taz walker. 12.

I've never been happy that Nǎinai's dead until now. She shouldn't have had to watch that. I shouldn't have had to watch that - but I'm alive, and she's not, and now Tune isn't either.

I think I'm going to throw u-


There it is, yesterday's lunch - all we can afford, I can hear her in the back of my head telling me off for wasting a meal that she could've eaten instead. Tune, so clear. So corporeal, even in death.

She's got blue lips, purple veins and sunken eyes by the time she gets back. A pallid look to her. Tune without her fire, drowned in a lake by a white boy - I'm not a violent person, not confrontational at all, that was Tune's thing. But I got somewhere close to vengeful when I watched that masked kid hold her down until she stopped thrashing and sent her body to float down the river as Carly's flew into the sky.

Tune deserved better than that. They're all saying fifth place is a goddamn miracle, like it's something to be celebrated - an achievement, a legacy for girls from Twelve. Above and beyond. And I know the world hates to see a girl from Twelve win, and the world hated seeing a girl like Tune get close, and Twelve hated seeing a girl like Tune win until she didn't and they took credit for her loss anyway. But I knew Tune. And she was all of those things - rotten, angry, mean. To me, even. But I knew Tune in all of her forms - good, bad, tribute, citizen. And she deserved better, god damn it.

I've started picking at the beds of my fingernails. Well - no, that's not accurate. I stopped for a while. Started it when Nǎinai passed away and Tune said I was a big dumb baby and scolded me for crying, but then she'd bring me band-aids she'd nicked from the local healer's medical bag. That's the thing about Tune: she was awful on the outside, and good on the inside. Sometimes. But it was enough, god damn it, it was enough to deserve more than that.

We put her in the ground and I can't watch as they shovel dirt over her casket. TUNE WALKER, 91 carved in stone. I just stare at my fingernails and fidget, fidget, fidget, letting the stinging sensation drown out the tears I know she wouldn't want me to cry.

But Tune's not here anymore to tell me to stop. Gone is my one and only cousin, my one and only friend - though she had a funny way of showing it. But I know I meant as much to her as she did to me, because I watched her find me in that Andrew kid from Eleven and treat him just as she had I. Kind, in her own messed up way of showing it.

I am unease. Tune was my foundation, my back-up plan, my always. And now she's not. I am adrift, released from the promise of her and how she'd always be there - even if she was just in the background, even if she was just in the back of my head. You ever had a family member that wasn't your sibling but felt like it? We were like twins, kismet. Two complete opposites that just worked.

And now I am just,

Taz

sharing the surname and blood of a dead girl that's caked between my finger-nails.