Fog in August

{Prologue}

Max watches from afar, watches as Mrs Miller cries in her husbands arms as the gurney is pushed down the driveway to the coroners car.

Not only three hours ago had August Miller been down at the local cafe reading her battered copy of Othello, sipping hot chocolate and pulling faces at the little boy at the table next to her.

Not only three hours ago August Miller was texting Max Peters, telling him about her great big plans to leave small town Delaware and go some place like Italy or Greece.

Now she was never going to those places, the only place she was going was to a blinding white coroners office, to be looked over, to be poked and prodded not to the only places she had ever wanted to go.

Max stands by his mother, holding her shaking hand as they both watch the scene before them, police cars and ambulances parked on the curb. Police officers, a woman and a man interrogating neighbours to find out god knows what.

August's death was simple, she hung herself by her ceiling fan, there was no struggle, Max's mum, Lorna had told him later on when Mr Miller informed her. Max knew then that August had no fight left in her that she had intended to die that day.

No one would have ever picked August to be suicidal, but Max guesses that most people can't when people are unwell like that.

August was one of a kind, she didn't want to fit in like others she liked being different and thrived on people gossiping about her,

'I don't like being normal, where's the fun in that?'

Something that she was constantly saying when people pried.

'Nothing wrong with being normal.'

Max would tease back.

But never had Max thought that she was suicidal, maybe a little dark towards the world but never suicidal. Now he had to live his life while she couldn't, he had to wake up every morning while she couldn't and maybe that's what hurt the most is that he wasn't going to see August Miller ever again. And he couldn't help but think that maybe if he had asked her that day if she was okay instead of talking about something else she wouldn't have died, she would've lived on and gotten help, but then he thinks that maybe she still would've done it and he hates himself for that.