But what happened to those of us who lived in the gray?
I made a phone call.
The bridge to Gatineau was without traffic. I followed my phone’s GPS to the address I’d been given, my thoughts a maelstrom. Parking, I remained in the car, staring into the distance, numb, numb, numb.
The streetlights stopped at the road, and I’d left the road behind. The night was dark. Although the moon was nearly full according to the calendar, thick cloud cover hung over the city, deep shadows impeding my view. Another storm threatened its wrath. The impending snow would soon blanket the world.
A black night. A white world.
Me in the gray.
Two girls and a boy in a place they didn’t belong. In over their heads. Drowning in fear and despair. One chose to hide. One chose to fight. One chose to die.
Memories came back to me. Things I’d seen. Things I’d read. Things I’d heard. I could stop it, end it tonight, but did I want to?
I pushed the thoughts away.
Get out of the fucking car.
I got out of the car. In a daze, I walked between worlds, between realities, to a place in the near distance. A crust had formed over the untrampled snow. My boots broke through easily, eerily crunching as I crossed to my destination.
The boy waited exactly where he promised, under a mournful willow, beside the cold stone slab of a memorial. Huddled in aski jacket, shoulders by his ears, he hunched forward—against the wind or ghosts, I wasn’t sure.
I joined him at the foot of the grave belonging to the girl he couldn’t save.
He didn’t speak, and neither did I. We hung our heads. In sorrow or prayer, it didn’t matter. She was a girl who had left the world too soon. A girl broken by boys much older than she. They had taken what she wasn’t willing to give.
“I loved her,” the boy beside me said after a time, his voice muffled by the collar of his jacket.
“I know.”
“If I could go back—”
“You can’t.”
“I know, but if I could—”
“Don’t do that to yourself.”
The boy went silent. He stared at her resting place with such soul-wrenching agony, I thought he might fall to his knees and dig a hole beside her, so they could be together again.
“She tried to move on,” he said.
“I believe you.”
“She shut me out,” he said.
“I know.”
“I blame myself,” he said.
“Don’t.”
“I hope they rot in hell!” His cry filled the dark, echoing through the cemetery.
“They will,” I whispered. “They are.”
He sobbed.
