Chapter 2

I could see the light. It was shining in through my blinds, peeking out and waking me up just before my alarm went off.

It was a new day, and I stared up at my ceiling, trying to convince myself to get out of bed. It was always the few days, or sometimes weeks after that made me feel the most.

It was hard to pin down the emotions, I usually wasn't sure what I was feeling. Those days were always a blur of tears and yelling and pain.

I was used to it, or at least I pretended to be.

I don't think I'd ever get used to it.

I pulled myself out of bed, before checking my phone.

13 messages

4 missed calls.

Sighing, I unlocked it. All of my messages were from Natalie. Confused, I opened it.

Alton.

I found something in Sara's attic.

Her parents let me come over, and I'm not sure what this is.

Please respond, I know it's late, but it's important.



The messages kept on like that for a while. I frowned, and pressed the call button next to her name.

RING

She picked up almost immediately.

"Alton?"

"Yes? What is it, please tell me everything's okay."

"It's all fine. I think. I found a DVD in her attic, and I didn't want to watch it without you all." My stomach dropped.

"It's probably just a movie or something. What's the big deal?"

"If it were a movie would I be calling you? No, it says something on the front."

"And that would be?"

"Only watch this if I died."

"Oh god."

"Yeah, I know. I told the rest of them to meet me in the back of the school. My parents are okay if we all go to their house and watch it instead of going to school."

"Okay." I hung up, before resting my face on my palms.

Why? It had taken us too long to find it, and I was scared to say the least. That didn't really explain how I felt correctly.

My stomach was turning, and my palms were sweating. My heart was beating so hard that I could hear it, and only it. It wasn't quiet anymore. My breathing was quick and ragged, and I struggled to catch it. I knew my parents would be mad if they found out that I had ditched school, but I thought that this was a perfectly good reason. This was something that would change me, I knew that much. Something that she hadn't told me.

I looked at myself in the mirror, and I hadn't realized I was crying until I did. I wiped my face, and started looking through my closet.

I didn't have the energy to look put together, and so I just through on whatever clothes I could find. I put on a too-big hoodie, the one that I wore almost every day, and I dried my tears on it. It was grey and said Kale along the front. I had seen the hoodies before, and Hayden had gotten me one for my birthday one year, getting it too big on purpose. I assumed that I would grow into it, but so far that hadn’t happened. I like it, it sort of helped me fade into the background.

Out of everything, this had to be it. This. The reason that Natalie had texted me so much could have been something simple, like wanting to hang out, but of course it wasn't. Not with us.

It seemed like nothing was ever simple. There was always a why, or a who, or a when, or something even more complicated.

I went downstairs, not caring that it was still earlier than I normally left. I looked through the pantry, but couldn't bring myself to eat anything. My stomach wouldn't have been able to handle it. It was still turning and I didn’t want to risk having to pull over to throw up. I took a piece of paper and started writing a note to my mom.

Sorry I'm gone early. I got some news about Sara, and I'm leaving early to talk to my friends about it. I'm fine, don't worry too much. Feel free to call.

I put it on the island, and grabbed my keys, walking out of the door without thinking twice about it. I got into my car.

Tears blurred my vision.

No, keep it together, Alton. You have to be strong right now. I inhaled sharply, and pulled out of the driveway, and started driving. My pace was slower than normal, and I looked around me.

Logically, I knew that maybe it wasn't a big deal, and that she just wanted to say goodbye. But I also knew that if she hadn't seen this coming, she would never have made that video. Whatever it really was.

I tried to get it out of my mind, but how could I? Mourning was all my life had been for the past years, and there wasn't any way that I could put it away. Not now, when I thought that I might find something out that would change who I was, and who I saw her as. My hands shook, and I steadied them against the steering wheel. The sky was still as blue as it was the day before, and the birds still chirped as if nothing was amiss. But it's not like nature knew, and neither did almost everybody else in the entire world.

The sun had already risen, and I didn’t realize how early it really was. It could have been 3 am, and I wouldn’t have cared. If it was for her, if that’s what she wanted before she died. I would do it, no matter what she asked of us. I was ready. I wasn’t.

I knew that I wasn’t ready, but I also knew that I wouldn’t ever be ready. If I just kept dragging my heels, it would never happen.

I was almost there. I had kept it together fairly well considering everything that had happened that morning alone. I felt bad for Natalie. If my reaction was like this hearing it from her, it must have been so hard finding the DVD. I pulled into the parking lot, and saw Hayden and Natalie standing by her car. I shut the door behind me and ran to them.

Natalie's face was red, but Hayden seemed empty. I stared at my feet, looking at the cracked asphalt. There was a chill in the wind that warned of a colder winter to come. I sighed and looked at them, but I couldn't find any words to express everything.

Natalie nodded. "I know." We stood there in silence. And it wasn't a good kind of silence. We knew that we needed to talk about it, but we couldn't bring ourselves to. It had been something that we didn't want to talk about. Almost as if we didn't speak of it, that it never happened. I knew that wasn't true.

I still liked to pretend, more that I probably should have.

A few minutes later, Jenna arrived, joining us in the parking lot. Normally she would have said something, but she didn't. We climbed into Natalie's car, just as silent as ever.

"We have to talk about this." Hayden was the first to break the silence.

"I know." Natalie sighed, shifting her weight in the driver's seat. "But what is there to say about a teenager who dies? It's too much to talk about, and I'd never be able to put it into words. It was too much when it happened, and she never truly told me why. I guess I’ll found out now, but I’m not so sure I want to."

Beat.

I spoke up. "We're going to have to do this. I don't want to. Only I do at the same time. And I imagine it's the same for the rest of you guys. We just have to be tough, and make it through the video. We don't know what it says yet, we will soon enough."

I watched out the window, seeing the trees zoom by. They left streaks of dark colors along the sky, and leaves fluttered to the ground.

“I know.” Jenna sounded smaller than normal. “I do.” She almost whispered the last section, her voice wavering.

Natalie lived on the outskirts of town. That was closer than I did, I didn't live in the borders at all. I wasn't even close to them. My neighborhood was small, and we liked to say that it was out in the middle of nowhere. We didn’t have very many neighbors, and the majority of them only came to be near the lake during the summer. The name was Oak Brooks. It was one of the more forest-y parts of the Wenjie area, and there were a bunch of trees that you could climb. I used to more when I was little, but sometimes I still went up and climbed.

We pulled into her driveway.

Her house was a little cottage, and was painted a light blue color. It had a red chimney with swirls of smoke coming out of the top, and it looked like something pulled straight out of a picture book. We got out, and went inside, following Natalie up to her room.

I sat on her bed, curling my feet underneath her. I watched her dig through a box, and pulled out a DVD. It was labeled just as she had told me it would be, and the label was certainly Sara’s handwriting. It was a little scrawl that I had seen so many times. She took out a little pink DVD player, like one that I had when I was younger. She put in the CD and I held my breath as it started playing.