Wolf Blood

Goodbye

            Goodbye. The word is simple enough. You never think about how much this word can change someone's life. You never think about saying final goodbyes to those you love.  You never think that when you say that final goodbye, it will be your last. 

            I never thought that when I said goodbye to my best friend, Amarissa on that cloudy, muddy day in January that it would be my last. I never thought that when I saw her get into her car, auburn curls flying around her face in the chilly breeze, gray eyes shining with laughter, and her perfect white teeth on full display, that it would be the last time I'd ever see her alive.

            "I'll see you at Kale's party tomorrow, Jules!" Amarissa had said, getting herself situated in her car.

            "You bet!" I said to her as I handed her red purse to her.

            "Bye, Juliette!" She said, smiling at me, her perfect teeth showing through her pink lip gloss.

             "Goodbye, Amari!" I had said.

            I had watched her drive away.

            Goodbye. It is a word that can ruin your life. I never thought I would be saying it for the last time. I never thought that just two hours from then, she would be dead.

            It was five in the evening and I had just sat down to eat my lean cusine when the phone rang and my whole world shattered.

            The only words I heard out of that one minute and twenty second conversation was Amarissa. Car Accident. Dead.

            Nothing was ever the same again.

            I met her parents at the hospital that night. Amarissa was gone, but her parents could not bring themselves to leave. 

           I had sat with them for a while, teary eyed and silent. No one had said a word. Somewhere, maybe in the basement, my best friend's lifeless body was sitting in a freezer, getting prepped to be cut open and violated.

            When I couldn't take the tension anymore, I got up and walked down the hallway towards the bathroom. As I walked down the hallway, not even a few doors down from the room Amarissa had been in, was a boy with bruises and a glass shard in his face.

           He was insisting he was fine. I knew that voice. It belonged to a nobody. An outcast. Someone who I would have never guessed would have been anywhere near Amarissa, let alone in the same car as her, considering how much the two hated each other.

            Jake Chasen.

           "I'm fine! Really!" He insisted.

           "Sir, you could have internal injuries!" One nurse said.

            "Look! I'm eighteen! Don't I have the right to refuse treatment or something?"He said.

            "Kid, you have amnesia, we should at least do a CT." The nurse said.

            Amnesia? Does that mean he doesn't remember the crash. He looked fine to me.

            Jake just shook his head and looked her straight in the eye until she gave up.

            The frustrated nurse sighed and left the room to get what I assume was his discharge papers.

            The nurse walked past me and sighed.

            Something made me look up and that's when I realized that Jake was staring straight at me. He was trying to say something without anyone hearing.

            He was trying to say sorry.