Theories of Global Warming

~Terry~

 "She's gone," I whispered, clutching onto my knees. My unshowered, tangled bangs fell in front of my face, rubbing the grease into the outlines of my forehead. "She died too early. She wasn't supposed to die yet. She's only fifteen."

I looked over to Lee. He looked up from his hands to me. By my surprise, his expression wasn't angry at all, he actually looked quite surprised by what I had just said.

I gulped before continuing, "Arum had five more years in her life to go. That's five more years of good times the four of us could've had together." I think that was the first time in my life when Lee didn't tell me to shut up while I was saying something emotional. For the first time, he was actually listening to me speak.

For a couple hours, we stayed in the park, not speaking at all. The sun went down completely, and we were still there.

Something that sounded like a car suddenly stopped near us. I just assumed it was my mother, so I didn't budge. I didn't want to go home yet. I wanted to stay with my friends. I didn't want to risk losing another one of them. They were the only ones who still made efforts to hang out with me.

"What did you mean, Provence?" Daryl's voice came from behind us. His voice was raspy, and his face was stained with tears.

What came next was not a thing that I would've liked to describe in very vivid detail. Unfortunately, Provence told Daryl the details about how we had a plan to end Global Warming, and we wanted Arum to be sort of our stunt devil. However, Arum was not aware that there were some changes to make it safer for her. Also, she probably wasn't aware of when she should've done it. Daryl basically just yelled a lot of nonsense, and went back into his car and drove away before I could even try to reason with him.

"We screwed up so bad," I stated, watching the mysterious snow drop onto my bare knees.