dead girls just wanna have fun 😘

it was more the fact that reading that book (you know the book — look at the show that caused all the netflix controversy in march 2017.  that book.) had made her increasingly aware of the fact that, like, immortality is not a thing that exists.  you can go at any time.  shit can happen.  life happens.  life was going to happen.

and if it did, when it did, she wanted people to remember her.

not like that, but…

she didn’t want to just die.  she didn’t want to die and have that be that.  that just sort of sounded like bullshit.

she finished the book on new year’s eve, after a party at lua’s that she had begged out of early and she was now sitting up with her back against the headboard and the soft glow of her bedside lamp keeping the pages illuminated as she got through the end of the story.

from beside her, her phone lit up with a few pictures sent from bryson and teddy and wilco and lua’s phones of whatever it was that she was missing out on as the new year raged on without her.

she’d stayed long enough to give bryson a kiss in the shadows of the hallway and rally out a “boo” with the rest of their friends as auggie and teddy’s kiss lasted well past midnight and went from the middle of the living room floor to the far corner of the couch.

but now she was home.  she was home, and she was finished with her book, and she was wide awake.

it was fucked up, really, the whole situation.

it wasn’t like that stuff actually happened.

so why did she keep thinking about it?

why did she keep thinking about leaving that kind of impression?

like… tone it down, edgelord.  you’re not dying any time soon.

and yet.  and yet.

she got out of bed.

it was three in the morning, the incoming texts on her phone had died down, and she was getting up and moving to her desk.  she flipped on the lamp, she opened her desk drawer to pull out her journal and grabbed her favorite ink pens, and she began to write.

teddy.  auggie.  syd.  lua.  peter.  shea.  wilco.  ginny.  jade.  bryson.

they were her people.  they were her family, had been her family since middle school and some even before that.  if something happened, if their post-graduation plans got fucked up because… of anything…

she just needed them to know that she still had shit to say.

she was olive graff, and she always had shit to say.

“are you insane?!”

“well that seems like an awfully judgmental question for a flower child.”

eliza louise lange’s lips pursed together and olive could see her eyes watering.  eliza didn’t live in georgia — she lived in south carolina — but she had promised olive that she would make the trek from charleston after new year’s to deliver olive her christmas present.  what she hadn’t expected was to get a box of letters in return.

a box of, like, postmortem letters.

“well this seems like my dearest friend is planning to do something and—”

“—i’m not planning to do anything,” olive was quick to assure her, resisting the urge to make a joke about why eliza always felt the need to talk like a character out of anne of green gables, since this was definitely not the right room temperature.  “i just… if something happens?  i don’t know.  it’s probably really stupid—”

“—it’s incredibly stupid!”

“eli.  can you just do this for me?  don’t make me ask your boyfriend.  he’ll probably dig the plot.”

eliza’s eyes narrowed into slits over the jab in her boyfriend, cinna’s direction, and she looked down at the shoebox in her arms again.  “so… what do you want me to do with these?  you’re really going to have to walk me through this.”

“maybe nothing!”  olive quickly assured her.  “just… if something happens to me, like… we… i don’t know.  we had this stupid road trip planned, and i don’t want them to, like, forget about it just because it was my stupid idea and i’m not around to force them to still take me on it.  so… if something happens and my life turns out to be some, like, pathetic lifetime movie tragedy or i get murdered — that’d be way more dramatic, let’s go with that — so i get murdered, right?  and anyway, my murderer’s at large, nobody’s caught the guy, he’s got a hook for a hand, and—”

“oli, focus.”

“—anyway.  then i just… want you to give my friends these letters.  let them know i’m still out there somehow.  that i still want them to hang out and… go on the trip, or whatever.  i dunno.  it made more sense when it was four in the morning and i was sleep deprived, i guess, but.  i still want that.  promise?”

eliza just about bit a hole in her bottom lip without bothering to reply.

“eli.”

her eyes finally met olive’s, swallowing hard.

“fine.  for your sake, you better hope it never comes to that.”

“i’ll keep an eye out for any hooks in any hands, deal?”

a beat.  “deal.”