THE FUNERAL, Part I: WHITE ROSES

A/N: loved to write this one, hope u like it. Don't forget to comment and to vote ❤️

AUTHOR's POV

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IT WAS THE START of a new day at Highland Bricklane's Sports&Arts Degree College, but not a regular equally natural day like others, no, this one was different.

There was a constant wave of depressing sadness passing through the heavy weighted air that flickered through the corridors, the piercing disturbing sound of the doors closing helped the growing fear to expand inside the hearts of the barely awakened students.

The weather wasn't helping, there were clouds closing the opened spots of sunlight, the strong smell of wet grass was permanently in place.

It was the day to wear black clothes only, but really everything felt lifeless, consumed by darkness.

At 7am, students started to enter, thinking there would be classes to attend, yet, they were surprised to know some of the professors were grieving too, and wanted to mourn the loss of the student they hadn't had the pleasure to teach, or to meet.

The funeral of Colber Dylan Foster would take place after lunch, next to a church close to the territory where the college stand.

It was so unfortunate the accident that took place that Friday night – the chaos it provoked was only now starting to emerge:

The suspicions about the identidy of the murder, the numerous doubts about his conections to his mates, the secrets there were stillto be revealed, yet especially, the biggest lost belonged to is love ones who weren't ready to say goodbye.

If there was something people cherished about Colber, was his undying determination, the will to suppress his adversities, how the boy would never close his fists and let his elbows face the ground

– Inside the football's pitch, he was the true golden boy, a symbol of pursuance, resistance, strength and courage.

He was running for his life every single time he laid his feet on the grass, he was fighting to win the matches for his own dream to represent his country one day, for his family, his teammates, for the people that cherish his name while he was giving it all, even when his body was failing him.

But, afterall, Colber just wanted to be himself, to be as happy as he could be: a kid whose happiness was determined by the ball that was on his feet, nothing more.

Those were the thoughts circulating inside Brendan's head, what he kept thinking the whole time, while his rigid body touched the cleaned white table standing in the middle of the cafeteria.

He was alone, his hands were intertwined beneath his chin, the eyes cold and bare like frozen water.

He had been the first to arrive since he hadn't had the pleasure to sleep at all.
At late night, Brendan would close his eyes only to open them again seconds later, his brain wouldn't rest if he kept constantly thinking about every possibility of him being the one who messed something up.

What if he had been somehow responsible for what they did to his best friend without even realizing it?

What if he had failed to catch some sort of signal, hint, which pointed out for something unusual, strange-looking?

"Fuck", Brendan cursed, bringing both of his shaking palms to touch his hair.

He wasn't ready at all, how could he be?

One week ago they were making plans to watch football games together, to practise new skills on Colber's backyard, to watch a car race, there were so many more memories to build, and now, now everything was gone.

Brendan just couldn't deal with the loss of a team player, a friend and a brother.
It was too much.

"Why you're gone man?"

He whispered, forcing his hands against the table before grabbing a paper, which had been silently hidden inside the black smoking he was wearing.

Touching the soft material, he questioned himself if he had the courage to say out loud what he had written all over the paper the night before.

Would he open his heart in front of all the people who he knew had hurt Colber? Someone did it, yes, the person responsible for his death would definitely be present at Colber's funeral, and solely that thought causes revolt and a nerve of twisting rage inside Brendan's stomach.

If Brendan let out the words he wrote in homage to his friend, the killer would be even more satisfied about his perfect master plan working out. Brendan just couldn't stand that.

But at the same time, not being gentle, true and honest one last time with his best friend didn't feel right. He deserved to hear how Brendan truly felt about him.

  "I wanted to start by saying how much Colber meant to me before mentioned what he actually did for me.
He never had my blood type, the same color of my eyes or even the same taste for football teams. Honestly, he was pretty much quite the opposite of me. But every single time, strangely enough, I felt like he was nothing  but family. Which seemed weird... I mean, I never had a family after all.
So I had to ask myself, is this what it feels like to have a brother?"

Discovering his own calligraphy with his almost wet eyes, he adverted his painful look to the empty seat next to him.

His heart was aching like never before, while he was alive he hadn't had the chance to deepen his emotions like this, he always fought them to the maximum, hiding his feelings. But today, damn, he was a wreck.

A sound of a door closing echoed trough the entrance of the cafeteria. Brendan could hear the steps of two figures and by the looks of it, it gave the impression they were approaching him.

Fighting the urge to let out a tear, Brendan closed his eyes to regain focus and inhale properly. Don't be a wimp. You got this.

"I see you managed to skip classes too" Sean talked with some distance.

Brendan rolled his eyes, putting the paper inside his back pocket.

He knew the coach wouldn't skip a training day, not even for the funeral of one of his ex students but he couldn't care less, Rhys wasn't on the mood for college today. He just wanted the day to end soon.

"What do you want, Windsor?" He asked, glancing at Kit, who accompanied him. Both were wearing smokings too, but for some odd reason, Sean was holding a white rose.

"Woah, patience brother." Sean said, approaching the table. "This is for you." 

Putting the beautiful plant on the table, Sean watched has confusion crossed Brendan's face.

"Page asked me to give it to you since you'll be one of the first to make a speech. She isn't coming today, she hates funerals"

"She could have gave it to Travis." Brendan said, finding the gesture odd, knowing Travis and Page used to have a thing going on for a while.

"Uh, not anymore" Kit talked behind Sean, looking at Sean.

Brendan opened his mouth to interrogate the two boys, but another sound followed, again coming from the door.

A girl with long crystal milk chocolate hair and plump nude lips entered in the room, but stopped halfway. Her eyes flashed with a surprising apprehension, her legs turned into rock and her mouth was mid open.

Wearing full black clothes and grey trainers, Brendan noticed the similarity between the two - both looked like a mess and both were tense to be around one another.

It was her. The girl everybody kept talking about, but stopped when Brendan was close. Everything about her was a mystery to him.

So she was attending the funeral too? She had been in college for one day, why would she attend the funeral of a person she had nothing to do with?

Alongside Kit, Sean Windsor flashed a smirk while looking at Evren Maddox. What a perfect timing, he thought.

"Right" He cracked, "You don't know her yet, do you?"

Brendan kept looking at Evren, puzzled, while he touched the white rose. He noticed she looked at his hand, and his outfit, like she was trying to figure something out, though she was quite far away.

Evren knew when she wasn't welcome in some place, and she was feeling it now. Sean analyzed her as if he was about to crack a bottle and say some joke. Kit remained calm and silent.

Though she wanted to punch Sean for the looks he was giving her, meeting up with Brendan boy was something she was strangely running away from, but knew she had to anyway.

For a girl who loves challenges, she wasn't excited for this one.

Grabbing her backpack, she gulped while turning her head, breaking eye contact, the hair of hers moving quickly as she reached for her door to leave.

Brendan eyed Sean, feeling uneasy, but found himself asking,

"Who is she?"

The blond boy crossed his arms to his chest and curved himself to get closer to Brendan, smiling.

"You know, it's giving me so much pleasure to finally know something Brendy boy doesn't have a clue about."

Brendan quickly reached for his feet to hold him up, reaching Sean's height.

"Fucking talk or I swear I'll-" He started to scream but Kit reacted, putting an arm to
separate the two, looking at Sean.

"Bro don't fight him now. You'll have many more chances ahead." He said to his friend, then his eyes mirrored on Brendan.

"Tell him, sooner or later he would know."

Sean lost his smile, yet agreed, "Fine. But I won't give you the details, Rhys. I'm saving that work for yourself."

"Yeah, you'll thank him later too. It's better if you don't know it all, I guess, considering the funeral is abou-" Kit talked to Brendan, but got interrupted.

"Here it is. The truth about your idiotic hero Mr. Colber Foster." Sean spit, watching Brendan with disdain.

"He was a liar all along. And an egoistic face too. Always talking shit about friendship, bonds, team effort, support bla bla bla. What for? He was no saint, neither a fucking leader. I was sure the bubble would pop up anytime, so I waited, and then, it happened. Everyone was surprised, but not me, no, he never fooled me."

Brendan lost his patience and grabbed Sean, pressing his strong hands against Sean's tie and neck.

"Don't say a word against him!" He shout.

"You know why you don't know about Maddox? Because we swore then we would all close our mouths forever, because we fucking had to, we had no choice!! Colber never gave us a fucking choice!!"

Screaming out loud, Kit watched as the scene in front of him was getting ugly. But he was also sure it had to happen.

"Stop saying bullshit-" Rhys screamed again.

"So of course, people forgot about it and weeks later Colber was back to being the perfect student, the perfect captain, the role model! Fuck him! He didn't deserve that! He was guilty!!!"

Sean continued,

"You say he was your best friend, uh? Then I hope you give an incredible speech today to your fucking best friend. But know this, you don't know a thing about who he was or what he did before you showed up! You never really knew him at all!"

Before he could say anything else, Rhys lost his brain and punched the guy in front of him, the pleasure of hitting him run through his veins. The blood left Sean's lip, but he did not lost his smirk, laughing too.

"Guess what? She was his fucking girlfriend!! Lost her virginity to the one and only Colber Foster, wonderful, uh? Oh wait, he never told you!!"

Reaching for his lip to clean it, Sean laughed while saying, "Worse - after fucking her, he dumped her ass, saying shit about her being wicked. Oh but let's not forget about the rest of it."

"Now that I think about it, it's fucking hilarious. She gained reputation for beating up on troublesome kids, only to have her ass beaten up too."

Looking back at a worried Brendan, Sean finished,

"Yes. That's why brother. Colber harassed Evren Maddox three years ago, left so many bruises on her body that she had to hide herself for three years. That's her story."

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To be Continued

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OMG!! What now?! How will Brendan react? Do you think it's true? Then why Evren loves Colber that much?

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