Own Me

Chapter Twenty-Four

♔ Chapter Twenty-Four ♔

I'd been staring at the wall ahead of me for what seemed like an unending amount of time, the only thoughts running through my head were of him. My dead best friend. Daniel Fletcher, gone.

That same image had stuck with me ever since they'd taken his body away, ever since they'd pried my hands off of him. I'd watched them, tears stroking the cheeks of my face like his fingers, zip him away into the darkness, and carry him off. Some part of me hoped they were taking him to a better place, but after all this time, I didn't believe one even existed. But if it did, Fletch must be there. I'd hoped with everything left in me that he was.

Stay safe, I thought. The thing we used to say to each-other, whenever we separated. Even after he was gone, I couldn't get rid of that last sight of him. His skin pale and hollow, lying there limply on the floor, like there was nothing left inside. His eyes still open, staring out into the bare nothingness that was left behind. They were stone cold, but instilled into them was a look that made my heart break. Fear, etched into his face, clouding his final thoughts. He died alone and afraid. In pain, begging for help. No. I couldn't bare to think about it. I felt sick.

The first time my eyes left the wall, they fell down to my hands. Bruised and torn up, but covered in dry blood. All over. Soaked into every pore and every crease of my skin, embedded into my nails, dark red and crispy. His blood. I'd already tried washing it off, scouring it off with boiling hot water, but it was still there.

I'd scalded my hands trying to wash it away, but I didn't care. I could still feel him on me, all over me, itching me. Even under the jumper I'd stolen from that kid, Mike, earlier, I still felt it all over me. Like his dead hands were roaming all over my skin.

I shivered, but it didn't matter. I couldn't really feel it anyway. All I felt was a growing numbness in the pit of my soul, growing stronger and stronger, the more I sat there and I thought, the more it dawned on me what had happened. Some part of me was still adjusting, reminding me that he was gone, while other parts kept wondering where he was or what he was doing, before I remembered that he was dead. I shuffled as I sat there, waiting.

They'd questioned me, the police. They'd sat me in one of those small, bare rooms and gave me a glass of tepid tap water. I'd sat with my hands in my hair and my face stained with trails of tears, my clothes with his blood, staring over at the officers opposite me.

"How did you know him?" one of them had asked.

"We were friends," I said. "Best friends." It felt wrong using past tense, like Fletch was no longer my best friend, like I'd already somehow replaced him. I felt sick again.

"When did you last see him?" they asked, scribbling down notes on the paper in front of them. I wasn't paying too much attention to them, while I sat there. My mind kept wandering. I couldn't focus, no matter how hard I tried.

"Earlier that night," I told them. "We were at some party. He said he was going to go back to the Junkyard. I tried to find him the next morning, but it was already too late."

"Were you with anyone else that night?"

I felt numb again. All over. I couldn't even feel my own fingers, my own hands. I was curling my toes in my shoes, so hard that I thought they might break. My head felt fuzzy, light, like it wasn't even there, like it was empty and I was empty. I felt empty, at least. Like everything about me had been carved out, and this was what was left behind, in the shell of my body. Nothingness. Emptiness. I wasn't even thinking clearly.

I asked them to repeat the question. "Were you with anyone else, last night?" they repeated, scribbling something down. I tried to ignore it, my eyes going over to the wall, counting the bricks, staring at the creases. It reminded me of the floor where he lay, when I found him, his blood dripping into the crevices between the bricks and outlining them in a bright red. I shook my head.