Tay and I slept in my childhood bedroom that night. After Cam’s death, she had retreated to the guest bedroom, quickly grabbing as much of her stuff from his bedroom as she could. That night, however, neither of us felt like sleeping alone. While I had had Jack the last few nights, I didn’t feel any less empty than Tay did. We were both lost and afraid, too scared to show our true emotions, but too frightened to deal with it all on our own. Together we had somebody.

My parents were definitely surprised to see me downstairs for breakfast. After not having heard from me for four days and Jack not having much good news about how I was doing, I could only imagine that seeing me at their house must have been a surprise. I told them that I did want to say something at the funeral, but I didn’t give them any details. I had been the only one to read the speech Cam had written for me, and it was going to stay that way until I stood up on that stage and read it out for everybody. They only got to know that there were pictures involved and that I wanted to play a song for everybody.

Not even Tay got to know what I was doing.

I, however, did get to know what she was doing. At first, I felt like it might not have been the best thing to do. Not because Cam wouldn’t appreciate it or like it, but because I didn’t want Taylor to do something she didn’t feel comfortable with. But she insisted. It was going to be difficult for her, so I decided to help. We just let it come naturally and didn’t want any disagreements going on. I didn’t want to take control of what she had in mind, so I went with whatever she wanted me to do. And I wouldn’t have had it any other way. She decided to perform her song ‘Windows in Heaven’ asked me to sing a verse.

I didn’t have any contact with Jack during the little while I stayed at my parents’. The lack of phone calls and texts, however, told me that Rian had informed him about me going. If he hadn’t, Jack would have probably been freaking out and trying to get ahold of me non-stop. I knew he was worried, and I wished I could do something to make him worry less, but to be honest I didn’t have the energy to do so. I was too tired to fake a smile just for the benefit of others. Maybe I’d never be able to.

Tay and I were standing just a couple of feet to the left from the closed casket (Cam’s body was too deformed for us to want to have an open-casket during the viewing). None of the guests were at the funeral home yet, leaving us standing in the room by ourselves. It was just a simple room with white walls, chairs lined in rows. We weren’t at the chapel or at a church. While my mom had been raised religious, our small family had never been. We were going to cremate Cam, but without any religious services attached. It didn’t make sense to us to suddenly do so.

When I saw Jack appear through the double doors as one of the first and early guests, I immediately looked away and told Tay I was going to go to the bathroom. I didn’t want to leave her all by herself, but I couldn’t stand there anymore.

As soon as I was in the bathroom, I locked myself up in one of the stalls and tried my best not to start crying. I couldn’t risk anyone hearing me and trying to console me. It was the exact reason why I had left. Every family member and all of Cam’s friends were going to come up to me to give their condolences. I wasn’t ready for that; I was never going to be ready for it. It wasn’t because I was afraid of saying my last goodbyes to Cam, but because I didn’t want people giving me sympathy and expecting to make it all better. Some stupid words weren’t going to make Cam’s death any less worse than it already was, nor was he going to come back.

But I also knew that staying in the bathroom stall wasn’t an option.

After finally gaining the courage to open the door and find my way back to Tay, I saw that many more people had arrived. They barely seemed to notice my presence, making me feel better in a way. Jack, however, looked lost and was continuously scanning the room, predictably for me. Tay wasn’t that far from him, but they weren’t standing with each other either. I didn’t know where to go.

However, when Jack's eyes landed on me, I couldn’t help myself from running at him. He hugged me back tightly without saying a word. I was still trying my best not to let tears slip out. All I needed was this hug. Luckily, Jack didn’t pull the same stupid move as he did at the hospital. However, he did remove one of his arms from my body, leaving me confused. As soon as Tay joined, I was comforted once again.

It wasn’t until a little later that I sent Jack to go help out and keep his friends, who knew nobody here, company. I lightly guided Tay with me when I was sure Jack wasn’t going to come back, and led her to a quieter and more secluded area.

This wasn’t something I want to do, but I knew I had to. Staying quiet wasn’t an option.

“I have something that’s yours,” I whispered and reached into my purse.

“Mine?” Tay questioned and watched as I pulled the velvet box out.

I sighed and put the box into her hand, wrapping her fingers around it. “Well, technically it was Cam’s, but he wanted to give it to you.”

After shooting me a confused look, she opened it and stared down at the ring in shock, just like I had done when Cam had given it to me. “W-what is this?”

----

When my name was called, I got up from my seat at the front row, tightly holding the lined paper in my hands. Jack gave me a surprised look as he noticed I wasn’t just going to sit there, but actually going to go up and say something. His eyes stayed on me as I got up on the podium.

Everybody was staring back at me, making my heart race. I always said that I never wanted to be up on a stage without Cam by my side, and I still felt the exact same way. The only problem was that he was there by my side, just not in the way I wanted him to be. His body was still in the casket just to my right, but it didn’t feel the same. I still felt like I was up there all by myself.

“Um…” I started, putting the paper with Cam’s handwriting on the lectern in front of me, my voice loudly echoing through the room. I wasn’t sure how to start it off, I hadn’t really planned anything other than reading out Cam’s speech, but I couldn’t just do that since it was from his perspective.

I took a deep breath, quickly glancing at Jack who gave me a small nod -- he was trying to make up for Cam not being there to encourage me. “So, nobody really knows about this, unless Cam decided to tell people, which wasn’t the intention. Back when I was still in and out of the hospital and things didn’t look all too good, Cam suggested something. He suggested that we write speeches for each other’s funerals. Back then, it was just Cam trying to find out how I wanted my funeral to go and he didn’t want to make it too upsetting, so he tried to make something fun out of it. After forcing me to read out the speech I had written for him, he told me that I was going to have to stay alive longer than him if I wanted to know what he wrote. I don’t think this is what he meant. But, I made a promise, and I’m going to keep it. I’m going to apologize in advance for all the things he says in this.

“Here’s what Cam has to say:

“Ok, if I’m correct, this is being read by Field -- for those who don’t know, that’s my nickname for Ireland -- at my funeral. First things first, this means that Ireland managed to outlive me, which is pretty fucking amazing. I wonder how old you guys all are, but I guess I’ll never know until I realize I’m living the last moments of my life.

“But I don’t want this to be morbid and sad, ‘cause that would just suck balls. Now I have the chance to embarrass people without them getting extremely mad at me and wanting revenge! I would never miss that opportunity, so watch out, especially since I know that Ireland wrote some pretty embarrassing things about me in her speech. Yes, I confess, I wrote this after you wrote yours. To be honest, I was playing tic-tac-toe with myself for the longest time while you were busy writing before I realized it might actually be cool to write one myself. If you don’t believe me, just look on the back of this paper, you’ll see me losing many games from myself. Pretty pathetic.

“I’m just embarrassing myself, which wasn’t my plan. I wanted to embarrass y’all, so let’s get to that. Since I don’t know what Ireland can and can’t remember at the point that she’s reading this, I’m going to have to go off what she knows at this moment in time, the moment in which I’m writing this letter. It does mean I’m missing some golden opportunities, but I can’t just assume things that are unpredictable. Unfortunately, it does mean that most things she remembers are embarrassing for me. There’re so many stories to tell, I don’t know which ones to choose.

“I’ll start off with one neither Ireland or I can really remember, but I just love the image so much. I hope you can see the photograph, or else you’ll have to go off from what I’m telling you. Somehow I’ve been always the more mischievous twin, but that meant that Field suffered most of the consequences. No, I don’t mean that she got the blame for my wrong-doings, which had happened before, but I mean the time when we were still toddlers and basically spent all our time together. As a kid, pens are magical sticks of doom. Fortunately, most walls were spared, but skin wasn’t. I absolutely loved doodling, but not on paper. My favorite thing to draw on was Ireland’s skin. Too bad I wasn’t all too good with colors because everything smudged together and turned into an ugly greenish-black. Let’s just say that the day after, when we had to go back to pre-school, Ireland looked a little like a turtle. But who am I to judge.

“Now, on to something good about her. It’s not an embarrassing story, but I’ll come back to those later, don’t worry. So, in middle school, kids are mean as fuck. While high school isn’t great either, Somehow middle school is worse. Ireland always fit in easy, while I was the weirder one out of the two of us. I don’t feel bad about that at all, because I wouldn’t change myself or my childhood. I believe it actually might have affected Ireland more than me. While I would just go on with my own business, she wouldn’t hesitate to beat up the bullies. I guess you could say we vowed to take care of each other, which I believe we have done.

“So, back to those embarrassing stories. Ireland might kill me if I say this, which is kind of ironic, but I will haunt her ass if she doesn’t read it out (I’ll probably haunt her either way). This specific story includes Jack -- Jack, if you’re not here, fuck you, you’re an asshole. There’re many things I could go on about between the two of them, but the best is this one time Ireland and I still lived together in that apartment. I came back a bit later in the evening one day after discussing some stuff for the new album we were putting out, and I find Jack and Ireland on the couch. Now, I didn’t walk in on them doing what most couples do when they think they have the place for themselves. No, this was nothing like it. They were in front of the TV, playing some video game, but the sound was off. Instead, the stereo system was on and they were singing along terribly to a Britney Spears song. It was pretty obvious they had had a little bit too much to drink. I just sneakily went to my room and took a couple of videos. Unfortunately, my phone crashed and the videos were nowhere to be found. It was quite a nice concert I got, but their video game skills were horrible. But then again, with what they had to drink, I was pretty impressed with the fact that they hadn’t passed out yet.

“Now… is there anything else I’d like to say… There definitely are a couple of things, but I don’t want to make this speech too long. Oh, wait, I know. I’m not going to say anything, but here’s something for you to watch, just to embarrass Ireland one last time.”

The next slide was projected on the white screen. A video from when we were just sixteen years old started playing. It was the last memory I had after my accident (I knew because I thought it had been Cam’s actions that had lead me to being in the hospital). One of Cameron’s nerdy friends had suddenly come up to me with the camera, getting all up in my face with the thing. It was set outside and I was sitting at the table, reading a magazine.

“Dude, get that thing out of my face,” I groaned and pushed away the camera with my hand, keeping my eyes on whatever I was reading. However, he continued to come closer and I could tell he was zooming in. “Really, stop being such a creep!”

This specific friend had tried to make moves on me before, but I would never have considered dating him. He thought he was so smooth and great and could get all the girls he wanted, but all the girls got the shivers from him, and not in a good way. There were times, however, when he would just act like a normal person and he would be a genuine good guy, but he always seemed to put up an act.

“What are you even trying to do!” I screeched and tried hitting the device out of his hands another time, but with no success.

He snickered and zoomed in on my face again. “Why don’t you ask your brother?”

“Cam!” I shouted and got up from my seat to go to the sliding doors that would let me back inside the house. “Your friend’s being a--”

Before I could scream out the word ‘creep’ again, Cameron threw a bucket of water on me from the roof of the shed. He started laughing loudly a threw a bucket of confetti next. I stood there, looking up at Cam and back at the boy behind the camera with the most unamused look as they were in stitches.

“You really think this is funny?” I asked them with a disgusted tone. “This is one of the most childish pranks you’ve ever pulled.”

“You just don’t think it’s funny because you’re the one being pranked!” Cam jumped off the roof and acted as if he didn’t nearly topple over.

I shook my head, still not moving from where I was standing. “Nah, this also wouldn’t have been funny if you did it to someone else. It wouldn’t even be funny if I had been the one doing it to you.”

“You do realize you’re wearing a white shirt, right?” The friend wiggled his eyebrows and I could see his finger moving the button to zoom in.

A shouted out and went to run at him, however the grass around me had been drenched as well, creating the perfect mud for me to slip in. My ankle twisted, and I fell right into the mud, causing it to splash all over my body. However, I couldn’t care less about my white shirt being ruined. Cam burst out laughing once again, now being the one holding the camera.

“Cameron!” I seethed and I pushed myself up with my arms, but couldn’t seem to stand properly. “I have a soccer tournament in two days!”

You could see the rage in my eyes and I clumsily charged at him. But even while injured, I was faster than Cam. You couldn’t see anything but grass as he tried to hurry away until the camera hit the floor and turned off. Somehow, the recording stopped right before you could see me tackling Cam.

“I still like to think that Ireland is embarrassed about this, but I also know that the only thing she was pissed about was the fact that I caused her to be benched for the next two weeks because her ankle had been badly sprained. But let me tell you, she did get her revenge. She managed to break two of my fingers right after the camera shut off… So, we were both prevented from doing things we loved, and with doing things I loved I mean playing guitar, you sick-minded people.

“Anyway, I’m going to end it off here. I sent in a song I wanted to have played. Some people might not get the humor and might think of is as being very inappropriate. But, fuck you, this is my funeral and I want this song to play. It’s way better than all those sad songs most people want playing.

“Cameron out. (Now, Ireland, drop the mic and go back to your seat for me. If there’s no mic to drop, drop something else)”

I took off the fedora hat I was wearing that had once originally been Cam’s, and let it fall to the floor as Dead! by My Chemical Romance started playing in the background.

Notes

Still more like a part of the prologue than the actual story itself, but it's important. I can't just end his life without having a funeral!
I had more ideas for the speech, but I had those half a year ago, so I couldn't really remember them. So, excuse the shittiness of this version.

BTW here's what Ireland was wearing: http://www.polyvore.com/cgi/set?id=218624068