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donna doesn't think, necessarily, that she's going crazy.
no, when it comes to the larger perspective, she likely has her head closest to where it needs to be, square on her shoulders. it doesn't make the odd moments any less jarring.
she sees laura everywhere.
in those last days of laura's life, donna remembers things being so strange, so blurry and red and vicious. she spends so much time, in the wake of it all, trying to untangle this puzzle and it ends up being so far out of her hands that she barely can feel anything when it's solved.
it makes those little fetches of blonde hair, stark and frightened blue eyes, wide smiles, alarming. at first.
she can't help but find comfort in them, after a while. when james leaves town and she's left with her family's confusion in her lap, laura's death and her life feel like far-away illusions, youth that she's not allowed to hold onto anymore.
it's never a full glance. she'll cross the street and see a scrap of a red sweater. when she's pulling up to visit her parents, years after she's graduated school and started exploring past the douglas firs of twin peaks, she'll hear that laugh, a call of her name. it's never her.
it could be her. it should still be her.
death follows donna hayward whether she wants it to or not, but she wonders, sometimes, if she'll stay in its shadow for the rest of her life. like laura never died.
it's not a particularly cheery thought. donna wonders, through this off stretch of her youth, if she'll ever have a confidante like the one she found in laura palmer ever again. maybe she should ask the dead girl standing on the sidewalk, grinning like she's holding the two of them up for first period.
it never stops aching. it just pulls a different muscle.