TW: Major character death, mentions of sexual assault, gore, overdose/drug and alcohol abuse

"Elena," Cecilia whispered, her voice wobbling against the stark silence. "Promise me something. That we will always be like this, yeah? That nothing will ever tear us apart?"

The other girl's hand snaked through the bright blue sheets mounted between them and she stuck her pinky out from her palm like a twig, thin and crooked. She stared back at Elena so earnestly, eyes gleaming beneath the dim, curved plastic cover of the nightlight.

The way Cecilia's unblinking eyes shone struck Elena in the chest, knocking the air out of her lungs. Her bottom lip trembling, Elena had to bite down hard to keep it from shaking too noticeably.

Oh, Cecilia was completely opening herself up while Elena couldn't even make the most simple of promises .  She knew things would change, very drastically and very soon.

"Sure, Cece," she murmured, casting her gaze down to trace the red swirls sewn into the blanket. She coiled her pinky around Cecilia's and stared for a moment at their intertwined hands.

If only it could be this way forever.

After that night, there were things she wished she could forget. Her first time- when she was lucid enough to realize she was hooking up with her friend's boyfriend but hadn't been sober enough to care. The scathing words Cecilia spat out at her when Elena told her she was leaving again, this time for good. The time she'd seen her friend get struck by her boyfriend, her already bruised lip bursting open once more like a popped seam.

The number of regrets she seemed to carry stretched across her shoulder blades and weighed her down, dragging her into oblivion.

And the worst of it all, the most tragic part of what occurred was that Elena would forget the one thing she needed to remember the most, the one thing that tilted the town onto its side: how she died.