Who Killed Lana?// Ryland Storms

• f o r g i v e n •

1st January 2022

   We were turning back from party, everyone was drunk so I was the one who drove. I was walking to my room but I jumped when I saw someone standing in the middle of Bryce's room.

   I opened the door and went in, it was dark so I couldn't see his face. I turned the lights on and saw Bryce's face.

  "Bryce!" I hugged him. He didn't hug me back.

"When did you come home?" I asked.

"Home?" he looked at me confused. "Is this place your home?"

"Yeah, I moved here." I said. He was still standing and looking at a point. I turned my head to see what is it that he looking at.

  A couple of medicines...

"So you bought drugs right after you left the rehabilitation center?" I closed the door cause I didn't want the others hear us.

He didn't answer, I grabbed his chin and turned his face to me, made him look at me.

"Two months? What was it for? Starting to drugs again?" I asked.

"It's your problem if you are stupid enough to think I would be done with drugs just because I went to rehab." he said. His voice was mechanical, like he is free of all the emotions.

  "No, it's your problem cause you are stupid enough to try kill yourself." I said. "Do you think Lana would be proud of you if she saw the way you handle her death?"

  "Do you really think she care about me?" He asked, for the first time since we started to talking there was a emotion in his voice. His voice was cracking, you could easily understand how sad he is. Then his eyes started to watering. "She was hating me. You don't know why she dated me, she never felt even a little sympathy for me. I'm sure now she is in the hell, fucking with Satan and doesn't give a shit about me." At the end of his speech, he was crying.

  "I know why she dated you." I said. He looked at my face. "And you're still here trying to make me give up on drugs?"

  "Yes." I said.

  "Why?" he yelled.

  "I don't know." I said. "I don't anyone to die anymore."

  "Fuck off." he said and left his room. I was looking at the door that he just passed with tears in my eyes.

  He was gone, and I did not have time to tell him what I had just now realized: that I forgave him, and that she forgave us, and that we had to forgive to survive in the labyrinth. There were so many of us who would have to live with things done and things left undone that day. Things that did not go right, things that seemed okay at the time because we could not see the future. If only we could see the endless string of consequences that result from our smallest actions. But we can't know better until knowing better is useless...