K A D E N

In the middle of town, there was a clearing in the shape of a ring. One side had a series of trees lining it and the other side had ascending stairs. The stairs extended outwards to make a long platform but they had the purpose of being makeshift bleachers.

There was a smattering of people on these stairs as they looked at the game going on in the middle of the circle. A basketball court had been drawn into the available space which now had a ball being bounced on the concrete by a few kids. Sam was among them.

I watched as he jumped to make a shot and the ball go in. A few cheers were heard including Noah who sat beside me and clapped to his heart's content.

"Never thought you were such a big fan of basketball," I commented.

"I'm not. I'm writing an article about this for extra credit."

"Right." I rose a brow in amusement.

"I'm going to go down and get some statements."

"You know this game is just for fun."

"Not to them." He stood up and went down the steps, where the players were sat taking a break for halftime.

I returned back to my paper which had more messy strokes than writing on it when a shadow fell across the page. I looked up to see Chloe. She smiled and lowered herself down to my level, her posture slumped inwards and closed off.

"That's pretty close to the original." She peered over my shoulder at the drawing and suddenly I felt my ears start to heat up.

"Pretty close?"

"There's a vine that goes just behind her earlobe. Just a loop. There." She pointed it out on the page.

"Thanks." I said gruffly, correcting it with my rubber and feeling my face warm even more. I continued to move my pencil across the page, increasingly aware of Chloe's watchful gaze."

"You plan on giving her a mouth?"

I looked at the empty spot and the faint lines of my attempts. "Can't seem to get it right."

She nodded in understanding. "So, is this like a hobby?"

"Something like that." I folded up the paper, returning my attention back to the game and watching Noah animatedly talk to Sam.

"Phoenix and I were close, you know. We uh. . . used to be at least." Chloe looked down at her hands.

"What changed?"

"The accident." She swallowed, "I was the one driving. Her brother died. I lived."

"And you think it's your fault." I finished.

She winced but nodded anyway.

"I knew a boy like you once." I began. "He and his sister went to the arcade one day. As they were coming back home these black cars started to roll up-- rows of them just surrounding a little park area. The windows opened and bullets started to fly everywhere. They hit the trees, the other cars and then his sister. She died instantly."

"That's horrible." Chloe whispered.

"It was." I continued. "And you can see why the boy would blame himself for it. If he hadn't taken her with him then the whole scenario could have been avoided. But it still happened and it was all a case of them being at the wrong place at the wrong time."

She thought about it for a second. "But wouldn't it have been the same if the boy had gone alone? Instead of his sister, he could have been hurt."

"I never thought about it like that." I turned to her. "Would it have been the same if it was just one of you in the car?"

"I don't know." She sighed. "What happened to the boy?"

"He learned to forgive himself over time."

"Who's to say how long that will take?"

I thought about the story I'd just told. It hadn't ended there. Then I looked at Chloe and I saw the boy. I saw myself. The guilt that ate away at me every waking second of the day. The responsibility that I didn't want to bear. I was stuck but she didn't have to be.

"That's up to you to decide."

-

The day dragged on until it was tomorrow. After my chat with Chloe, I came home-- though it felt far from one. I cleared up the rubbish from a few days ago when everyone had come to mine after the festival. Then sat on the now free couch, fingers knotted into my hair.

I was tired.

My limbs were filled with fatigue as I walked up the stairs and to the bathroom with my cracked mirror. Except it wasn't there anymore. I stared at a blank surface before opening the cabinet door and taking out a small bottle of pills.

My grip tightened against the sink as I stared at the orange plastic in my palm. All I needed for a nights rest. One pill was all I needed. But sometimes it didn't stop at one. And suddenly the harmless plastic became a weapon in my hands, taunting me for my flaws and all else that seemed to go wrong with me. It was a miserable way of thinking but one I found often wormed its way into my head when I endured longer nights.

I began to remember then. I remembered the nights in rehab. I remembered why I was sent there, who had sent me there. I thought about Jane and my parents and what life was like before. How simple it once was, only to now end up with an empty house and endless nights riddled with nightmares that refused to go away.

I shut the cabinet door with more force than necessary and threw the bottle of pills into a far corner. Taking the key from around my neck, I unlocked the locked door, opening a room of four walls. One of which was halfway filled with a series of black lines. Like the ones you might do if you were trapped in a prison cell. Some were straight, some were wobbly depending on how many bottles lined up the bottom of the wall. I picked up an unopened can of beer from the last time I was in the room, surveying the product of my insomniac mind.

I stared at the lines until they morphed together, making my stomach turn. My fist tightened around the rim of the can as I resisted the urge to throw something against the wall. I had enough broken glass in my life.

I snorted to myself, absentmindedly tracing circles across the mouth of the beer can and counting back down from a hundred. These violent tendencies didn't surprise me anymore, I eventually came to terms that they were a part of me. That still didn't mean I didn't try to suppress that side of me. Only when there were people around did I try to hide it; the facade that Taylor had pointed out. In the recesses of my home, in a room I kept locked for reasons I didn't particularly know, I could let all the ugly thoughts out and not have anyone judge me for it. And there was a sort of peace in that.

I slowly closed my eyes and waited to get that buzzed feeling from the alcohol but instead all I heard was a knocking sound. At first, I ignored it but after a few seconds of incessant banging, I reluctantly got up to see who was at the door. By the time I reached the last step on the stairs the bottle was half empty.

"Sam?" I blinked in surprise as he stood panting on my porch. "What are you doing here?"

"Why didn't you answer the door?" He said, ignoring my question, bent over with one hand on his knee and the other on the door frame.

"It's two in the morning." I gestured outside which was pitch dark. "I was asleep."

He took no notice of my excuses, catching his breath by the door instead. Then I noticed the haggard state he was in. The way his hair seemed to be messier than usual and how his eyes were puffy like he'd been crying. "Are you okay?"

"Can I come in?" He rasped out.

I moved out of the doorway, giving him entry and followed him to where he sat on a stool in the kitchen. He was dressed in his pyjamas, his breaths could be heard loudly in the quiet, strangled and rough. He buried his head in his hands, rubbing at his eyes ferociously as if he had something stuck in them.

"What's wrong?" I approached him carefully, placing a tentative hand on his shoulder.

"I didn't know what to do." He muttered to himself, shaking his head. "I just started running. . . I didn't know where else to go."

I placed a glass of water in front of him. "Hey, listen. Tell me what happened, slowly."

He looked into my eyes, his beginning to tear up before he looked away. "If you can't tell me, could you show me?"

I heard him exhale before nodding and getting off the stool to head outside. Grabbing my keys and stuffing my feet into a pair of sneakers, I followed him out to the car.

"My house." He said monotonously from the passenger seat.

I did as instructed. The roads were empty at this time of night. Quiet too. There wasn't Sam's usual chatter to fill in the silence and that's what made me even more anxious. That feeling only heightened when we were stood outside his door and I saw how his hands shook as he put the key in and twist the knob.

He let me go in first. The passageway was dark but I made no move to turn them on as I silently crept into the living room, past the piano, past a vase of yellow roses. I let out a breath of relief when I saw that everything was normal. The furniture and couch were the same as the last time I'd been to the Johnson's.

But that breath got stuck in my throat when I saw the body that lay on the rug that Ms Johnson had so proudly told me had been imported from Peru. And it was the lady of the house herself that lay unmoving on the ground.

My body felt numb as I crouched down next to Sam's grandma and pressed two fingers down on the side of her neck. I counted to twenty hoping to feel something- anything. I tried her wrist next, taking the frail and wrinkly hand in my own but all I got was silence.

And it was deafening.

I glanced up to see Sam stood in the doorframe, both his hands clamped across his mouth as tears streamed down his face, watching the few remnants of what family he had left wither away. I said nothing as I pulled out my phone and dialled 911.

"Paramedics are on their way," I said, slipping my phone back into my pocket once I was done. He'd moved onto the couch, posture sinking into itself as he just stared silently. My throat went dry as the words got stuck in my throat but what could I say?

I'm sorry?

It's going to be okay?

But I knew there was no guarantee that it would be. That it ever would be. So I stayed quiet. My eyes stayed glued to the clock watching the hands move, and time just slip past. Too soon. Too fast.

Even then, it felt like hours for the paramedics to come. The sound of the ambulance pierced through the night, the lights illuminating the walls of the Johnson's place. People in green scrubs strapped Sam's Gran on a stretcher. He looked at her with bloodshot eyes. I looked away, hating seeing him like this.

One of the paramedics asked me if there were any other relatives and I remembered the detective. In all that had happened, I'd forgotten about the last member of the family. Since I didn't have his number I got Sam's phone, scrolling through his contacts until I came across his brother's name.

My finger hovered over it for a moment before I pressed the number and held my breath.

-

"They didn't have any Hershey's but they did have doughnuts." I offered the box to Sam but he shook his head. He was still in his pyjamas but I'd managed to get him into a coat before he got into the ambulance so he wouldn't freeze on the way.

"You need to eat something." I tried again but he still refused. Sighing, I leaned back in the uncomfortable plastic chair and bit into a doughnut. It turned to sawdust in my mouth.

A nurse walked by and I checked Sam's phone again, seeing only a blank screen. The Detective hadn't answered so the best I could do was leave a message on his phone telling him to meet us at the hospital. It wasn't ideal. None of it was.

Sam hadn't said a word on the way to the hospital. Instead, he sat on the chair, blank-faced and terrified. The tears had long ago dried up but his eyes remained a puffy red. Even though I was with him, he still seemed alone.

Rubbing my temple, I brought his phone out and scrolled through the contacts once again. I stopped at the word mom. My finger hovered over it but Sam spoke first.

"Wait." He croaked out. I slowly turned towards him. "I'll do it."

"Are you sure?" He still looked as if he could break down at any moment.

"Yes."

Without another word, I handed his phone back. He stood up and walked a few paces, then a few more until he turned a corner and was out of sight. That left just me sitting on the chair and staring at the white walls. I'd never liked the smell of hospitals. Not because of the 'death' smell but because of the general smell of the disinfectant. I'd always wondered how a place so clean could smell so bad.

Now that Sam had gone, I found myself restless. I got up to my feet, doughnuts in hand and decided to finish the rest on my way to the vending machine. By the time I'd reached it, the box was empty and I'd thrown it away in a nearby bin.

My eyes scanned the rows of sweets and the prices attached below until my fingers pressed the buttons for a soda. The machine made a whirring sound and the soda can fell from its holder but when I put my hand in the hatch there was nothing there.

"Overpriced piece of trash." I muttered to myself, giving it a kick.

Still nothing.

I ran a hand across my face and thought about hitting it again when I heard a familiar voice. It was angry and raised and when I twisted my head, I saw Phoenix. On the receiving end was a doctor, whom I vaguely remembered taking my cast off-- Andrews or something.

Words of their conversation floated over to where I was stood.

"You can't tell her."

"Phoenix, this is for your own good."

"What is? Please tell me because I can't see how I'm benefitting from any of this."

"What you did was dangerous and--"

"And nothing. You can't tell me what to do, you're not my father."

"No, but I care about you." A long silence fell between them after that but I didn't stay around to listen anymore. I walked past them, all the while feeling Phoenix's eyes on my back.

Having left like that, I realised that I'd forgotten my soda but all thoughts of money grabbing vending machines disappeared when I came back and saw Sam. He was stood anxiously biting his nails, phone pressed against his ear. A man in a white lab coat came up behind him talking in hushed tones.

I looked back the way I'd come through the empty hallway. Except Phoenix was standing there now, hands across her chest as if she was inspecting me. My eyes flickered to Sam and then the door.

And like the orange plastic with pills inside, it would have been easy to walk out those doors. To leave tonight behind and into tomorrow. To forget about it after a while.

But I didn't. Instead, I walked in a straight path towards Sam.