#star!!

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Aaron has so far spent most of the wake standing by his mother's high-school graduation photograph, and accepting condolences by not outright insulting those who offered them. Whenever he's ignored, which is often, his gaze drifts back to the photograph. Taken at the start of her senior year in highschool, 1985. She had long blond hair and was smiling, actually smiling at the camera. Aaron isn't sure he'd ever seen her smile like that. She'd been seventeen then. Three years older than he was now, and only a year away from having him. All Aaron knew about his mother's life before he was born was that she found out she was pregnant halfway through her senior year, got on a plane to California with his dad the next day, and never looked back.

Only for his uncle to drag her back to this shithole thirteen years later, and then she died here. Leaving Columbia was the only thing she was ever proud of, and she died in her hometown anyway.