was out of school for a few months after his mom had died and Cypress and Ember had gotten closer together. Cypress hadn't gone to see him much, she hadn't really known what to say to him as she had never lost a parent.

Ember had lost her little brother, it was heartbreaking that she didn't have a little person to protect anymore. Just when Ember had started to go back to school after her loss, Louis's mom had gotten really sick, and had died shortly after. At this point, the two were going through similar instances, and supported each other. As tough a time as it was, they had made it through their losses, but Cypress had been left out of all the deep stuff  they had gone through.

Ember called Louis whenever she was going through something. Sure she would talk about questions for the universe with Cypress, and held her when she had tough times, but Louis understood what she needed when there was something wrong. Right now, she felt she needed to go up to the surface. She said it was because she needed to see her father again, and she was curious about what was up there.

She knew the chance of dying, she wasn't her father, chances were she would die because of the pressure like many others. She wasn't her father, she wasn't him. Her mom had tried and forced her to be. Ember knew she meant the best, she sent her to all the sports tryouts even when she didn't want to play the game. Her mom had really just been trying to get her in shape for the LSU. Ember refused, she hated sports, she preferred a pencil and paper any day.

She didn't see any point in playing something that you couldn't really create something with. You could have a style, be good at it, but you couldn't create something from it, you didn't spend time thinking on a game because it was too complicated. In sports you knew how to play, you could only get better. In art, there were so many techniques, you had to think, to feel, when you created something, in sports you just did until you were the best.

In art it didn't matter if you were the best, it only mattered that it meant something different to all who gazed upon it. Her mom had tried to force the sports and athleticism on her, and she had shoved it away. Only later did she find she was so curious she didn't know if she could resist not knowing what was up there. So she decided to make up reasons, but the real reason was just to know what lied beyond the waters, and to see her father.