I feel as if I am dangling over a cliff. My heart, my stomach, my entire body ready to plunge like a stone.
Don’t say it, please, don’t fucking say it,I think.
“Ch-ch-chase, help.”
A distinct rope of fear knots in my throat, and I try to talk but every word I could have spoken is strangled behind my teeth.
When a hand finds my shoulder, I flick my gaze to my side, finding Rusty to my right. His golden curls that match his son's hang over his solemn eyes.
I look back toward Harlen, as he drops his face into the crook of his elbow, wiping over his eyes. His hands tremble, shoving his hair behind his ears, staring at the ground, not meeting my eyes.
Before today, I had never seen my best friend cry.
Before today, he could have said the same about me.
Harlen is a picture of devastation as I stand frozen in place, feeling the hope I held onto for Jade and Laiken’s lives diminishing by the second.
Tears fall down my face, and I don’t so much as palm them away, I let them roll with the hollow words that seep from between my chattering teeth.
“Look at me when you say it.”
A pain so wicked and horrific tells its own story through the broken, crimson capillaries at the sclera of Harlen’s misty-blue eyes.
Because when he looks at me, he doesn’t have to say anything at all.
Harlen covers a cry with a cough, steps forward and grips my shoulder so tight that I shake with the force.
A moment passes before he raises his chin and his bleeding eyes meet mine. And with Rusty on one side, Harlen on the other, they hold me up when he speaks.
“I’m so sorry, man. I’m so fucking sorry.”
They were gone.
My blood.
And my sister's best friend.
The two girls I should have kept closer.
Dead.
Just.
Like.
That.
“Where?” It is the only word I can get out.
We are in my truck, Harlen behind the wheel, engine idling in the parking lot, fumes crawling through my open window.
9:09 p.m. glares back at me in glowing orange numbers and letters from the dash.
My fists lay slaughtered, numb and twitching at the ends of my limbs after I’d crunched both against the pillared brick fence outside of the station.
Blood is everywhere.
It is a massacre.
