Olivia

Thursday, July 25th, 7:13am.

I try to ignore the idea that everyone is staring at me as I sit in the back corner booth of the diner. A TV is mounted on the adjacent wall and most every eye is on it instead as some broadcast about Derrick plays.

"As of yesterday, the search for local missing teen, Derrick Morgan, has come to a tragic end. A nighttime beach jogger discovered a body after it had washed ashore here on the banks of a New Buffalo beach. The jogger promptly reported it to the authorities, who quickly identified the body as the remains of Derrick Morgan. No solid evidence has been found to narrow it down to a single suspect, however detectives promise that all possible suspects are going to be questioned over the next couple of days-."

He's really dead.

I want to cry from the relief. I want to throw up from all of the pain I had to go through before this.

I force myself to sit still, to stay in this one place as I wait.

They don't know who you are.

I breathe deeply, calmly.

I want to pretend that I am okay but I'm not. I can still taste the blood on my tongue from where I had bitten it the night before.

I can't remember how I got home.

By some miracle, I did make it home and if I didn't have the bite on my tongue I could have believed that everything that had happened last night was a nightmare.

I wish it was.

I know that Mila did something to me. To us. But I don't want to accept it just yet. I can't accept the fact that one of my few friends would do something like that to me.

But is she really your friend?

I push the thought away when there's a chime at the door and Amy walks in. A hat is squarely planted on her head and as she walks over to the booth I can see that the words 'Cat Mom' are stitched across the front of it. Her makeup is smeared and her eyes are puffy as she sits down across from me.

"Hey," she says and I can't help but notice the rawness in her voice.

"Hi, are you-?"

She shakes her head and it's almost frantic. I let the question drop as her eyes fix on a point past my head before she refocuses on me.

"I'll be better when Josh gets home," she says and it almost sounds like an apology.

I remember then that her oldest brother is still overseas somewhere serving for the military since he first got out of high school a couple years ago.

"Mila told me what she did."

The truth is like a slap across the face and I find myself stiffening up as I reach for a silverware packet and hold it tightly in my hand.

"I'm sorry," she whispers, her wide eyes not leaving mine, "oh, Livy, I'm so sorry."

"Why?" I croak.

"Because she thought it would make me happy, she had done it partly because of what she thought was best for me," Amy admits as she gnaws on the edge of her lip. "And I'm really sorry about it."

"Amy, you didn't tell her to do anything, you have no reason to apologize," I begin to say, but she cuts me off.

"I just don't know what to do," she rasps and it's then that a waitress approaches us.

"Can I get you two something to eat?" the waitress asks as Amy looks away to hide her face.

"Oh uhm," I glance in Amy's direction before looking back to the waitress, "we'll take a couple of waters."

"A couple waters, anything else?"

Something flickers in the waitress's eye then and I feel my gut lurch as I stop breathing. The silence between us seems to stretch out for far longer than it should. She suddenly tilts her head like she wants to ask me something, her eyes narrowing as she studies me.

A yell followed by the sound of breaking glass shatters the silence and I look up to see that a waitress has slipped and dropped her tray of drinks on the floor.

I can't help it when I sag against the table with relief.

"I'll get your drinks," our waitress groans as she walks over to help the other waitress to her feet.

I nod as I watch her leave, my heart beating too hard in my chest before Amy clears her throat.

"Do you think they know who we are?"

"I don't know," I admit, "but we may not want to stick around for long."

"We can head back to my place-."

"No."

A silence fills the air between us as she watches me and I blink and look away. All of those parties, all of the times I went over to their house to spend time with Derrick when I thought he loved me.

It's a place I don't want to go back to, even though I know he's gone.

"We can go to my house, Emily should be at work, we can talk about all of this in private," I elaborate.

My explanation is enough for her as she shuts her mouth and nods.

"Okay."