"As I see."

"What if you grew to love an Evermore, or something like that?" He eyed me.

"That's crazy. I'd never love an Evermore."

"Well, good luck with your Evermores." He turned to leave.

"Wait. If you want to talk, we can."

He gave me a glance over his shoulder. "Maybe some other time," he said. He leapt down, and left, and I was awe-struck.

Lovers Cemetery It was Sean who dragged me all the way to the night club a week later. Said I needed to get out and away from all the craziness. There was a rave going on. He knew the DJ Maxx and said he played all the best music. I still hadn't told him about meeting Marcus in the graveyard, or that he'd kissed me and I'd kissed him back. I didn't tell him about the strange man who followed me home from school and threw daggers at my head, or that I was following along with it.

I couldn't hear myself speak over the loud music. "What is this?"

"Industrial Goth," he yelled.

"Oh."

Color changing lights flashed in my eyes and all around the place. "This band is Combichrist."

I had to admit, the beat was kind of infectious. Next, they played "Lullaby" by The Cure.

I was talking to Maxx about music when someone tapped me from behind. I turned around to see Marcus.

"Hi," he said.

"Oh. Hey."

"That's all you're going to say?"

I stared him up and down. "What else is there to say?'

"You can't just enter scene like that and disappear. And you still owe me a dance."

"You came for a dance?"

"Yeah." He yelled over the music. "With real music." He flashed me a smile.

"No, thanks." I said.

Maxx played "Please, Please, Please," by Muse and Marcus took my hand anyway. "I only want a minute of your time. Not a lifetime. I think you can give me this."

And before I knew it, I was sort of slow dancing with him. He looked into my eyes, his eyes smiling. And when the song ended, he motioned for Maxx to play it again.

"You said one dance, one song."

"This is one dance, one song. Besides, it was too short a minute." And he proceeded to stare into my eyes again. When the song ended a second time, he said, "Will you come with me?"

"Come with you where?"

"For a walk."

"No." I half-laughed.

"Just come on." He said and gently led me toward the exit. Sean and Maxx watched. "Don't worry. I'll return her safely."

Sean raised an eyebrow.

Marcus pulled me out of the nightclub and into the night. And then he dropped my hand, like he was confident I wouldn't try to run away at this point. "You can't lie with a guy in a graveyard on one night and then forget he exists the next, you know." He flashed me a smile. I didn't respond, but my heart certainly did.

"One of those guys your boyfriend?"

"No." I said. "I don't have one." Then I immediately regretted saying it when I saw his face glow.

"Oh, I was under the disheartening belief you did. Wow. This sounds promising."

"Don't count on it."

He tilted his head in the direction of the local cemetery. It wasn't the only one this town had, by far. But it was the closest one near us. "Come on," he said.

"Why are we going there again?"

"You'll see."

When we arrived at the cemetery, he showed me the incline that was directly beside it. "This is Lovers Hill. I don't think I need to explain why. It leads all the way to the top."

He started to climb it and I followed him. And when we got to the top, I saw that it overlooked the entire cemetery. We could see all the graves below us, and the moon and the stars. He leaned his back against a tree, hands in pockets and pleased, he watched the night glow. "This cemetery is called Lovers cemetery," he said. He pushed himself off the tree, and watched me intently as he lowered himself to sit on the hill next to me.

"Why is it called Lovers Cemetery?"

"Everyone buried down there, is rumored to be young couples who at one point, sat on this very hill." He didn't remove his gaze from mine.

I gazed down, below the hill. It was a long way down. I sucked in air. A slight shiver crept over my skin. I exhaled. "Maybe we shouldn't be here then. Just saying."

"But it's okay, Ellie." He gave me a partial smile. "Remember? We're not lovers."

My stomach flopped and I went back to staring at the stars. What was I thinking? Maybe we shouldn't be here, then? Marcus wasn't even my boyfriend.

But this was the most peaceful place on earth. And he was a grand possibility.

Out of nowhere, he had gotten another moonflower, and caught me off guard by planting it behind my ear again, and smiled. "Let me know when you're ready to go back."

A rowdy nightclub didn't compare to this view. "I think...I think I'll stay."

"Oh really?" His smile widened.

"Okay, Marcus. You win."

His lips still smiled, but his eyes looked serious. "What do I win?"

"More of my time. For now." I said.

He scooted closer to me, our shoulders almost touching. The entire night was magical. That is, until Marcus took me back to the club and Sean and Maxx laughed at me.

"Who is that guy, anyway?" Maxx asked.

I treated it as a rhetorical question. But for the rest of the night, I sat in the back of the nightclub and drank sodas, listened to the music, and thought about it. I didn't even want to go home. I wanted to go back to where Marcus was. I wanted him to look at me like that again. I wanted to feel alive. I knew this was something that I wouldn't be able to let go.

Stars, they thunder "Romance, who loves to nod and sing, With drowsy head and folded wing, Among the green leaves as they shake Far down within some shadowy lake, To me a painted paroquet Hath been a most familiar bird-"

Teacher b.i.t.c.h tapped my desk. "This is not English Lit, Miss Piper. Please put your Poe poems away and turn your attention to the overhead." I heard giggles permeate the room. I couldn't stop thinking about last night. The moonflower still in my hair, asleep. I doodled red hearts on my graphing paper.

Madison tipped her desk forward to lean over my shoulder, her s.k.a.n.k hair at yanking length. "Hope you're not still obsessing over Declan. He's made it clear that he doesn't want you."

I laughed derisively. Kept drawing my hearts, ignoring her, but said a little too audibly. "These hearts aren't because of Declan." I immediately regretted saying that.

"Then whom are they for? Something, or someone is making you rather cheerful, lately."

Asphyxiate her, someone please, so I won't have to hear her blabber mouth.

"Is it a crime to be happy? My summer was h.e.l.l, but of course you wouldn't know about that."

"Yeah. Declan told me your Dad left and now you're living in a trailer park. Must be tough."

I swallowed. Hard. She had no idea what it was like to one day live in a nice, loving home, then have a sister murdered and lose everything. She kept talking, and so I took my scissors and surrept.i.tiously shortened a section of hair that was hanging near me and she didn't notice.

"Darcy was beautiful, too. It's a shame. You think her college boyfriend did it?"

I gripped my desk. "He wouldn't have killed her, Madison."

"Okay. I'm just saying. Sometimes that happens, y'know?"

"That's not what happened, okay?"

When the bell rang, I gathered my belongings and headed to the door with her hair clasped in the palm of my left hand. Another cla.s.smate brought it to her attention and I heard, "Oh my G.o.d! What did you do to my hair?!"

"Honestly? You can't tell?" I laughed. "I think I'll toss it to the wind and maybe a bird will use it to build a nest."

Her face dropped and I smiled and just tossed it in the trash instead before I fled campus, skipping last cla.s.s.

It was okay to have a broken heart, as I did, but it wasn't okay to let people like Madison and Declan know I had one. They thrived off people's weaknesses. I wasn't about to give them a thrill. I could get over this. I knew I could. Especially the Declan part. I'd given myself entirely to him, and at the time, it felt like love. Now it felt more like rape. Nothing was real about it.

Nothing. I'd been toyed with. How could I have been so careless about my virginity, when that was the one thing I'd wanted to hold on to? I was supposed to share my heart and myself with my one true lover and it was supposed to be beautiful. If he were to have broken my heart, instead of Declan, it would've been a bittersweet tragedy, like a Shakespearean play, something like Romeo and Juliet, and not this disaster that dilapidated my spirit and lacerated my heart.

After my sister's death, I thought I'd die, too. So, Declan decided since I couldn't spend time with him, since I was "too busy grieving when I should get the h.e.l.l over it already," that now would be the ideal time to bail-out and cheat on me, which he did, and left me alone to cry. Two weeks before school started back, he told me he was sorry, he just didn't know how to deal. I never forgave him.

I wrapped my red and black plaid coat around my body to guard against the daggers in the September wind. The woods were not far from here, and to them I'd go, with my camera.

Being in the woods always inspired me to write stories with light. I always felt like a poet, or a poem. Here, or in the cemetery, felt like home in my heart. Deep, dark, and beautiful. Certainly not lonely. No. Loneliness was an emotion found only in real life. I found tranquility in these woods. I could let my spirit out to fly.

In these woods, it felt like Plath and Poe, Whitman and Hughes, and all the great poetic masterminds danced around me. Or at least, their poems. This afternoon, it felt like A Midsummer Night's Dream, though it had a dark composer. It was slightly twisted.

To be alive is to be able to feel. To feel as Plath felt when she bled her deepest emotions on page and how The World Drops Dead. It's Lysander and Hermia eloping in a forest and fairy dust. It's feeling that Snowy Evening in the Woods, and being Naked with Nature. It's a Leaf Falls Loneliness. It's Romeo and Juliet meeting. Romeo and Juliet dying. It's love unified with the possibility of death, but knowing that's the only way to truly be alive.

In those dark woods that chilly September afternoon, a raven flew overhead and swerved down low as if it knew me. But it wasn't just any raven. It was a white raven that flew with grace. I thought I was dreaming again. I was mesmerized. Only doves where white. Ravens were supposed to be black. No. This raven was white. It perched itself onto the tree branch and gazed at me with piercing green eyes. I heard something about ravens being able to remember faces. Perhaps he'd seen me somewhere before and remembered mine. Before I could capture him on my camera, he flew away. I took a moment to imprint this image in to my long term memory.

I didn't immediately notice it, but Marcus had watched me the entire time. He crept around me, silent. When I turned around and saw him, I jumped slightly. His presence was unexpected. His eyes landed on mine, lashes flirted. I'd always had a thing for guys with heavy lashes.

Warmth swam through my veins. His gaze made me feel incredibly alive, and also, as if I could die at any second and that it'd still be okay.

He moved closer and danced around me. We turned circles in unison, never breaking eye contact. His expression was somber, but his eyes smiled.

He moved even closer to me, and ran his finger down my arm, like a silent kiss. It made me shiver. "Let's go." And he nodded his head in the direction that led out of the woods and into a clearing, growing with flowers. Everything seemed romantic under the burning sunset. Especially with a field of flowers. Especially with the way Marcus looked at me.

He stood behind me and covered my eyes with his hands that smelled like perfume. "Listen." His voice was melodious.

All I heard was my heart beating out of control.

"Can you hear that?"

"What?"

"The heavens turning. The stars, they thunder." He removed his hands and I gazed into the sky to see the first twinkling starlight. The sun had not quite set in the sky. It was that magical transition between daylight and nighttime that painted the entire sky in mystical colors that felt like they'd been pulled out of some dark fairytale. I was standing on the edge of falling again. But this time, I wanted to be here. I had to warn him.

"I have a broken heart, Marcus."

His eyes twinkled greater than the stars above us. "I can unbreak it."

And I believed him. I'm sure he could even make a bouquet of veins appear beautiful, though they were tragic. And I was sure I'd be just that, a bouquet of veins, if something went wrong, and this didn't work out. I needed it to last forever, even if it really didn't.

"I want to begin this with you, Ellie. I couldn't possibly conceive of an idea as beautiful as this."

"I'm not sure I can unbury my heart."

"So don't. In time I'll dig it up. Let it rest, for now."

Time. Such a fast and such a short measure to be compressed in to.

"Stay with me for a while. At least until sunset."

"The sun is setting."

"You don't have to stay, you know."

"But I want to."

He smiled and took my hand and we sat amongst the flowers. He watched me for a long time before asking, "So, who broke your heart?"