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The night Timothy had died hadn't been good for Maddie, but it had been worse for Simon. She hadn't seen it, she'd been too busy spending the night sobbing into her brother's arms, but Simon's night had started going downhill before his brother had overdosed.
In the moment it happened, he was convinced Maddie not loving him back would be the worst thing that ever happened to him. That moment, filled with enough emotion to last a lifetime, would go down in history as the worst moment in Simon Kalivoda's life. He'd thought that he would relive that moment forever, the terrified look on her face as tears slipped out of bloodstained eyes, the way his heart dropped into his stomach, the way the curtains rustled in front of him, the open window making it hard to see, but that didn't matter because he knew what every single inch of her looked like with his eyes shut.
And then time unfroze, and the walls that Simon felt were closing in came crashing down. He thought that feeling, of being suffocated by the walls until he died, he thought that would be worse than anything else he could ever feel. But when his entire world collapsed, leaving him burried under the rubble with no one willing or able to save him, he knew that would be his lowest point.
It had been a blur that night, the ambulance sirens, Kate at his side as the police questioned him, the victim's brother, gripping his hand as if he would float away if she let go. Maybe he would have. Maybe he would have floated high above the ground, destined never to return. Maybe that wouldn't be so bad. The phone call to his mom was one that he would never forget. Sherrif Goode had made it, but Simon had been there, within earshot, the muffled cries of his only parent ringing through his ears as she shattered.
But, two minutes later, and that noise was replaced by the rush of blood as he wrapped his arms around his brother, closing his eyes against the feeling of Timothy's arm tensing around Simon's shoulders, and the way his scattered breaths ghosted over SImon's shoulder, the only indication that he was alive.
Drugs had almost killed his brother, but now, drugs would be his saving grace. Not just his, but Kate's, the girl who'd kept him together when the sheer outside force was threatening to pull him apart, and Maddie's, the girl who would do anything for those she loved, which Simon was ecstatic to learn included him.
"Let's Timothy this bitch!"
Since that night, Maddie had thought a lot about dying. Well, more than usual, considering she did live in "Killer Capital U.S.A," and something that had invaded her mind for a while was the question of where. Where would she die?
Needless to say, after much consideration, she'd decided that the Grab N Bag, the grocery store Simon had worked at for the last three years, would be a pretty shitty place to die. Yet, it's exactly where she was.
"A few months ago, my brother Timothy had an unfortunate experience in which he injested too much of a certain substance," Simon dumped an armful of pills onto the counter they were all gathered around. "He was dead for two minutes. But," he did a little drumroll on the counter. "We got him back!"
