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And then, I woke up with my cheek pressed against cold stone.

My arm is still outstretched, as if I was holding onto someone who stopped existing mid-grip. As if my hand is still reaching for someone who never reached back.

Cold hits me first, then silence, then the name under my face finally registers, and everything in me feels like acid.

Mireya Vitelli.

Not again. Please, not again.

“Damien, you slept here again,” I hear Hayzel’s voice coming through. She’s watching me, her eyes are red, filled with grief. She never stopped mourning her.

“I saw her again.”

She smiles and taps my shoulder softly as I stand up. “Milo is in the car waiting for you. He wants to get more shells to add to his collection before leaving the island.”

I nod, looking back once last time to the stone where the love of my life will forever rest and then I leave a new star there. One she never got to make. One without her blood staining it. 9-1-2-3-2-1

“I’m with you, and I’ll never stop making wishes.” I murmur one last time hoping that my love will find her wherever she’s hiding.

I start walking back to the car when I hear Hayzel crying, “I want my best friend back, Damien. I need her back.”

And I swallow grief before replying, “I need her back too.”

Mireya Vitelli.

The foundation of my own tragedy.

I will see you again, and in the meantime, I’ll search for you in every firefly and every star that crosses my road. Grieving you will be my last act of love.

My eyes stare at the sky she last saw. Blue and endless, stars that weren’t bright anymore.

“I’ll wait for you to haunt me in my dreams, little miss sad eyes,” I whisper hoping, it already reached her before I even thought of it.

I have a promise to fulfill, Milo will grow up away from this hell, and he’ll never have to question his happiness like you did, I promise.

134

Milo

7 YEARS LATER

Play - Fable by Gigi Perez

One last wish

Seven years later, and I still have the star.

I’ve been trying to give it back to her for seven years. The wish. The one she gave me when I was a kid.

It’s been years since I saw her, or heard her voice. The woman who was more a parent to me than anyone.

I went through the boxes in the basement that Hayzel sent us over the years and the one titled, “St. Ellesta” intrigued me the most.

Today is the day that I finally watch her last memories.

Her box of things sits on top of my dresser. Her sketchbook is not here, I let Damien have it when we moved here. But her yearbook is mine and now it’s open on my lap.

Her picture is there, I remember that day. She brought a pizza back home and we watched the same movie again.