Dawn, I didn't steal your sweater.

Vampire + stake = dusty dry cleaning bill.

Huh, vampire slaying and a family in one.

It's times like these that I wish mom was still around. Maybe it's some form of regression to want to climb into your mother's lap when the world around you seems to be going terribly wrong. And it was going terribly wrong. Nothing after her death had really gone right, whatever that's supposed to mean. I mean, it seems overly dramatic or something to say something like that, but it's the truth. I just didn't know how to function without her and I'm still trying.

I resist the urge to go all little girl these days because I'm growing up and because it's some dose of reality to just know that she's not there, she won't be there and there's nothing I can do about it. Okay - I was really too into my last school classes. The only one I hadn't practically failed was psychology.

Maybe it was stupid to just let life over come me, but it's one of those things that just happened.

Sometimes, I try to remember the exact way she smelt - a hint of oak from her wooden dresser drawers and a distinctive sweet smell like baby powder, but it's hard to tell anymore because her things don't linger in the house anymore. I think I start to forget and then I try to dream of her.

Again, reality. William Glasser was right.

I think I went all introspective about my mom because yesterday was my birthday. It was all about making that one wish on my white frosted cake and being unable to do so - not to mention the fact that I felt like the Great Pumpkin had run me over about a dozen times yesterday.

I had been exhausted as dad put down the birthday cake in front of me, bluish-green scrawl across the top and similar colored frosted flowers as it said simply Happy Birthday, Devon. I smiled lightly as dad kissed the top of my head, told me he was proud of me and shared the cake. I then got movie choice and forced him to watch through Brad Pitt's stomach muscles in Fight Club, even though I fell asleep in the middle of it.

I wished for my mom or him. I wished for anything but eighteen. Even though I slept, I woke again with the same feeling, a dull ache and nausea I couldn't pass. I was less than par, but I swore I had a sinking feeling about this day.

"Honey, I know you miss him," my dad said as I opened the refrigerator door and looked inside with a wrinkled frown. I wasn't hungry. I wasn't thirsty.

Mom hadn't been the only one I'd lost. Ryan wasn't there for my birthday. A birthday, he swore over two months ago, as he leaned in and kissed me, would be life changing and incredible. You only turn eighteen once, he said with the purest knowledge as he approached ending the teen in his age entirely.

I have this sinking feeling that he'd positively hate the way I was being now.

What can you do? There's love and loss and life in between. I just thought that maybe that life in between part would go a little longer for him. It hardly seemed fair so have someone here one day and then not the next.

I gave my dad a wry smile and poured myself some orange juice to drink. "I'm okay," I told him. "You know, I've been thinking more about taking that assistant job. I think I could make some changes." Really, I couldn't see myself doing it, but goals made dad happy. Like I had focus again. Like I didn't feel completely lost.

"That my girl," he grinned, showing teeth, as the doorbell rang.

Putting my glass of juice down on the counter, I shook my head to him with a simple I'll get it motion. Swallowing the acidic citric taste in my mouth, I went to the door, opening it. On the other side was a smaller blonde girl, older than me, with an unreadable look in her eyes.

"Can I help you?" I asked.

"Oh, honey, that's probably Billy about the whole cook-out thing on Friday," Dad said, coming out of the kitchen.

"I don't think so, dad," I told him, "unless Billy lost the beer belly, a couple years and mysteriously turned into a girl."

He gaped. I saw the look of shock on his face immediately.

"Buffy," he said, stunned. He came in closer to the door and I looked back to the girl who knocked on our door before looking back again towards my dad.

Wait, what?

[[open to Buffy]]