Welcome to The Family (INVADER ZIM)

Four: All in blue

Now they stood on fresh grass beside her parents' graves at a memorial park, Ivy in a black stretch skirt, boots and a black shirt. Most of the attendees wore black or navy. Her parent's coworkers stood somberly behind the minister and the row of chairs; their closer friends looked miserable on the gray folding chairs, eyes swollen with tears. There was her mom's yoga coach; there, her father's golf friends. Ivy's classmates and her pack of stable brats had shown, but all she could do at the church service and now at the grave sites was register their presence with unblinking eyes.
Two matching mahogany caskets were poised above the opened rectangles, flowers heaped on them in equal amounts. 

My parents' bodies are in there, she thought, trying to block out the images that formed. She shuddered, feeling sick to her stomach, wishing the service was over and never wanting it to end. Wanting to be suspended here in time, so she wouldn't have to go on without them. Her mom. Her dad. This is the part that's the nightmare. I'll wake up from this soon. I swear I will. 
A thin-faced, wrinkled, old minister Ivy didn't know going on about ashes and dust until she wanted to scream at him to shut up. Tears streamed down her face and she choked back a sob.
Her newfound uncle stood on her left, and a woman who had arrived late at the service and had been introduced to her simply as Marie stood beside Professor Membrane. Ivy assumed she was her uncle's assistant, but no one had said so. She was very good-looking. Her clothes were expensive. Her heels were like the ones she had seen in magazines-over five hundred dollars a pair.

How can I even notice such things when I'm burying my parents?

The woman craned her neck forward and looked at her. The heat rose to her face and she grew even more ashamed, as if she knew she'd been checking her out.

The minister raised a hand and intoned "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil."
As if on cue, a cloud trailed over the sun, and the sky above Ivy and the others darkened. Heads looked up.
It began to sprinkle.
Soft murmurs began to spread throughout the crowd and the minister looked up, temporarily losing his place. Umbrellas fwapped open and people moved in close, some sharing with others, and one of the attorneys from Daddy's office held his umbrella above the minister's head, who said, "Thank you," and pressed on.
The sky darkened as black, smoky clouds rose into thunderheads; lightning crackled inside them, and the sky rolled like a kettledrum. 
It began to rain in earnest. A few people ducked bare heads apologetically at Ivy and began to leave. 
She didn't feel the rain; she didn't feel anything...
The flowers on the caskets were being drenched, the ink on the florist cards blurring.
Time passed, she didn't know how much of it, but the rain turned into a storm; Ivy couldn't hear the words of the minister at all. Yet he droned on, completely ignoring everything else, oblivious that now most of the attendees were now fleeing to their cars.
The clouds rumbled more intensely; then suddenly, without warning, a bolt of lightning shot down from the sky and hit an evergreen tree about a hundred yards away. To a chorus of surprised shouts, it burst into flame, which was quickly dampened by the oncoming torrents of rain. Nevertheless, Ivy was jostled by the electric charge and felt the heat. Chaos broke out; there were screams as people ran in the opposite direction. Soon there was nothing but smoke to prove it had happened at all, and then a few burned limbs on an otherwise healthy tree. But the terror of the moment had ruined the service.
To the few stalwarts who remained, the thin, gray-faced funeral director in his black suit stepped forward with his hands extended.
"I'm very sorry," he announced, "but we really must leave. It's dangerous to be out here with the lightning." He gestured at the tree. "Especially with the metal tips and spines on these umbrella."
He walked over to Ivy and took her elbow. "I'm so very sorry." He looked like he meant it.
She couldn't think of anything to say. She looked uncomfortably at the caskets. 
"We'll lower them after it stops raining," he said.
Then she was being herded somewhere. It was the limo; and the person who was escorting her was the stranger,  Marie. She put her hand gently on the crown of her head and said, "Duck down."
She did so. The door on the other side opened, and uncle Membrane got it. Marie slid in next to Ivy and shut the door.
Professor Membrane sighed unhappily. "Do you think anyone will come to the reception?"
"We'll handle it," Marie announced comfortingly. 
"The professor and I." 
Taking his cue from her, Ivy's uncle nodded.
"Yes. We will. I'll keep the guests away from you." Uncle Membrane soothed.
They rode the rest of the distance in silence. Seated so closely beside Marie, Ivy smelled the woman's clothes and the faintest whiff of perfume. The limo was redolent with wet wool and mud, and Ivy knew that for the rest of her life, those odors would remind her of this hideous day.
Ivy closed her eyes, trying to breathe. It was tight in the limo and the woman was sitting too close to her. Their bodies were touching and she was embarrassed, but it seemed ridiculous to upset about that now. Of course, so much of today had been ridiculous.