The night is alive.

Close your eyes and you can hear its untamed roar resonate in your ears, a cackling symphony of blaring horns and ferocious winds that fills up your entire being, ridding it of the shackles of inhibition that burden it in the day.

Close your eyes and you can feel its intangible presence, the kind of presence that stirs in the air, that sends your blood roaring and your mind whirring.

Close your eyes and you can smell its musky aroma underneath the city's putrid stench, an intoxicating perfume that paints a world where, for once, you can be free.

Now, open your eyes and you can see in front of you what was before hidden.You can see neon signs and street lights lighting up the streets in small patches, leaving pools of darkness and shadows scattered about. This darkness is like a river, swerving and sloshing and coating everything around it in a thin tint of black, seeping into your soul and washing away with it all the burdens inside, leaving you clean and raw, albeit for just a few stolen moments.

But not me.

My regret is not a stain on my soul that can simply be washed away by the serene night; it is a parasitic plant that feeds off of everything good inside of me. Everyday, the waters of my guilt nourish it, and everyday its vines grow a little more, twining a little tighter around my heart and lungs, so that every breath comes out like a desperate sob and every heartbeat slams in my chest. Everyday, these vines inch a little higher up my throat, penetrating the back of my eyes, so that insomnia plagues my nights. The day will come undoubtedly when the vines will infiltrate my brain, just like they did to her, to the grey eyed ghost sitting in the bus seat next to me.

To Caitlyn.

You know, lots of people in our little town will tell you that Caitlyn is dead, that she bled to death in the backseat of this very bus, but it's not true. Caitlyn is very much alive. She's as alive as the ocean breeze, the summer night.

Close your eyes and you can hear her sobs, smell her vanilla perfume. You can feel her misery dripping from the metal confines of this very bus, like the thick congealed blood that coated it when she slashed her wrists open.

And when you open your eyes, you'll see her. You'll see her in her faded Jordan's, smiling at you from the backseat. Maybe she'll even give you a small wave.

But don't be fooled like I was. Don't fall into the trap. Because underneath her shirt sleeves is an assortment of red slashes, all varying in length. That smiling face you see, it's nothing more than a façade, a lie.

And I should have seen that.

But I didn't, and now she's gone.

This mirage of her is all I have. After she went away, lots of people asked me why she took her life in this bus. To be honest, I don't know. My best guess is that she didn't want her younger brother to find her dead in a bathtub somewhere.

Sometimes I wonder if she had second thoughts. If, in those last moments, she panicked and thought to herself, 'Oh shit! Oh crap! I should not have done that. Abort mission. ABORT MISSION!'

I wish I could ask her this. I wish she was here. Not the ghost version of her, but the real her: flesh, bones and all.

But she isn't, and now all my questions drop unanswered into a void of what-ifs that has only grown in the five years after her death.

What if we had never fought? Would she still be dead?

What if we had never met? Where would I be right now?

It's a never ending maze I venture into every night but the more I delve into the heart of it, the more I realize the futility of the act.

She's never coming back and everyday I lose her more. As time passes, my memories of her wear away, like sedimentary rock eroding under the strong currents of life.

It's why I started to wear golden earrings and to tie my hair up in a knot, so that some part of her would always remain by my side, but its not enough.

It's never enough.

Every second of my existence is overpowered by my guilt. It shields me from the rest of my life, like a glass separating me from every moment passing by. I feel like a hollow husk of what I used to be, like some part of me died with Cat and now in its place is a rotting piece of flesh that spreads through my body like a disease.

But I'll have my answers by the end of the night, I think to myself as I run a finger down the length of the cool blade. By the end of the night, I promise you Cat, you'll know how sorry I am.