Tears came to my eyes. 7 years it had been since I had seen or even thought of her. I looked around, expecting her head to be mounted on a wall somewhere. I get up and walk back into the house. It's almost midnight now, and Mom and Brad are safely upstairs. Asleep or not I couldn't tell. I knew at least a few places where she could have hid her. I knew Mom hated Audrey, and I knew that she would have tried to get rid of her the first chance she had gotten. But I saw the tenderness in her eyes when she looked at her. Audrey was all we had left of Dad, and destroying her meant that every last of his idiosyncrasies, quirks, hopes, dreams, and eccentricities of him would be gone forever. I doubted she sold her or dismantled her, so that meant she was somewhere in the house. She had to be. To see her again, to peek under the veil to the mechanisms within, to feel my eyes fill tears, was almost like putting on my beat-up navy blue Converse, ripping up the shag carpet, and sitting on the dirty concrete like I had done on that sticky summer afternoon so long ago. There was no trace of her in the hallway closet, nor in the bathroom one. It could be in Mom's room, but I dare not run the risk of waking up Mom and Brad. I stumble into the dark garage. My phone light is the only light I can work by, and the darkness almost seems thick, like it was its own being. Panic began to flutter in my chest. What if the darkness was sentient? My breathing became labored, and I turned every angle to make sure the darkness wasn't hurtling towards me. I back up against the wall, hitting a huge fake sarcophagus we used for Halloween. The eyes seemed luminous in the thick darkness, painted angularly with a deep blue, seeming black in the lighting. I didn't want to shine the light in the eyes for fear of blinding it. Whenever we were going to decorate the yard for Halloween, Mom always insisted on carrying out the sarcophagus herself, even though I grew to be stronger than her in the recent years. I slowly felt the side for hinges, and I could feel them against my fingers. I find a latch on the side. I take a deep breath and pull.

Tomorrow finally came, and I was tired beyond the point that I was energetic. When Lance came to me at my locker and tried to kiss me, I turned away and pretended to look inside my locker for something.

"What?" Lance scrunches his eyebrows at me. He looks nice today; he wears an oversized pink jumper with acid washed jean shorts and Vans. I shut my locker and look at him, I hope, seriously.

"Lance, last night, we were both really vulnerable. You were crying and I was just trying to cheer you up." Lance's eyebrows raise.

"So that meant nothing last night?" I was only a few months older than Lance, but sometimes I feel so much older than him.

"It didn't mean nothing," I say slowly, "but I don't think we should do that again," I begin down the hall, Lance at my heels.

"Why not?" Lance cuts in front of me and blocks my path. He shows no signs of extreme hurt or anger, but I can tell that he's starting to come apart at the seams.

"We're just friends, and I think we should stay that way," I conjure up the excuse from nowhere, and I'm grateful for it, "It was late, and I didn't want to turn you away like that." I can see Lance begin to grow angry.

"No. Here's the story. I came to visit because my dad punched me in the face and my boyfriend verbally abused me, so I came crying to your doorstep, then you decided to take advantage of me in my bruised and upset state." He smiles. Lance is the gay best friend to a wide host of girls, some of them widely influential. If that story got out, it could cause ripples. I didn't want Violette catching wind of this mess.

"Lance," I say slowly, "I don't want that to happen, and neither do you." I grab his shoulder, trying to steady the rocking ship on the raging ocean in front of me.

"You came twice," Lance was bucking on the waves, fighting ferociously, "and now you tell me I meant nothing to you."

"Stop twisting my words!" I shove his shoulder. His breath catches in his delicate little throat, and I have a vivid image; my hands around his throat, my fingerprints painted onto his throat in bruised purple, his body in my backseat. There I would drive through town, where the seeds of this terrible rosebush were planted, and I'd bring him out to a field somewhere, far from where the doom of his ill-fated love began. I come back to myself and deal with the wounded bird in front of me.

"Or is this because of her?" The words fly from his lips and slide down my back, venomous ice cubes. I can't deal with this anymore. Lance had abandoned me when Dad died and was plentiful like wildflowers when he came back. He never wanted to hear about my problems and expected me to listen to every single ailment of his.

"You know what, Lance? Yes, this is about her. Last night was a mistake, and if you're too immature to see that, then you can go crawling back to that asshole you're only with for sympathy. Tracy Shaw told you all the things he did, and you still dated him. You only sleep around to get sympathy, and you think you're such a mystery, but you're not! You're so childish!" I spit at him. He only smiles a smile. A broken smile. A bitter, broken, smile.

"I can't believe I thought you were the only man I ever loved." He was gone. I ended up feeling guilty, but I had something new waiting at home.