It All Starts

It all starts with a car accident.

The music's blaring and Liz's hands are in the air, her hips swinging side to side (to the best of their ability in a strapped seatbelt)- The window's open and the self-created wind has her brown hair whipping at her face. Kaleb smiles widely and turns up the music a little louder as he catches Ryan, Taylor, and Ema, all dancing, hips bumping in the back seat.

The world was theirs. That's what he thought anyway.

But every good moment has to end sometime, and theirs happened to end with burning rubber, shattering glass, and simultaneous screams. The first thing Kaleb hears is crickets chirping, the first thing Kaleb see's is that everything's upside down. He lets his seatbelt loose and falls with a hard thud. He doesn't understand, and his thoughts just won't process completely.

And that's when he sees Taylor, her body flung between the center console, blood oozing from her head.

"Crap!" Kaleb says, running his fingers through his hair, blood staining his fingers as he searches for a pulse in an already dead girl. "No!" and tears are burning his eyes as he stares towards Ryan's limp body.

Then his eyes caught the airbag, "Dammit!" He screams, fingers the rubble of his car please let it still be there, please dear god- please His fingers come up empty and he's fumbling to get out of the car and to the other side because the airbags are crushing Liz.

He's screaming and cursing and crying as he fights with the airbag, to where he knows her body is. "Liz!" He's screaming and screaming until it sounds like a cursed mantra, begging for some type of response.

"Kaleb?" a soft voice from behind him calls, and there's Ema, brown hair matted with blood and a pocket knife shoved into her thigh. "I-it hurts."

"Ema," Kaleb says and he rushes, to the best of his ability scooping her up into his arms, blood staining his lips as he kisses the crown of her forehead. His brown eyes lock with hers as it drifts to her leg. "Ema…you love Liz right?" his voice is quiet.

It hurts so bad, her leg does, it's like lightning bolts are zapping that one spot and circulating through her veins to make EVERYTHING hurt. But she nods, because she does love Liz. She loves Liz, Kaleb, Taylor, Ryan, Tristan- all of them. But…does that matter?

"You'd do anything to save her, right?" His eyes are intense and his voice has more urgency in it. The memories flash through Ema's eyes so hard she has to close them. Dear God, they were all dead aren't they- but, Liz? Was she alive?

"Yes," Ema says and nods at the same time, because she's not sure how to do one without the other at the moment.

Then his hands wrap around the hitch of the blade softly, and he looks into her one last time. "Ema…forgive me okay?" and he yanks the blade from her tender flesh.

In a fluid movement of colors, blood rushes from the wound and a scream hurtles its way out of her throat and tears stain her face in a way the blood never quite could. She watches Kaleb's form rush over to the passengers' side door, a bloody blade popping a big white marshmallow.

"Liz." Ema assumes the previous conversation forgotten, before letting the pain consume her and letting stars form behind her closed eyelids.

After a couple weeks, Kaleb and Ema's bodies are back to normal, only leaving the hospital with a few scars, Kalebs on the side of his head, and Ema's across her thigh.

"It doesn't seem quite right."

"What doesn't?"

"That we leave perfectly fine, and they die."

"Yeah."

They stay out of school for a while, not together of course, neither one of them can quite look at the other one yet because there's always the thought of I was driving and if the blade wasn’t in my leg. So they just stay apart, trying desperately to deal with what's eating at them.

The forever present absence.

The two of them walk through the doors at their school exactly three months after the accident, just in time to see the janitors cleaning out the lockers and removing the names from the wall of students.

The brunette is a second from collapsing, tears already blurring her vision as Kaleb grabs her hand and drags her past the lockers.

She notices he can't hold her hand now without crushing her fingers.

"Tristan's found a new group of friends," Ema comments at their lunch table, and Kaleb stares to the empty seat beside him, where Liz should be. "He hangs out with Jamie and his friends in the chess club." her eyes drift around the very empty table. Tristan use to hang out with them, but that was before the crash.

"Two is definitely lonelier than six," Ema says quietly, eyes dropping down to her salad.

"And they said one was the loneliest number." Kaleb says malice and despair dripping off every word.

"It still is." Ema says even softer, so soft she's not even sure she said it, but Kaleb doesn't hear her regardless, so it really doesn't matter if she said it or not.

Their acting teacher is actually the one who breaks Kaleb, who drifts through school nonchalantly, like he's his regular old self, even if his words are slightly bitter now. He tells Kaleb to play a zombie, and when Kaleb's face has no emotion, arms out-stretched, he goes on a tangent, that he really shouldn't have gone on.

"No Kaleb, for cripes sake you're not a robot, you're a zombie!" The teacher says throwing his arms around for emphasis "Pretend you're angry! Furious! Like Liz!"

It's strange how such a small three-lettered word can bring someone like Kaleb Oliver to his knees.

It's raining when he comes over to her house for the first time, well, more like in her house for the first time. She watches him through cautious eyes as he stares up at her from her red bean bag chair on the floor.

"She loved the rain," Ema says absently.

"Storms mostly," Kaleb adds, his gaze drifting to the window. "I wish you wouldn't talk about her. Ryan and Taylor died, you know."

"I know," Ema says quietly, her words choking her. "Just…she was my best friend." She turns her eyes towards her flower-printed bedspread, her fingers folding, unfolding, refolding- constantly moving.

"Think Ryan would write a song about this, us- w-what happened I mean?" Ema says offering a small pathetic attempt at a smile, Kaleb is kind of scary now. "And Taylor would sing it?"

"It's more like a song Tristan would write," Kaleb says running his fingers through his hair, his fingers skimming his scar. "And for some twisted reason, Liz would like it."

"W-why are you here?" Ema says her eyes searching for him in the dark bedroom.

"…The RV still smells like her." he says, and Ema thinks she might cry.

Time seems to blur together, in a series of what was, what is, and what never will be, but they press their lips together anyway. Lightning lights up the sky.

It's two days- later Kaleb asks her if she wants to hang out with him sometime.

It’s five days after that Ema sees Liz.

She's sitting in his RV wearing one of Kaleb's flannel shirts, and it's strange that the only thing she can think of is did Liz wear this one? She thinks in maybe another life- a different life, she'd be wearing someone else's shirt- like maybe Ryan or Tristan's. She wonders if Taylor ever had the opportunity to wear a guy's shirt like this…she wonders until she feels kind of sick.

"Kaleb?" Ema says quietly, she's quieter around Kaleb, she's afraid it will hurt him if she rambles like she use to. She's afraid to be herself, so the words that she would usually say swarm around in her head like a bunch of angry bees.

"Hm?" He looks up from his guitar and Ema thinks he looks gentle, beautiful even.

Whatever question Ema was going to ask, it gets lost as she sits up on her knees- leans slightly off the bed and kisses him full on the mouth.

When she opens her eyes, the lights are out and she has goose bumps crawling up her arm.

"Did it cold in here?" Kaleb questions, getting up to fiddle with the light switch.

Ema doesn't answer, she's too busy watching Liz glare at her from the corner of the room.

"Mr. Lane," Ema says sitting on the counselor's couch, twiddling with her hands. "do you believe in, you know, ghosts or something? Because sometimes when I'm alone, or with Kaleb, sometimes- sometimes-"

Stop talking Ema, he’ll think you’re crazy...

"Sometimes, what Ema?" Lane questions, raising an eyebrow waiting for her to continue.

"Sometimes…."

People don’t hear ghosts Ema...let alone see them.

"Sometimes, I think I see Liz," Ema says, but her voice is less strong from when she started, because she knows, Liz's in there with her, even if, at this moment, at this time, she can't see her.

"Well, that's understandable," Lane says sitting forward in his hanging chair, just a bit. "Liz was your best friend. Have you seen Ryan, or Taylor maybe?"

"No," Ema says quietly. "Just Liz."

A smile brims his lips suddenly.

"Well, if anyone was going to haunt anyone, it would be Liz wouldn't it?"

Ema stops listening after that.

"You miss her don't you?" Ema says, breaking the silence, she watches his face transform from calm, to angry, to devastated, to something relatively calm again.

He decides not to say anything, just pretend it didn’t happen, right Kaleb? He kisses her on the crown of her forehead, and walks away.

"She misses you too."

She's sitting in her room, brushing her hair the next and last time she sees Liz. The dark figure with sharp amazing blue eyes, brown hair, and blue streaks, sits directly in front of her, eyes not exactly glaring anymore. She's so clear, Ema swears she's right in front of her.

"If anyone…has to see him like this, I guess- I'm glad it’s you." Ema thinks Liz's voice shimmers.

"Liz…he misses you so much." and there are tears blurring her vision, making Liz less and less clear by the second. "I miss you so much."

A shimmery hand reaches up and touches a brown lock, Ema cant feel her- but she watches as a strand of her hair moves, as if by magic, behind her ear.

"Will you take care of him Ema?" tears of black sparkle down an already sparkling face, Ema thinks Liz's the most beautiful angel she's ever seen. "You'll stop him won’t you?"

"Stop him from what?"

But Liz's already disappearing.

"Stop him from what? Liz?" Ema squeals, rising to a stand on her bed, as if that will stop her. She looks down at her wrists and cringes at the little red lines that have formed there. She's not sure if she herself left the mark, or if Liz was leaving her a message of some kind that needed to be deciphered.

She just grabs her dad's keys off the end table and leaves.

Ema finds Kaleb in the bathroom of his RV, blood paints everything and if it wasn't so damn nightmarish, it might be kind of artistic. It was on the sink, on the floor, all down his wrists and arms, big clunks of it that looked like he spilled jelly all over the place. Ema would think it was if it wasn't for the heavy smell of iron, and you know, the fact he wasn't moving.

She rolls him over, in an attempt to, she's not quite sure what, but she's shaking him, and blood is staining her fingers, and then she's screaming, “KalebKalebKalebKaleb!”

He opens his eyes, but she looks blurry.

"I killed them all you know." his voice is quiet, too quiet. "Taylor visits me sometimes, she tells me all the things she never got to do. And Ryan…Ryan plays. He plays the saddest songs."

"K-Kaleb"

"But..but" he gasps as if talkings to much effort, but he has too much to say and continues anyway "Liz never visits me. She never fucking visits me."

Ema watches as a tear rolls down his cheek, she's not sure if it's his, or her own.

"It's okay," Ema says pulling his arm over her shoulder, blood staining her neck, and running down her chest. She gets him into a sitting position and he groans.

"That stings." his eyes are closed again.

"We're going to get you to a hospital."

By the grace of God, Ema gets him into her father's car and buckled up. She gets in and starts the engine, hands shaking, mascara and blood staining her face.

"How'd you know?" Kaleb says head pressed against the cool window "How'd you know that I was-am-dying?"

"Liz told me." Ema’s eyes never leave the road.

It all ends with a car accident.