Fontaine Five

FIVE

          MY BODY TUGS itself out of bed and my hands find their way to the curtains. I pull them apart, only to be met by another sheet, except this one's white and composed of a dense fog.

I didn't even want to get up, let alone draw them; just needed light so I could see where my phone had ended up last night, after falling into a drunken sleep while on the phone to Blair. The wine bottle sits, sad and empty on my bedside table, and Ellis is dead. I allow myself another drink tonight for this reason. After the funeral. Maybe Blair and the others can join me this time, if I end up in the mood to actually invite them. Blair can invite Kendra if I'm feeling especially warm.

The swirling movement of mist on the street below catches my eye. A single traveling light, just visible, slows in front of the house, at which point I make it out to be the paper boy on his bicycle. He lobs today's newspaper in the direction of our doorstep.

Only when he's out of sight do I tread downstairs to retrieve it. I'd never bother before; either still fast asleep or I'd let my mother get it. So it's shitty luck and shitty timing, then, when I rip the plastic wrap and the paper unfurls to reveal the headline WASHED UP: TEENAGE BOY'S BODY. It's big and bold, and takes up most of the front page for lack of a photograph to match, oddly enough. My eyes sting just looking at the loud print, but it's like a bloody movie. You want to stop watching, yet can't tear your eyes away. It's morbid curiosity. A sick yearning to know.

Almost skidding, I rush to the kitchen table as my fingertips fumble at the corner of the page. Overleaf is the article. My gaze darts left and right over the lines, black on white, too fast for my brain to read the sentences in their entirety. 17-year-old Ellis Grey... son of widowed Daniel Grey... prominent family... official cause of death yet to be released...

The last few sentences, separated into its own paragraph, finally focuses my attention. Described by St. Fontaine's vice principal as "one of [the school's] very best, excelling in all walks of school life", Grey was also well-known amongst the student body - not only as St. Fontaine's swim captain but as a member of the close-knit clique dubbed by others as "the Fontaine Five", according to a source. It is also claimed that the former five were "inseparable", seldom seen apart even outside of the school walls. Could the remaining four have answers? Will we soon receive an explanation for the worst tragedy the town has seen in over a decade?

My hands are fists. This town is quiet. That's the way it's always been, as far as I know, so anyone barely has to read between the lines to see through the milking; see through to the bullshit. A desperate journalist's attempt to dramatize and exploit all this, and for what? More readers? Publicity? No one so much as touches a newspaper anymore anyway. The blood under my skin boils.

My hands are smeared with ink from the now creased mess of paper. I scrunch up the pages as tightly as I can, ramming it into the trash.

V

I'm looking at the scene unfolding before my eyes, but I'm not seeing. I don't let myself match sights to their meanings. They're all just objects, shifting, moving, disrupting the mist. Flesh and bones draped in black. Damp blades of green. A wooden box disappearing beneath dirt.

And then I see something I can't block out. Blair is crying. Of course she's fucking crying, I think, as it comes to my immediate attention that other people are too. I realize I should be doing the same - that I can do the same - but crying in public settings isn't something I do. I always thought it one of the many things that make Blair and I alike. I guess I let myself think she wasn't quite human either, less so than even me.

"Mom, I'll be with Blair and the others."

"Alright, mija. I'm leaving for a client in ten, though, so grab a ride from her if you can. Sorry I can't be at their house for the service." She pauses. "I love you." Squeezes my hand.