The Stolen and The Gone

One

Cameron White layed on her bed watching the dark sky on the street where it was raining heavily. She could not feel her fingers and toes as she lay there in the cold. Her bed sheets had not been washed the past month and smelled of sweat.

I will not sleep. I will not allow myself to fall into the darkness.

The tears fell across her face making it hard for her to see. Her eyes felt like sand had been buried into her eyelids and it stung when she closed them.

I will not sleep.

She kept on telling herself this for the past month. The dread of her nightmares was too much to bare. It started that first night of Piers's passing and would not stop unless she battled off sleep.

She had been twisting and turning all night the first time until finally falling asleep. Her father woke at hearing her shrieks in the middle of the night, holding her shaking body in his skinny, warm arms and kissing her forehead, saying, "It's okay, baby. Everything is okay." She shook her head frantically.

Everything was not okay.

To put it into words, the last few weeks have been utter hell.

She wouldn't dare look into the mirror ever again for two reasons. The first was because she knew she looked horrible. She was certain that there would be terrifying dark circles under her probably washed-out blue eyes and her hair must have fallen out from all the lying in bed she had done. Her cheek bones must have been protruding from her face and she could feel that her lips were faded and chapped. She would look dead.

And that's how she felt. Because she could not bare to live another day knowing that Piers was gone forever. Nothing could have explained the grief and sorrow she'd experienced.

After her friends had dragged her frozen body out of the restaurant she'd only felt one thing, and that was an extreme shell-shock. She didn't know what was going on until a single police officer came up to their group of four.

"Excuse me," he asked,"but do you perhaps know a young man, about eighteen to early twenties, with dark brown hair and a jersey that says 'Green Day'?" He had said it in the softest, kindest voice Cameron had ever heard. But she would not speak. She would not say that she knew him because her tongue felt numb and she was scared that if she spoke he would only make out jibberish.

Phillip spoke for all of them. "Yes, I think, sir, Piers Alexander. He's our friend that came here with us." Cameron noticed the creased forehead on Phillip's head and was afraid he was thinking the same thing she was.

Something has happened to Piers. And it's not going to be good.

The officer breathed out heavily. "I'm sorry to say this, I truly am. We received a phone call from a hysterical woman on the first floor. She said that she saw, um, I'm sorry but this might be-" he cleared his throat, "gruesome, but she saw a boy lying in a blood pool."

She felt her heart stop.

"We found him and he had no pulse. I'm sorry."

Phillip's hand flew to his mouth and he began to choke-cry. Jess' head was in her hands and her body started shaking. Tyler was the only person other than Cameron who stood motionless. She did not blink for a full forty seconds but no tears formed and her breathing had stopped. She just stared into open space.

When she moved her eyes slowly towards Tyler she found that he had an expression she could not place. Was it fear, or worry? His already thin lips were pressed together into an even thinner line. It was like he couldn't stop rubbing the back of his neck and furrowing his eyebrows.