Our Fading Stars

1. First Days

Pete's favorites songlist
Track 1: Queen- Bohemian Rhapsody

Tiana's POV

"Sunday morning rain-" I turned the morning alarm off almost immediately. Pretending that I had just woken up, I scratched my bed-head, yawned, and stretched my arms out widely.

I dragged myself to the bathroom to wash my face. The dark heavy bags underneath my eyes showed my sleep deprivation as always. I could never get enough sleep even though I desperately wanted to. It was because of the nightmares. They were there, waiting for their time to feast on my soul at night.

He always haunted me in my dreams. I knew it wasn't the real him and that Peter had loved me even the second he died. I knew it was all me, and that it was happening because I blamed everything on myself.

Every night, the dream started with the beeping of his heart-beat in the ambulance on the way to the emergency room. My sight was too blurry to make out his face features and his face only looked of a mixture of black, white, and red. The emotions that were bottled up in my throat couldn't come out as if I wasn't the owner of my own body. I wanted to reach out to touch his hand and tell him to hold on, but I myself was dangerously hanging on to the edge of my life/death cliff.

With every blink of my eyes, the color of the ceiling changed, indicating that I was being moved from place to place. And after the fifth blink I was in the hospital room after finishing surgery. The room was quiet, a little too quiet, no one asking me if I was okay or what happened there. Only the deep depression of the room's atmosphere was enough for me to be mentally screaming mercy. I blinked for the sixth time and there he was. Peter's ghost with bloodshot eyes and shaggy grey-black hair. I could see his yellow teeth as he hissed his disgust towards me.

That damned ice cream, Tigerlily. It killed me. You killed me!

He got on top of me and started choking my neck. I could feel the veins of my neck standing out with the struggle of breathing, but didn't fret and endured his rage upon me. I deserved this, and if I could've died in place of Peter, I would have done it a hundred times, over and over again.

I always woke up when I almost lost my consciousness in the dream. Panting and sweating, I shifted under the covers until the alarm clock rang. It was my daily sleep routine; try to sleep, be murdered, wake up, and stay awake in fright for the rest of the night. No wonder the dark-circles made me look like the grim reaper. Now I only needed a scythe to make the look official.

I stripped off my clothes and took a shower in cool water. I didn't like hot showers; the humidity made the choking feeling come back from the night before. The cool water trickled down my face to the bottom of my feet and the sensation of the sweat being washed away made me feel fresh.

After I finished my shower, I put on the most normal clothes I could find, a gray hoodie that said "BORN TO BE" in big bold letters and a pair of faded jeans. I usually wore black t-shirts, black jeans, black make-up and everything black, and trust me, I wasn't gothic. (Not that I didn't like gothic people, they were awesome.) I just liked the fact that black had no color, but it was made of all the colors put into one.

Why did I put on normal clothes today? Because today was a historical day for 16-year-old Tiana Kings's life. I was going to school.

I was home-schooled since Peter died. I couldn't stand it outside, stand it when I saw the cars, roads, and especially ICE CREAM. The word pun, 'I scream ice cream' is not a joke to me. It breaks me down.

I had overcome my trauma with cars, and could ride them for a short time without puking now. But when I concentrated on them, I felt suffocated and trapped in a box.