Not Your Rival

Dedicated to my mom who came up with the title. 

Copyright 2020 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, except in the case of brief quotations, without permission in writing from the author.

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author. 

Warning: Death As A Major Theme, Mild Profanity, Mention of Underage Drug Use (Don't do drugs. They're bad.)

Last week of summer break, and I'm standing at my best friend's grave. The sun is sinking into the rolling hills, casting golden light everywhere. The white steeple of the old red brick church is awash in light. There is a dainty iron bench. The bustle of the day is fading into the quiet hum of night. I want to paint this in perfect delicate watercolor just so I can rip it apart. The cicadas drone in the trees scattered throughout the cemetery mocking that Bells is dead and the world doesn't give a damn.

                                        "In Loving Memory of Isabella Katherine Corden, 

                                              Born March 4, 2005, Died April 10, 2020, 

                                                                 Beloved Daughter " 

is stark white against the gleaming black gravestone. Bright green grass is just starting to grow over the red dirt covering her grave.

I can almost see Bells. Her curly blond hair, that she hated because it "makes me look like a doll, Liam!" her shy smile, over-sized clear glasses, brown eyes, her height. Mr. Corden tried to make her a basketball star when we were little. She was good. But not that good. Her real talent was always school. She always had a book and used to ask me to make up math problems so she could solve them. Such a nerd. I shake my head and smile.

But she's gone. I remember her visitation. Me standing there in a borrowed suit of my dad's. My dress shoes scuffing the cheap linoleum. The fluorescent light washed everybody out, no matter their skin tone. My dad, on edge, watching me. Worried 'cause I was her best friend. Carlos was there clutching the braided bracelet Bells gave him for their two month anniversary--no one was watching him. I wondered where his parents were. Flowers everywhere. Bells' giant shiny closed casket because no one wants to see a girl that burned to death in a house fire. "Amazing Grace" was playing. No one speaks above a whisper. The soft chatter was like a wave. I'd swallow around a lump the size of the basketballs me and Bells would play hoops with. Knowing death would always smell like lilacs. Not knowing what to say, not knowing what to think, not knowing how to feel.

Bells was cheerful and could make anybody smile.

She talked too much, but I didn't mind this year.

Jason and Daniel, my other close friends all through elementary and middle school, had ditched me for new people.

So I ate lunch in the bathroom. It wasn't that bad. No one else was in there during lunch. It smelled kinda nice from the vaping the stoner boys did earlier. I made school friends in three of my classes. We talked in class. And that was it.

My mom split when I was real little, so it's just me and my dad. (Last I heard my mom's on the other side of Kentucky.) My dad got promoted at work, so he's gone all of the time now. I used to tell him everything. Now we never talk. When we did I didn't know what to say. Maybe this is just growing up? I don't know.

Before freshman year, I didn't know how many types of silence there are: the silence of coming home to an almost always empty house, the little bubble of silence that surrounds you when everyone else has someone to talk to, the silence that in the backseat exists when Daniel's mom drives me home from art club and basketball practice with Daniel because he never told her he ditched me.