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Without another word, we kept right on searching. Much later, we reached the waterfront and stopped at the edge of the harbor to wait for the guys, who still had not called with any news. “You still have a signal, right?” I asked.
“Yep. I get five bars near the harbor. They haven’t called.”
I suppressed a sigh, turning away from her to pace. Ten steps, turn. Ten steps, turn. Ten steps, turn. Ten steps…
“Frost!” Liz called, causing me to jump. I spun in the direction Liz had shouted and sure enough, there was Frost loping towards us. When he had nearly reached us, he shrugged mournfully. “Nothing.”
My heart ached for him. The hopelessness was easier to read on his face than any book. “I’m sorry,” I said uselessly.
He shrugged again. “Maybe Justin found them. Or maybe we were wrong and they just went to get something. Maybe they’re sitting in the apartment right now, wondering where we are.”
His voice was like a thin thread worn to almost breaking. It creaked and whispered pain and desperation. He could feel in his heart that his mother and his brother were gone, but his head couldn’t understand it.
Then we heard footsteps slowly approaching and turned to Justin, who was watching his feet intently. “Justin?” Liz prompted sadly. She too already knew the truth.
“Nothing.” The guilt and self-disgust in his voice was enough to make my stomach churn. Whatever had happened tonight had been inevitable and I knew it. My eyes darted to Frost. He was staring at his shoes, biting the inside of his lip, eyes glistening in the eerie city light.
“Wait,” Liz cried out, facing the harbor. “What’s that?”
We all spun to look out towards the very edge, where the earth met the water. Out about ten feet into the harbor, there was definitely something floating in the water among the boats. The others started towards the water’s edge, but I just stood still and silent for a moment, trying to place the shape of the floating object. I couldn’t seem to comprehend it, though it seemed like it should have been obvious. Then the nausea hit.It was a body.
“Stop!” I shouted. All three stopped and turned to me in confusion. “Wait,” I said. “Let me.”
They stayed where they were. Shaking, I ran past them and made my way down to the docks. As I ran along a pier, the wood boards echoed my footsteps like gunshots. Behind me, I heard footsteps pursuing me. Without bothering to look, I knew who it was. “No!” I shouted back at Frost. “I’ll be back in a second, just stay there!”
I reached the end of the pier and struggled to climb aboard a small yacht, quickly traversing it and looking over the opposite edge, where I knew the floating form would be.
I was looking straight into the glassy blue eyes of Mrs. Frost.
I jerked sharply away, barely holding back the instant gag reflex. My stomach clenched and churned and I swallowed back bile, grimacing in horror and disgust. When my stomach was mostly under control, I franticly searched the water. Before long, my eyes touched on what appeared to be another body about ten more feet out into the harbor. Ryan.
Oh God, oh God, oh God…
EIGHTEEN
Frost asked to have his mother and his little brother cremated. The decision shocked most of the other attendees at the funeral, but not me.
I don’t think any of us really cried that day. Not Justin or Liz. Not Frost. When everyone else was finally leaving and the graves were closed, the four of us started towards the parking lot. “What now?” Justin asked glumly.
Nobody answered for a while until finally Liz spoke up. “How about we all get changed and meet for food somewhere.”
I noticed how she had smoothly avoided saying ‘let’s allgo homeand get changed’. Frost had his apartment, but his real home was buried in ash-stained snow now. However, I pretended not to notice the words hanging in the air and agreed. “All right. Suggestions?”
“Somewhere quiet,” Frost replied. “Poe?”
“Whatever. Wherever you want to go.” The idea of eating at a time like this was frankly nauseating to me. My brain felt disconnected and cold. Numb. All those names slashed in obsidian headstones burned across my retinas like fire and it was as though I could see nothing else, blinded by their brightness.
He shrugged. “It really doesn’t matter.”
Liz half-smiled encouragingly. “Okay. We’ll meet you guys at that Chinese place on 4thand Broad Street.”
With that, we parted ways, Frost and I leaving them to return to his apartment. We made the brief journey in complete silence. It wasn’t until we were sitting on the couch in his apartment, frozen, that my voice broke the eerie calm. “Frost? Are you okay?”
“He wanted me to be a surgeon.”
I tried to catch his eye, but he was in another world. Thinking about his father. At first I wondered why of all his family he was thinking of his controlling dad, but he answered for me. “The others I can say I have no regrets about. We all got along and could talk to each other. Especially Trina and I. My only regrets with them are that they had to die.”
Recalling what Trina had told me the night of her ballet concert, I nodded my understanding. He continued, “But not him. We never saw eye to eye. He wanted me to be just like him, to be his version of ‘great’. I just wanted to do what I loved, what I was good at. I wanted to help people, but I could never be a doctor. He never understood that I needed a crusade. Something to stand for. ‘Help’ in his eye was surgery. In my eye it was standing up for what’s right. Not just fixing, but actually fighting for the victims. Preventing pain rather than treating it after the fact. Sometimes I feel like I disappointed him.”
