One for the Team

33 | after

I first met Detective Solomon a few days after we killed you. I think he came to me first. I'm sure. It had been a day since I'd first gone back to the woods, and it had been raining heavily for hours, and the sun had long left us when he walked up the front steps of my house in a dark long raincoat over a dark suit.

Archie had been playing with his action figures by the living room window. When it rained, he liked to play on the windowsill. Liked to open the window just enough that it rained inside too, and so his actions scenes would be punctuated by heavy rain, just like in the movies.

When he saw the detective come, he ran up the stairs up to my bedroom. I had been lying down in bed, Achilles snuggled on top of my chest, his eyes following mine as I read your book. Your book. I still have it. I can never give it back, can I?

I had been looking at the same words for a while when Archie barged in, had been feeling the sharp lump in my throat, the words making it swell, and swell, and swell. Something about seeking peace for the dead, how there is none for the ones who live after.

Archie came in then. Said a man was at the door. Said maybe it was a college scout. Said I needed to hurry. I didn't of course, but the detective didn't seem to mind, or if he did, he didn't tell me.

I never told Archie it wasn't a college scout. Never told him it was, in a way, the complete opposite of a college scout. This man wasn't about to hand me a future. He was about to take it from me.

That night I told him nothing, nothing that would lead him to you. I'm sorry. I couldn't. I needed time. I told him about the party, yes. Told him, like I had told your mother, that I found you too late, because I did, didn't I? Because I can't go a day without thinking that if I had been faster, I could have gotten to you sooner. Could have gotten to you before they even put you in that bedroom. I could have stopped them.

I told him you ran away, because you did, didn't you? Because no one will ever catch up to you now.

That night, the detective asked about the nature of our relationship like he knew. I had to look away. He would have known otherwise. I told him we were good friends. Told him I liked you and almost bit my tongue in half. I liked you. If I wasn't going to hell before, I was sure going now.

I liked you.

Lies. Lies and a grief.

The second time I see Detective Solomon, he is on the screen of my tv, the day your body is found. I'm sure I'll see him again soon but before that... your funeral.

My mom leaves the suit on my bed. I plan to tell her I'm not going. I have no right to. I have buried you already. I have cried over your grave. But I'm too selfish. Mom tells me it's going to be an open casket funeral and I throw all my plans away.

I go to the funeral. Your parents have it at your house. I don't think it will be your house for much longer. I see the for-sale sign in the garage when I'm coming in. I try to ignore it but now it's burning in my mind.

There is sadness in everything, as if your parents paid someone to do it, just as they paid the catering company. Decorate the house in sadness, they would have asked and promptly gotten it.

By the time I gather the courage to show up, most people have already left. I see your casket first, open as promised, and then your mother.

Where does it hurt? the doctor asks the house. There, it answers, there, standing in a corner. There. Your mother, a hand on her chest, as if pressing an ugly open wound that won't stop bleeding, as though if she let go, her heart would fall right there on the carpet of the living room.

I can't stand to look at her. I'm sure if I look down my hands will be covered in blood, and so I don't. I don't move. The lump in my throat comes back. My heart burns. Your mom doesn't move either. She's just standing there, Levi, looking at the wall on the other side of the room with her hand over her chest. I think for a second she'll always have to hold it like that. That the open wound will never heal. That it will always hurt, and hurt, and hurt. I think it for a second too long until it gets too painful to keep looking at her.