Paper Hearts (Phan)

2 days after

There were 13 things I was absolutely sure of.

1. Dan is dead

2. I killed him

3. He's dead because of me

4. He is not dead

5. This is all a bad dream

6. Dogs can't see colours

7. Everyone is angry at themselves

8. Magnesium is the 8th most abundant element in the earth's crust, though not found naturally in its elemental state

9. I am demoted from cuddle buddy

10. I feel sick

11. "To be continued" will not be continued

12. I killed him

13. Dan is dead

The staff had also cancelled all classes for the rest of the week until Monday, which was the day directly after the funeral had been scheduled. I'm not sure if I'd be able to convince myself to get out of bed at all on Monday, but I decided to play it by ear instead. In other words, if I still wasn't able to sleep, I wouldn't go to class. Simple as that. Of course, everything was sweet and simple like that now. Nothing to do, no mess to clean up, no hurricane to contain. Eerily simple.

I hadn't gotten any sleep so far though, despite the wide time frame to get enough rest, so no classes looked closer in the realm of possibility than I'd thought. Because each time I slept, I dreamt. And when I dreamt, he was there.

God, I couldn't even say his name anymore.

PJ was tearing himself up over everything; in fact, everyone was. Somehow, every teacher at Seacoast knew we were the closest to him, and we were relieved of any heavy assignments due any time soon. Except for the thesis in zoology, which was due at the end of April, and I knew she wouldn't drop that, considering the date to turn it in was originally December.

But the thing that bothered me the most was the crushing feeling of whether or not he did it on purpose. If he meant to crash over the railing, and slam into the tree for good measure. I desperately hoped it was an accident, that he'd started to doze off behind the wheel and accidentally swerved to the right too sharp before he noticed he was falling through the air and to the ground.

"There's no way it was suicide," PJ snapped when I brought up the idea "he never would've thought about that."

"PJ, he drove the car over the railing."

He slammed his hands against the table, stood up, and yelled at the top of his lungs, "For the last time, it was not on purpose!"

PJ swiped his hands across the surface in front of us, and everything Dan had either purposely or accidentally left behind, clattered to the floor. Then he stormed out, slamming the door as he went.

"He was so drunk he barely second guessed it," I remembered Joe saying, "The police officer on the scene said he smelled a hell of a lot of alcohol."

And I thought, well maybe he was so drunk he couldn't swerve, but then I realized there was no way, because by the time he'd left he was still flipping the steering wheel of the car violently in the direction of the forest. There were a lot of twists and turns to get to that cliff too.

He was definitely asleep, then. Maybe he'd died when he was asleep. I don't think that hurts.

My lips were still tingling like TV static. It was definitely a weird feeling to know your first kiss was dead, one nobody should ever have to know about this early on. I wasn't the only person that had gone through a situation like this though, and I couldn't tell if that made it worse or made it a little better.

I could still taste the smoke, the overwhelming taste of it too, and it flooded my mind and twisted my senses and wouldn't let me go even though I had to, I had to let him go. Because he's dead and you can't bring back the dead.

Well you can, but in the stories it always ends terribly, like the dead person ends up becoming a zombie and murdering the one that had made the brilliantly stupid decision to try and bring them back. And besides, I'm not even sure I wanted to see him as a zombie. Then I couldn't stop myself from asking the question of if it was on purpose or an accident. I couldn't tell which would be worse. I'm not sure I would be able to stomach the stench of rotting zombies either. Stupid movie clichés with their stupid truth or dare and their stupid zombie people.

"I'm going to bed." Chris said, and we all left the room and went to our own separate dorm rooms in silence, because what else were you supposed to say? Even if we were supposed to know, none of us had any idea as to what.

And I shut the door behind me and stared at the blankets, neatly tucked on top of the corners of the mattress. I remembered the first time he'd buried himself in my chest and slept for hours with me under those sheets without removing his vice like grip around my waist.

The bed was absolutely freezing too, like it was trying to mock me and confirm the thoughts he'd never be there again to press his foot against the back of my leg to have his hair flop over into my face. I just wanted him back.

All I wanted to know was why; why he insisted on leaving, why he kept apologizing (because it definitely wasn't directed at us for waking us up), and why he drove off the cliff.

I didn't sleep.

__________

The entire 9 hours I was awake after I was supposed to be sleeping, I was turning ideas over in my head. What would've happened if he came back? Would I be #57? Maybe he'd lied when he kissed me. What if he never really liked me at all?

Smoke started to fill the room; it was almost like he was back. And I almost expected to hear him laugh or say something, anything, about how unjust it is that we have a designated campus-wide lights out time. But instead PJ violently coughed and I had to remind myself it wasn't healthy to be living in cigarette smoke.

I got up, stood right in front of PJ, and tossed it in the trash bin.

"That's not going to bring him back." I told him, and he diverted his gaze to the stained carpet like a scolded puppy.

"It masks the smell, dumbass." He flicked ashes off his jeans and on to the floor.

And he was right too, worst of all. I could only feel my nose burning and my eyes watering, so I sat down next to him to try and forget.

"Y'know what's gonna suck?" He mumbled "walking by his old room every day to get out of the building."

"And going across the lawn to get to zoology." I added and PJ sighed exasperatedly in response.

"How're we going to do anything anymore?"

In all honesty, I wasn't sure. There was the possibility to just forget, pick up drinking. But we'd all seen how that worked out, and nobody ever wanted to touch anything like that anymore. Then there was flat out ignoring it, but you can't sleep to the end of the world, so it's no use to even try. And you can't let it go. No matter how hard you try, it'll stick in the back of your mind like glue, that there is no way to forget; there is no way to ignore it and push it to the side, there is no way out.

For a while I'd believed that to be true. There is no way out, you're stuck in your own place for forever, impossible to move, absurd to even begin to think there was a way to do something about it, to change how other people viewed the way out.

But he'd done it somehow. He'd found a way, simultaneously discovering how to twist the way I thought about everything, not stopping at my own mind but everyone else's too. Morphing the ideas of "the way out" - the way out of what? What exactly are we trying to get away from? If it's that bad then why hasn't anybody else attempted to leave, maybe even disappear for good on their own path? Which leads to the mindset of nowhere to go, taped in place and left to wonder if there really is something around the corner or off in the distance.

And in the worst conceivable way possible, he changed the rules, created a new advantageously destructive set, and found his own way out.