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Then I tell them how grief stricken he was, how bad he felt about the ordeal.
I tell them that I watched him walk off that ledge, his grief finally consuming him.
Mik doesn’t deny anything, only agreeing with me.
We share something now, the bond of accidentally killing someone, and we both want to bury those memories, stuff them down so deep until they disappear.
I can already feel the bruises rising on my skin, I know it must be obvious that I was in a fight.
But nobody questions our story.
“THERE’S ONE MORE THING I need to know.” I tell Noah as we approach the small bungalow house in my old neighborhood.
He stuffs his palms into the pockets of his fitted black jeans. “Are you sure?” He questions, one brow lifted. “You don’t think you’ve gotten enough truth for one lifetime?”
I’ve probably had more than enough, but I still need to know this one last thing. “One more thing.” I tell him, tossing him a soft smile.
He wants to bury this night behind us and I can’t say I blame him. We’ve spent a year of our lives reliving one night. Chasing down all of the secrets and searching for justice. It’s broken us in ways I don’t think we’ll ever recover from.
He still has a black eye and some yellowing bruises along his abdomen. We buried his father with a small ceremony. Mariam knew immediately that we had lied, she knew something else had gone down, but she didn’t want to know. She told Noah she knew about the cameras… why they were off. The two shared a knowing look and then pushed it behind them, never to be spoken of again.
We cling to each other, praying that this alone is enough, that we can carry each other through it. I think the worst part is over now. Now we just need to pick up all the shattered pieces and try to create something new.
We’ll do it with her in mind.
We’ve both lost something now, a part of ourselves went over that cliff that night with Edward. The truth had found me, scratching its way out. For a while I thought if I knew what happened I would suddenly feel better, but that’s not how it works.
I felt worse.
But I understood why he hid it from me, why he tried to protect me, even if in the end it didn’t work.
I knock on the dark wooden door of the old house. Noah lifts his sunglasses from his head and tucks them neatly into the pocket of his leather jacket.
My skin buzzes as we wait, I feel like the final puzzle piece is just on the other side of this door.
“Hello?” It’s Kelly who answers, Auden’s best friend. Tight jeans hug her legs and she wears a loose peasant top. Her eyes grow wide when she sees me.
“Hi,” I say, “Can we come in?”
She silent as she gestures for us to come in. She’s eighteen now, and she looks more mature than the last time I saw her. She’s a senior in high school and I wonder what Auden would have looked like at eighteen, as a senior. I wonder if she would have changed, who she would have loved? She’ll forever live inside me as a seventeen-year-old, never aging, never growing. She’ll never get to be like Kelly.
“I just have one question.” I say as we sit down on the couch across from Kelly.
I pull out the photocopy of the text messages Auden sent me, handing it over to her. “These are all the messages my sister sent the night she died. What happened at that party, Kelly? Why was she so upset?”
Kelly chews on a nail while she reads through the messages, Auden’s pleas for me to help her. When she lifts her gaze her eyes are lined with tears ready to fall.
“I’m sorry,” Kelly whispers, the first tear dropping.
Noah shifts on the couch next to me, leaning forward with interest. He thought this was silly, he begged me to let this one go, that it was probably nothing.
He admitted to deleting the text messages, figuring we would never know what led my sister to his parents house that night. He finally admitted this transgression in the emptiness of his house, the two of us cuddled in front of the fireplace trying to come to terms with our truths. He wanted to protect me, protect me from the feelings that coursed through my body. Regret, pain, sadness.
Auden had been crying when she arrived at his parents house, but nobody knew why.
The sadne
ss in Kelly’s eyes tells me that she might be the only one who knows.
