Weight In Gold (Brendon Urie)

The Kardashians

Tuesday

Brendon and I are on the way to my old school to talk to Avery and my other old friends. I'm sweating like crazy and almost certain that I'll need and entire new outfit when we get back to the house. There's also a pit in my stomach that I can't get rid of.

"Are you feeling okay?" Brendon asks, shouting a little to make sure that he's heard over the wind. "Yeah," I say unconvincingly. He picks up on the fact that I'm worried out of my mind about what'll happen once we get to the school, so he places his hand against my back and rubs it in circles in an attempt to help me relax. I put My shoulders down and take a few breaths, but this nervousness is unshakable.

"What do you want to do after we're done?" Brendon asks to try and distract me. I shrug, because the only thing I can imagine doing after we're done is crawling up in a ball and crying. "Maybe we could go swimming or something?" Brendon suggests. Again I shrug.

Brendon sighs quietly and says, "Why don't you tell me about what it used to be like with your friend?" I look over at him and see that although he's being patient, he looks a bit frustrated with my quietness. "things were fine...I guess. We were always really close, but you always had to keep your guard up with them. It was like we were all friends but somehow all enemies at the same time," I tell him, thinking back on what it used to be like at school.

"Were you like their little 'ring leader?'" Brendon asks. I chuckle a bit. "Definitely not. It wasn't really like that," I say. "Well then what was it like?" He asks, trying to get a better understanding of what I'm talking about. I think for a second about what I should say in response. "We were like...a family. But not a real family. A family like, say, the Kardashians." At this, Brendon bursts out laughing. "In what ways were your friends like the Kardashians?" I laugh a little too before responding. "Well, we were all there for each other in a way, but we consistently did things behind eachother's backs, in spite of eachother. And we were super over dramatic, but everyone else in the school loved hearing about our drama." Brendon continues to laugh.

"I think it's a bit of an exaggeration to call yourself a Kardashian," he says, still cracking up. "I mean you're pretty dramatic, you could be a Kardashian too." I say lightheartedly. Suddenly, Brendon's expression hardens. "You can call me an idiot, an asshole, you can call me a lot of things. Just don't ever call me a Kardashian, alright? Fuck you." Before I think of something witty to say in response, we arrive at the school.

I get out of the car and all of the nervousness that our conversation had distracted me from immediately returns. I hold onto Brendon's arm for support as we walk into the building. When we enter, I lead him to the main office so we can get our visitor's passes. Once we're all checked in, we start making our way towards the back field. It's lunch right now, and my friends used to eat in the backfield underneath the bleachers religiously. The only time they wouldn't eat there is if it was raining so hard that it was flooding, which was rare.

As we get progressively closer to the bleachers my heart rate starts picking up. "Brendon," I say, stopping in my tracks. He looks over at me in recognition. "What if I can't do this?" He simply rolls his eyes at me when I say this. "Please. I've seen you do so many harder things, Ashley. I promise, you'll be fine. If worst comes to worst, just imagine you're talking to the Kardashians, okay?" I take a brearth and nod, then continue to walk.

A few feet before we come into view of anyone sitting underneath the bleachers, I stop again. "Brendon, I want you to stay here. I have to do this on my own," I tell him. "Are you sure?" He asks, looking a bit worried about me. I nod, and take a final deep breath before I step into the view of the people I used to spend most of My waking hours with.

The first one to see me is this girl I knew named Reece. She's in the middle of telling a very dramatic story when she looks up at me and her eyes widen. "Ashley?" she says like she's looking at a ghost. Suddenly, everyones heads whip around and look at where Reece is looking, which happens to be at me. "Hi everyone..." I say quietly. "What are you doing here, Ashley?" Avery says. I would expect her to be angry or upset to see me, but she actually looks kind of nervous. Maybe I would be too if I was her.

"I came to apologize and to pay my respects for everything that happened with Luke," I begin to say. But then for some reason, no one's attention was directly on me anymore. It was all directed behind me.

"What happened with Luke?" I hear an all to familiar voice say. Slowly, I turn around and see a face I definitely didn't expect to see, mostly because I thought that it was a face that belonged to a corpse.

My mind went from apologetic and nervous to entirely enraged in seconds. I turn back around and look at Avery in the face. "Did you fucking lie to me?" I ask her, seeming calm at first. She stays quiet and doesn't answer me, which causes me to completely snap. "I SAID DID YOU FUCKING LIE TO ME?!?! DID YOU BITCH? BECAUSE I'M GOING TO BE PRETTY PISSED IF I DROVE ALL THE WAY DOWN HERE AND HAD MULTIPLE MENTAL BREAKDOWNS JUST TO FIND OUT THAT YOU FUCKING LIED!"

At this point I'm screaming so loudly that if we weren't at the end of a football field, everyone in the school would have heard me. Still a few people might have. "You know Ashley, you kinda deserved it!" Avery says, standing up now too. She's getting mad as well, but not quite as mad as me yet. "NO I DIDN'T FUCKING DESERVE IT! NO ONE DESERVES TO THINK THAT THEY'RE RESPONSIBLE FOR SOMEONE ELSE'S DEATH!" I continue to scream at her. "WELL WHAT IF HE HAD DIED ASHLEY, BECAUSE HE COULD HAVE?" she starts screaming back at me. "THEN MAYBE I WOULD HAVE A REASON FOR BEING DOWN HERE!" 

All of a sudden, Avery's fist swings at my face and hits me in the jaw, hard. By the time I can turn around she's already walking to go back to where she was sitting. I don't let her get away that easy. I walk up behind her and grab her shoulder, spin her around, and punch her significantly harder than she punched me. We're about to get in a full on fist fight when I feel two strong arms pull me back from her.

"Ashley! What the fuck?!" Brendon shouts at me. When I realize it's him and become aware of what I'm doing, I force myself to calm down. I look around and see Avery with a bloody nose. Everyone else is simply watching in awe, other than Luke who's sort of looking at the ground. "Who the fuck is this?" Avery says looking at Brendon, still trying to act tough. "Let go of me Brendon. I'm not gonna fight her," I tell him honestly. A bit reluctantly, Brendon let's me go. I walk up to Avery and get a little closer than I should to her face.

"You're right Avery. You were always right. I fucked up that night at Luke's house. But I'm glad I got sent away, because my life is a hell of a lot better there than it ever could have been here. Luke," I say and look over at him, "You will forever, in my mind, be a cheating piece of shit. That being said, I'm sorry. What I did was wrong."

I begin to walk away from them, but before I'm gone I turn around once more to face Avery again. "Oh and Avery, you never would have beat me in a fist fight." The next thing I do isn't my proudest moment, but damn it felt good. Before we leave, I look Avery straight in the face and go: "You're a nasty attention whore. See you never, Kim." And then I walk away.

I know that calling her Kim was probably only funny to me and maybe Brendon, but I think of all the other things I could have called her (and of all the things I already DID call her) Kim Kardashian was definitely not the worst.

We're all the way back to the car before Brendon says amother word. "That was unexpected," he starts. I look up at him, definitely ashamed by my actions. "But you were right in one place," he continues. "Where?" I ask, curious to what his idea of the 'one thing I was right about' could be.

"You guys really are like the Kardashians."

AN// I was cracking up while writing this. I've never written "crazy bitch" Ashley before. This entire chapter was so ridiculous.