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Chapter Two

Zach

In the past few days I've laid in bed and looked up at the ceiling, studding it more now then I'd ever even thought about it in the past 21 years of living in the room.

I couldn't say why I studied it. Whether it was to distract myself or just kill time.

My brother was dead. There was no changing that. There was no reason to be screaming and crying over it.

Crying. I don't even know what came over me last night when I was with Natalie. It's like an invisible dam broke, and then she was trying to comfort me?

My stomach clenched again just at the thought of yesterday.

It's not every day that you burry your best friend... Your brother...

I ran both hands through my hair and rested them behind my head.

I remember when I'd sleep in on the weekends or in the summer, Max would come in and call me a lazy bag of bones. He'd say I was wasting a perfectly good day. I'd groan, throw a pillow at his head.

The memory made me laugh. It was half hearted but still it was better then nothing. As pathetic as it probably sounded, the laugh actually made me feel a little better.

I know Max would have wanted me to laugh about the good times. He was always trying to find the bright side of everything. It actually got annoying a lot of the time. I'd roll my eyes at him telling him to go shove his rainbows down someone else's throat. Max had a obnoxious laugh. It was his real laugh, his care free and unique laugh. The thing about Max was a lot of things he did were contagious. His laugh was the most contagious thing about him though.

I know I will forget things about my brother, but his laugh will always stick with me.

I took a deep breath and rolled on to my side. The clock on my night table said it was 1:30 pm. Well, might as well see what the rest of my family is up to..I need to make sure my mother was okay. And I needed to look out for Quinn.

She seemed to be taking it well, but you could never be too sure with her. Quinn liked to be mysterious a lot of the time. She usually just trying to keep everyone at peace and in a good mood. A lot like Max did.

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The door bell rang as I was opening the fridge. It didn't look like anyone had eaten anything today, but I could be wrong. My mom and sister are pretty clean people. I'm The one who can get messy from time to time..

I strained to hear if someone had got the door. Usually Quinn did. Mom and I didn't want to deal with people telling us how "sorry they were for our loss", and "here's some cookies for you". Really ,people. Okay, I'm not one to turn away a cookie, but it's not like they actually help.

Mrs. Bruno's cookies are the only exception here. When you bite into the cookies that she made it is literally like dying and going to heaven.

There was hushed chatter coming from the direction of the front door, but it was moving to the living room.

Must be Natalie.

Natalie was the only person Quinn let in the house. I agreed on this because who wants random people handing around their house when you don't really want them there? Not me.

I slapped a few strips of bacon into the frying pan. You can never go wrong with bacon. It's the perfect food for every occasion. Over the snap of the grease I could hear the girls talking.