E
vanescence ~
*
It'd been years since they had actually sat together as they were sitting now, jotting down ideas and making plans, it seemed so long ago.
Really, it came as quite a shock to Ryan, as he sat there lost in the haze of his memories, absently flicking at the glass of his drink, hardly hearing the sound that it made with each clunk made by the back of his finger. It had been high school when last they'd all sat together, packed around that lunch room table for the last time, just a few weeks before graduation. Making plans and exchanging numbers—though, everyone had had each other's contacts for as long as they could remember. It was just a safety, security thing, just to make sure, ya know?
But all of it had been in vain with the coming of that last week left. To have everything around them, everything that was their world, come crashing down so soon—so close to that last day that they were supposed to have together. It wasn't fair.
Five faces were around that table now, counting, of course, his own; though it was supposed to be six, just as it had been back in school. Even after all these years, it was still so hard to believe that that one face amongst them was really—gone.
"What do you think Ryan?"
It was Becka's voice that finally broke through his haze, and the warmth of her hand as she put it over his, atop the table. She was smiling to him, then, just as she always had when they where younger, though her smile, he could see, had changed, just a much as he was sure that his own had over the years. He blinked as she gave his hand a squeeze before releasing it and moving to sit back in the booth, snuggling into it before lifting her own glass to her lips and taking a sip.
She was the one who had changed the most, from what he could see. Beyond the things that could physically been seen about her—the mere presence of her as she walked into a room—Everything about her hand changed. But for the better or for the worst, Ryan couldn't quite decide; not just yet.
Way back when in school, she had been a skinny little nobody with the thick glasses and the tangles of average brown curls that reached all the way down to her waist, if not longer. Freckles dotting her cheeks and across the bridge of her nose; not in the least bit developed. Though, even then he had thought her attractive, with her bubbly and sugar-sweet disposition. No one could do wrong by her, she was just too kindly and forgiving. The perfect picture of innocence. And even now he could see it in her if he looked past the contacts that replaced the glasses. Her face no less narrow than it had been back then, but more subtle, more pale; the paleness of her complexion only further emphasized by the dark lip color that she wore, the smoky effect of her makeup as she wore it around her eyes and her long locks hacked into an almost bob dyed a glossy black. Such a drastic change from the pretty little—nymphet that she once used to be. Now she resembled something more of a gothic fae, something that haunted the drug-induced dreamers and entranced them all at once. But she sparkled, with a radiance that no one else seemed to notice, she sparked.
"About what?" Ryan asked, finally speaking up as his eyes narrowed, struggling to focus as they were forced to look back into reality. He felt bad now, for not listening to what all everyone had been talking about, being a part of the group as he still was; despite his feeling—detached.
"About the party thing," spoke up one of the others with a sheepish grin. "You know, going back to what we used to do when we were younger. Acting our shoe-size rather than our age."
Everyone laughed at that, Ming-Yuu rolling her eyes as she pulled the big serving try of sampled appetizers back her way. "Easier for some than others," she said as she picked and nibbled at one of the remaining mozzarella sticks.
"Oh, come on!" laughed Jess, pulling the platter black towards himself with one hand, his half guzzled drink still clutched tight in the other. "Who are we kidding? We're still as childish as we used to be. And if anything, this meeting here in itself should be testament enough to that."
"Not to mention the subject matter," said Becka with a smile, glancing across all the other faces around the table. Maintaining her dark and enticing smile, she looked again to Ryan who still looked, unflinching, at her. "So what do you think?" She asked again. "It'll be just like the old days. Costumes and candy, tricks and games."
"And Becka already has some things in mind!" Ming-Yuu chirped up, proud of the fact that there was something about her best friend that she knew before all the others.
Everyone else exchanged glances for a moment before they all shift their sights to Becka, looking at her puzzled as she toyed with the rim of her glass, her long, painted nail gently dancing along its edge. She nodded, a faint twinge of rouge to her cheeks as she kept her eyes lowered, that little bit of shyness from her youth finally peeking through.
Of course, being that Becka and Ming-Yuu had practically been born on the same night and their mothers best friends even before their two were a thought, it was written in their fate, as Becka would have said it, that the two of them be BFF's for all times. And they liked that. It was the thing that made the two of them unique in the group, rather than their simply being labeled as the "cute chick" and the "ditz." This was why Ming-Yuu had been so adamant about transferring to Becka's college when she had found she could take the same classes there as she'd already been taking elsewhere.
Though, there were other reasons, too, reasons that neither of them spoke of, much less anyone else in the clique. It was why they'd all drifted apart those few weeks before graduation, and the reason why they'd all but lost each other until just recently.
"Liric," Ryan murmured beneath his breath, his eyes still locked hard onto Becka's face who only nodded solemnly as he spoke the name aloud.
Everyone fell silent at that, as if death had touched them all in that instant, rendering them motionless and without a voice. All eyes seemed to avert then, as if there was a sudden wave of embarrassment or shame that had overwhelmed them all. Ryan could sense it, the pain and the grief and the sorrow—so thick it could be cut with a knife.
"So I wasn't the only one thinking of Liric," he said aloud, his narrowed eyes watched them all shiver at the mention of her name. Just how long had it been since it all had happened? He couldn't quite recall. But he could feel the pain of it, still, as if it had only happened yesterday. "I'm not ashamed to say that I've been thinking of her, and none of you should feel ashamed either." Looking again to Becka, he waited until she finally raised her eyes to meet with his at long last, blinking slowly, trying to avert them again. Though her efforts were to no avail.
Instead she pursed her dark lips, nodding in the hopes that it would bring him to break his hold on her. Her own cross to bear was being reveled, and she could feel it. Like a great and unseen burden that was being lifted from her shoulders she could feel it, and she breathed in deep, as if she hadn't breathed in years. It was why she'd went away, why they'd all gone their separate ways and had stayed away for so long. She knew it, Ryan knew it, and the both of them were ready to confess to it. "It's why I wanted to do this," she confessed at long last, turning the glass around slowly atop the table, her eyes still locked with Ryan's. "Liric always liked those half-assed parties we threw together. All the games, the childish antics. It was her Christmas, to say the least." Taking another breath, Becka forced a smile, turning to look at long last to Ming-Yuu, who sat now nibbling at her lip. But it was only as Becka offered to her a reassuring smile that Ming-Yuu returned the gesture. "For years we'd just forgotten about the one thing we all used to love doing together. The one thing that gave us more joy than shopping sprees and weekend clubbing."
Everyone started to smile at that, save for Ryan, his expression still dour.
"I just couldn't go another year without doing what we all used to do, not because of something so stupid--!" The words had escaped her before she could think them, and she quieted herself before going on, giving herself time to think and gather before going on any further. With her hand she raised from her lap, she gave a surrendering wave, wordlessly asking them to forgive how her words had come out. "Not to say that what happened to Liric was stupid—though, in my opinion it was... I just--," Pausing again she breathed and offered another smile, dark strands falling into her face as she'd given a shake of her head. "I just think it tragic that we've stopped doing what we all loved to do together. I just think that we should make do with what we have and be narcissistically nostalgic for a time; even if only for a night. I even have ideas—things that I've been studying--,"
Ryan listened as Becka went on, recalling what all Ming-Yuu had told him only a few days prior when she had tracked him down at long last to talk to him. She'd confessed to him then and there her other reasons for transferring mid-semester as she had, and what all Becka had gotten her into once she was there and settled. She confessed how she'd seen, back in high-school, the way Becka had, in an instant, been entranced by this new little clique in school, one that none of them had really paid much attention to before the accident. How they had called themselves a coven, though, to Ming-Yuu, she had thought nothing more of them then than just another clique spouting poetry that they referred to as spells and incantations, and speaking of mixtures and concoctions that they called potions and the like. She confided in him that she hadn't thought much of them then, an had told herself that it was nothing more than a comfort and that Becka would be out of it just as quick as she was in once she was past her initial state of mourning.
