From the Ashes (Possessed 2.50)

“You all right with it?” I ask, not sure if I could let her go if she wasn’t.

Her hands come to my cheeks, forcing me to look up at her. “Declan,” she sighs my name like a prayer, “you’re all I want. Living with you sort of comes with that. You couldn’t be rid of me if you tried.”

Her happy smile is all I need.

With my heart full and her happy, I take her again. Just like I promised.

Epilogue

Ashley

“One moment. In your life, there will be one moment in time that has the power to determine who you are. What you’ll do. How your future will turn out.” I stare out at the stadium of freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors. All young people like I used to be, or wanted to be.

I wonder if someone had come to my high school and spoke about what I’m about to share with them, would things have been different. Always wondering…

“My moment was nothing defining at the time. I was no more than a snot-nosed brat that thought I was better than everyone else because I had the pedigree. I had the money and the perfect family.” Taking a breath, I watch them, sitting in their own little cliques. Some whispering to each other, others looking around possibly trying to figure out why I’m here or where their best friend of the week is.

“My moment wasn’t so much a point in time as it was a person. With feelings, and heartache, and more trauma than she ever deserved. My moment was Cecilia Marks. She was broken, and I preyed on her. I shattered her beyond repair.” Pausing, the whispers start. “At least, I thought I did. You know what’s so amazing about broken people? They aren’t nearly as defeated as you would believe. They fight, and they claw their way out. They push back; not physically maybe, not even emotionally, but one step at a time. They build a wall so high you can no longer penetrate them, and right there, that wall? That’s strength. There’s no weakness because it takes an inhuman amount of power to ignore the darkness and let in the light.”

Taking a step back from the microphone, I look to my left across the stage for my strength. A sip of water soothes my dry throat as nerves fight to challenge me to back down. I won’t.

“My name is Ashley Powers, and in this room, beyond these walls, and on this campus, I was a bully.” Standing tall, I let their garbled, indistinct voices wash over me, let their judgments be expressed because no matter they say, I’m better than that person I used to be.

As the students begin to quiet down and some teachers I recognize straighten up with smiles on their faces, I begin again. “I was once the mean girl. The one everyone followed because they thought I was cool. I slept with the popular boys to prove I was better than those same girls. Do you want to know what I really was?”

“A bitch?” a snarky voice from the back asks.

I smile. I know that voice. “Worse,” I snap back.

“A slut?” There’s a bit of laughter in her voice now that I know only I can detect.

“Guess again,” I call, placing my hand on my hips feigning impatience.

“Desperate?” she asks walking towards the stage.

Pretending to be thoughtful, I wait until she’s waddling her way up the stairs to answer, “Desperate could be a good word for it.”

Standing side by side, we look to our captive audience. “So what were you?” a shy young woman from the front asks.

“What’s your name, sweetie?” I can tell she doesn’t like to be put on the spot.

Her face flushes red as she answers me. “Amelia,” she says faintly.

“Well, Amelia, I was lost. Alone. Scared. Maybe even insecure.”

“She really was a bitch,” Cec interjects again.

“Oh, shut up, you,” I murmur back.

“So who’s she?” another student asks.

Turning towards my sister-in-law and her very pregnant belly, I smile as I answer. “She’s my best friend and the love of my brother’s life. She is Cecilia Marks. And I was her bully. I made her life pure hell for no other reason than I saw her pain and how it matched so closely to my own, and I knew I could exploit it. I honed in on it like a finely-tuned car and exposed every corroded wire until there was nothing left.”

The room fell into such a silence that you could hear a pin drop. “Don’t let her fancy words fool you. She was a complete narcissistic bitch. She made my life a living hell, and when her brother pushed his way into my life, begged me to love him, I nearly didn’t because of her. Ashley was not a nice person; she was the devil in stilettos with prettier hair,” Cecilia explained.

Shame no longer washed through me the way it used to. I was finally doing what I could to make sure the younger generations didn’t end up as shattered as us. I have become somewhat of a motivational speaker with the help of Becky, Felicia, and Zack.

&nb