STARDUST ⭑ LUKE PATTERSON

one

"WE GOTTA STOP DOING THIS."

"Are you joking?" Dawn scoffs. "This makes me feel alive."

"You're dead, dingus."

Dawn only tsks at her best friend in response. Her bouncy coils of kinky hair moves with each shake of her head, dark brown--almost black--eyes still gleaming with, what can only be described as, life. Once again, Dawn Knoll is deceased, but she had a liveliness to her that Death couldn't even take.

On the other hand, one not even on the same body, (I'm talking other person, other world, other dimension), was Emerald Rosario. A part of her was dead long before she took her last breath.

"Yes, I know we're dead, Emmy," Dawn drawls out, pulling at a curl before letting it launch back up to its rightful place. "But that's what makes walking around here so fun."

"This is a high school!" A smelly kid with greasy hair walks right through Emmy, the latter shuddering and gagging on his stench. "People kill themselves to never have to come back here, and you wanna roam around here for fun?"

"You don't have any right to speak--"

"We're both minorities. How dare you try to revoke my rights."

Dawn slaps a hand over Emmy's face, making the Filipino girl feel as if her flat nose was only going to get flatter at the brute action.

"You think having fun is sitting at the house, playing that rickety old piano. No one ever comes to visit anymore because your music scares them away," Dawn whines.

"I don't even play that bad!"

"Yeah," Dawn says, "but you play sad and that might be worse."

"Go fawn over your stinky boys then," Emmy declares. "They can't even see you anyways."

"And it's a damn shame too. I'm so hot."

Emmy rolls her eyes as Dawn disappears from her sight to reappear at a very crowded lunch table. They do this every Tuesday. Dawn thinks it's not healthy for Emmy to sit by the dusty piano everyday. Supposedly, she needed sunlight. Emmy would argue that she's not a plant. Dawn would tell her what a blessing that would be to not hear her speak.

That's just how they worked.

Dawn was the always-happy-never-sad person, and Emmy was, well she wasn't that sad--just sadder than most. Maybe it was the way the two of them died. Dawn died back in 2002, at the ripe age of 18 in a car accident where her friend was driving them home from a party drunk. She's been reckless since her teenage angst flared up when her hormones first kicked in.

Emmy never really talked about her death. All Dawn really knew was she was 17 and it was in 1995, and Emmy would trail off, and then later in the night, when the moonlight beams in through the broken windowpane, she would play the same melody of the same song she always did.

Dawn blips back over to Emmy, a silly smile gracing her face. "It wouldn't kill you to loosen up, bitch."

"Wouldn't you like to know what kills me, huh?" A small smile pulls at the corners of Emmy's full lips.

"At this point, I'm starting to think you're just an immortal witch."

"Possibly."

Dawn's eyes fall into a playful glare before her vision focuses on something going over Emmy's shoulder.

Following her gaze, they both watched two girls standing by some lockers, one with frizzy hair and kind smile and the other with a questionable outfit, and small-dog energy exuding from her petite frame.

"Look at that," Dawn sighs. The girl with the big hair dreamily looked over at a blonde, white boy with the most tacky varsity jacket Emmy has ever seen. "Don't you miss that about high school? Crushing on the most popular boy with the prettiest eyes?"

A sharp tug ripped at Emmy's chest before she redirected her eyes to the floor. She shrugs. "Nope."

"My bad." Dawn blows an immature raspberry before tugging playfully at Emmy's lavender dyed hair. "I forgot The Great Emerald Rosario was incapable of feeling such emotions as love."

I wish, the purple-haired girl thought. Instead, she scoffs and says, "And don't you forget it."