Parker Gautier // District Six // Fin

"Hey, Sis! How long can the brain go without oxygen?"

A teasing voice reaches her ears, ebbing and flowing like the landscape of photos in the dark room her parents let her create. She knew who the voice was, obnoxious and filled with shit eating grins as if they didn't already know she was done with trying to be like her mother or father.

"Six minutes."

Porter moves past her shoulder as she lifts up a photo of Maverick smoking a cigarette behind the school, silently brooding like always. Where Porter goes, Preston follows. It's only a second before she can hear Preston lightly shove Porter with a loud laugh upon his tongue. She's dealt with this for twelve years now and two nosy twelve year olds were not what she needed right now. Dropping the photo back onto the table in front of her, eyes scanning the rest of the film that's slowly developing, she takes notice of her twin baby brothers and their stupid grins as Porter holds out a photo of Scarlet Hyde. Immediately, the words on her lips slip.

"Aren't you two supposed to be terrorizing the graveyard or something?" Fingers reach for the photograph of Scarlet Hyde as the guilt resides like a heavy wave of nausea in her chest. "And give me that shithead." Clutching the photo to her chest for a moment, she can feel the heat reaching her cheeks as memories of a drunken kiss and a lingering shame of rejection fills her head. Eyes glancing around the dark room as the soft anger flashes across her once more, eyes glancing down to her two shithead brothers that are messing around too much. All it takes for her to snap is the slight bump of Porter's hip to a counter as she shouts loudly at them.

"Get lost! You're going to ruin my shit again!"

Porter and Preston don't listen to her though. Hands rushing over some photos as Porter grabs the one of Maverick she had just set down, his eyes lingering over it for a moment before he smiles a bit wider. Preteen little shit had gotten the wrong idea in his head already and all she could do was glare back at him. The voice of the shithead comes out once more, almost cutting straight through her like younger siblings can do. "Is that your boyfriend, Parker?" She was going to kill him. Porter Gautier had a death sentence just by saying that. Preston starts the song like the preteen shits that they are. "Parker's got a boyfriend! Parker's got a boyfriend!"

The twins look at one another as she contemplates which one to strangle first, until the room grows louder with Porter following along to Preston. The words echoing with the room's emptiness, bouncing around her skull with a headache until she finally rushes them, hands grabbing at them as the two get the signal, already running out the door. Laughs lingering in the room as the door shuts with a slam and Parker can feel her heart beating in her chest as she slams the door and locks it. The annoyance bubbling up in the form of a heavy headache as the photos linger along the counter with real moments of people who could care less about her.

Wasn't it funny?

The way she knew none of them truly would care about her if she were to disappear. Lingering words left behind only to remind students that she had been loud and vocal, unlike some of the others, unafraid to let others walk all over her. Whispers underneath her breath swearing that no one will understand her, but when Porter and Preston talked about Maverick in a way that she never would have felt with a guy like him. It's annoying how much her bratty brothers could really get in her head, it's silent as she stares at a photo of Maverick lingering around a corner, unknowingly looking more comfortable than normal. It's the quiet moments she always finds interesting in all of them, pieces of a picture that she paints in her mind with the clicks of flashes.

She knew she didn't belong there.

Cleo's presence had made it clear enough. A photo of Cleo spiking a volleyball straight down, crumbling her foes with ease, too many memories flood back from a time where popularity and reputation weren't even a concept. Days spent taking photos and laughing; enjoying the time of their youth where things hadn't been complex. Complex issues still flood through her brain, almost like clockwork, ticking by until six minutes pass. Setting down the photo with the others where Maverick resides and Grady angrily stares, her headache begins getting worse and worse, until she shovels more and more of the photos to a corner, ignoring the ache of a friendship long dead and never coming back.

Cleo could have the attention.

Parker didn't want it.

Or she didn't until things got harder. The world numbing to a dull color, never bright enough to see quite right. A funeral-like state where nothing feels quite as vibrant. Trust broken in words and time passing where Parker would be alone, spending late nights in her room with tears and frustrations about how no one makes any fucking sense. Deep down, Cleo could have the attention, but Parker would give anything just to feel apart of something in Salvatore Academy. Always a drifter, never quite hitting solid ground, but floating amongst the other peers. A friendly smile sometimes or a knowing glare, she was never apart of school.

Always an outcast, but useful to some.

Scarlet Hyde had fallen from grace because of the snakes among the crowd. Plotting and planning to take her down a peg, but no one was ready for what happened after it all. The Gautier Family having taken over many funerals over the year; one's where Parker had to take photos of the events. Lost among a sea of emotions, she had avoided everything like a plague; deep breaths and heavy thoughts leaving her in the dark room of their house. Photos scattered about with pinpricks pieces of time; Grady glaring at the camera, Stella giving a fake smile and pose, Cass writing in a notebook completely unaware, and so many others. Each piece apart of the puzzle until then.

There's a knock at the door; familiar to her. Her father who hadn't smiled at her since the first day she asked to be a photographer; a fake smile is plastered to her lips as she lets the numbness fill her heart. "Yes?" The door opens, letting in light from the hallway as her father steps into the room, eyes scanning the photos hung up from a funeral service for a poor kid who died to a terminal illness. His voice echoes along her ears, sending her spiraling through her own head begging him to act like a loving father for once.

"Pleasant. Make sure to get more of the grieving next time."

Silently, she nods and slips past her father; knowing the conversation would end there.

She didn't care if he wanted to talk more. She didn't care much about anything anymore, but everyone knew she wasn't the same girl from middle school or childhood. She's been silenced, quieted by the world of teenagers and social climbing. A part of her truly cared about all of that, but in her room where the light of the day doesn't quite reach the center of the room, a dream of the whole ideology burning up in a flame, never to recover. Even then, she knew it wouldn't be the same. Solace coming in the form of a scream into her pillow as she lays across her bed.

It's funny; she wasn't meant to be someone who cared so much, but deep down, the incident had given her something she craved.

A voice.

An opinion.

A feeling of being whole for just a second.

Parker Gautier knew it would never come back. Alone. She would be alone once more. A place stuck in between hated and liked; she was always somewhere, but never anywhere. The photos had become grounding in a way that nothing else had. Small moments of real people with real things that made them feel real. Not the fake versions of themselves they sell to the populace, but actual humans with actual feelings. She knew they were already, but no one gets to see the parts that make them function or the quiet moments when someone has time to themselves. Those were her favorites, not the fancy artistic pieces her father and mother wanted her to take for funerals.

It had always been the photos that made her feel something.

Whether it was a good feeling or a bad one, she didn't care.

As long as she felt something more than the empty feeling she's been left with.

She never expected to care, but the photo of Cleo and Parker smiling from when they were younger sits on her dresser watching over her. And yet, she still cares in some way. Pieces of a friendship torn apart by age and people, some nights she goes over every moment in her head of where she went wrong. She's always cared in some deep way, but now, she was growing numb. She had lost all of those feelings from back then and what was left ended up being just a girl who had nothing left to lose. Always standing out rather than fitting in because things were easier that way. Better to be the person everyone thought she was than the person she truly was.

Things were better this way.

It always would.

In the end, she would drown in her own place among her peers. Throw jabs and jeers like the rest of them, pretend like she didn't care about what anyone said, but take all of those words in and bury them in a grave deep at night. Spend days in dark rooms processing photos taken at different moments; bleeding her heart red as she hands it out to everyone else to see. Giving out pieces of kindness with the spite and attitude she always carried, but that's what she did to survive and feel something more than lonely.

It only takes six minutes for a brain to die without oxygen.

It takes only takes three years for a girl to forget what it's like to be apart of something more than herself.

It's funny.

She was never going to be the same.

Sneers and jabs thrown away in the hallways.

Alone;

With only her camera and the facade across her lips.