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My heart was beating fast. So fast.

It continuously drummed an uncoordinated beat that thumped through the skin on my chest, making it feel as though it were about to rip through the fabric of my shirt.

I couldn't feel my feet - they had become numb from the coldness of the night, and from the shock that I was caught up in. At this point, I couldn't feel my head either.

This was the person I'd known since elementary, since he was young. Since we were both young. I had seen him exchange his glasses for contacts, and watched him trade his hoodies for blazers, and saw him open up and grow and be proud of his sexuality. I saw more of him than I should have, more than I wanted. But this wasn't my fault; if anything, it was his.

I held on to his beady necklace, still warm from resting around the smoothness of his neck. Staring down at my hand, I blinked harshly a few times in an attempt to make the sprinkled blood on it disappear, and even though I couldn't feel it shaking, I could see his bracelet shivering around my wrist without a clue of how I'd even gotten it. The others had gone off somewhere deeper into the woods, leaving us behind, alone and wandering in the shadows of the night.

Where the hell was I? What had I done?

"Francisco," I called out, thinking perhaps I didn't fully do it - I could barely even remember my own name in the midst of it all, and I was less able to recall what had happened these last ten minutes. It would have been easy to convince him someone else did it, that he was so brutally drunk that his thoughts were all jumbled. But his only response to my words was the silent cry of his still and glossy eyes.

I stood up, still confused and unaware of the ripple I would cause. My head, once hot with motivation, had frozen in panic. It was too late to go back.

And I had to find the others.

Once home, I took off my shirt, drenched with the now-cold scarlet liquid, thick and heavy on my skin.

It was too late.

I tried to convince myself that it was fine, that he was just sleeping. And for a second, sitting at the edge of my bed as I started to subconsciously doze off, I believed it.

But it was too late.


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