bruises // heathers

three // picture, picture

"So, your name is really Giselle?" Asked a girl with reddish hair.

"Yeah, but most people just call me Elle."

"That's cute! I wish I had a cute name like that!" Squealed the taller brunette.

"What are your names?" Elle asked.

"Lindsay Duke." The small, reddish haired girl said. She had auburn hair, and it barely brushed her shoulders. Her eyes were a pretty shade of blue. She looked a lot like her mother, who Giselle had identified as the green Heather.

"Ashlee McNamara." The tall brunette said. She had her mother's brown eyes but she also had brown hair that went to the middle of her skinny back instead of a dirty blonde as her mother had.

"Your guys' names are way nicer than Giselle." Elle insisted, brushing back a blonde curl loose from her ponytail.

"Yeah but everyone is named Ashlee or Lindsay. No one else is named Giselle." Ashlee pouted. "That's what we're jealous of."

"Well I mean you guys probably know about your dads." Elle complained, before realizing that is not what you are supposed to say to new potential friends. She started to nervously rub her right arm.

Elle chastised herself mentally, wondering why she had to make everything so unbearably awkward.

The two girls didn't respond, just sort of looked at each other sadly. Then Ashlee, as her mother would have, changed the conversation to something cheerier and asked Giselle why they were moving back to Sherwood. This led to more and more discussions spanning a long time, maybe about two solid hours of talking. Elle could hear her mother's voice raise at times, at others she could hear her mother break down and cry.

"What do you think they're talking about?" Ashlee asked after Veronica sobbed particularly loud, all while brushing her hair for Elle to show her what a fishtail braid was.

"My dad." Elle answered.

"What about him?" Lindsay asked, her voice kind of having that same sassy tone as her mother's, unintentionally as well.

"My mom won't tell me anything about him. I don't even know his name." Elle sighed, dropping her head down into her folded arms on the thick carpet of Ashlee's bedroom floor.

"Well we don't know a whole lot about our dads." Ashlee said. "My dad was named Kurt, and Lindsay's dad was named Ram."

"What happened to them?"

"They killed themselves in a repressed homosexual suicide pact." Ashlee answered, shrugging her shoulders as she said this. As if that explanation made complete sense.

"What does that mean?" Elle, filled with naivety from her overprotective mother, asked.

"They were secretly in love, but couldn't be together. So they killed themselves." Lindsay explained, annoyed to an extent at Elle's innocence. "It's kind of romantic, you know?"

"That's terrible, I'm so sorry." Elle apologized, feeling badly for complaining.

"I have an idea!" Ashlee yelled excitedly.

"Spill." Lindsay demanded playfully.

"In the attic, my mom has her high school yearbooks. Maybe there'll be a picture of your mom with some guys and we can figure out who your dad is." Ashlee said to Elle.

"That's actually smart, Ash, I didn't know you had it in you." Lindsay teased, opening the door to Ashlee's room and walking down the hallway with Ashlee and Elle following.

Ashlee opened a door revealing a dark, narrow staircase that, presumably, led to the attic. Lindsay pushed her way in front of Ashlee, snatching up a flashlight on a stair and turning it on to light up the small stairway. She began to walk up the stairs, having to coax Elle to follow her and Ashlee. The door closed, engulfing the three girls in the dusty smell of the attic. Ashlee flipped on a light switch and the attic was now visible to Elle. It was empty, filled mostly with boxes. But there was a bookshelf filled with yearbooks from Heather's entire school experience, and the part of Ashlee's that had already started. Next to it was a cork board filled with random pictures.

Lindsay walked over and picked up the book that read Westerburg High 1989-1990 on the spine. She opened the book up and sat on the attic floor.

The first two pages had read across the top In Loving Memory of Heather Chandler, Kurt Kelly and Ram Sweeney.

On the first page, there was a picture of a very beautiful girl with strawberry blonde hair and blue eyes, wearing red. There were two boys, in letterman jackets on the second page. Both boys were brunette, but Elle couldn't make out their eye colors before Lindsay flipped to the next page. The first few pages of Westerburg's yearbook was always dedicated to the graduating class. Then the juniors, sophomores and lastly freshmen before going into the staff and extracurricular activities.

There was a picture of Veronica, decked out in blue, with three girls. The girl who killed herself in red, Ashlee's mom in yellow and Lindsay's in green. The four girls were kind of smiling but it seemed a little bit forced. Elle's eyes scanned the pages in front of her but couldn't find her mother with any boys but a group photo with the other girls and the boys who killed themselves.

Elle flipped the page and searched the newly opened pages. Her eyes drew to a picture of her mother, laughing, with a boy, who was also laughing, wearing a trench coat and holding a slushee. It was as if they didn't know that their picture was being taken, it seemed so candid and natural the way they stood together. The boy's one arm was protectively around Veronica's waist, her one arm around his shoulder. But their touch was not friendly. It was loving.

"I think that's him." Elle said, pointing at the trench coat kid entangled with her mother. She flipped a few pages ahead where there were the actual school-taken pictures of all the students. There were many boys but none had the same shaggy hair that curled awkwardly. The same blue eyes. She instantly found him, on the first page of seniors. She pointed to a photo, then read his name off the list. "Jason Dean."