Only, that was not how grief worked. You can’t rewrite time, and you can’t hack through the bones of tragedy to piece them back together the way you want them to be. This was real life, and in real life you had two choices: pick yourself up, or tumble off the ledge.
And today, I knew what I was choosing.
When I spear my hands into my hair and bite the elastic from my wrist, looping the strands into a low bun at my nape, I think about the one Laiken will be forced to make today.
It cools the sweat on my neck, and I dry-swallow, almost dry-retch.
The sheer will to see herself through the dark hours of a day filled with only violent memories and unease was no small feat. In fact, it was enormous, but the girl had always been brave.
And her bravery had always had a way of tilting me on the inside.
Who chose to stare down a violent killer instead of running? Who lays themself out like that?My thoughts push my heart to my throat, and I burn through the last of my blunt, throwing it into the lake.
Someone who cared much more about the life of her best friend’s than her own.
I pinch at the tip of my nose when it drips again. I wished I’d thanked her for that, and I wished I’d told her she was a fucking idiot too.
I’d once heard thateyes spoke louder than wordsand I’d wondered more than once what hers had saidthatnight when she stared back at the faceless man that had mutilated my sister.
I knew it had to have been marginally different from the look that I saw on her face no less than a month ago.
The one that she didn’t want me to see.
The one that I had caught through the diner’s large windows when she thought I hadn’t been looking.
The one that saw her mossy green eyes glittering with fragility.
Laiken was broken and she tried so hard to smooth out her jagged edges, but she’d never been able to hide her vulnerability, not with me. Broken recognized broken. It was why she hadn’t just been Jade’s friend, but mine too.
I pull a breath through my teeth when the pier creaks and Harlen takes a seat next to me, placing a plate of pancakes between us.
“Eat,” he says.
I don’t.
I drop my head.
I hate myself for doing what I had done to her, for saying the things I said in order to push her away. I hate even more that I couldn’t be the person to help her soothe her gaping wounds because my own remained a carnage of despair.
I hate that my father took that from me.
I hate that he made me the man I fear most.
However, today I can see past the possible threat at my own hands.
I wouldn’t feed her hope. I wasn’t that much of a cunt. And I wouldn’t walk back into her life and give a fresh voice to a promise I had made to her all those years ago when we had found her father dangling from a tree.
But I would keep it, even if it meant I had to do so from a distance, where she’d be safest.
“You will survive this. I’ll make sure you do.”
Today, on the third anniversary of my sister’s murder, I will watch her best friend in the shadows until the sun rises. The same way I had watched Nan's house the year before, and the one before that too.
I will make sure that Laiken Campbell makes it home safely tonight.
Devil’s Dineris scrawled in cursive across a fluorescent 50s style sign.
Each letter alternates between a stark candy apple red and vibrant magenta pink, its glow reflecting off shallow pools of water that speckle across the gun-metal grey asphalt parking lot in front.
