I stared at the four people that had always held my heart, tears streaming down my cheeks. I couldn’t accept it. How could they be gone? These boys who’d turned into men right under my nose. My first loves, my most solid enemies. How could they just not…be anymore?
A strange calm fell over me. Eerie. Slow. Cold. It was like I was suddenly detached from my body and my emotions. The fog wrapped around me tighter, thicker. Even though I was inside the mangled bus, a sudden wind blew around me, whipping my hair around my face, and in the distance, I could hear the crash of thunder. Through the orange tinged fog, bright flashing lights lit the night with electric green as I stared at guys' corpses.
Then I grew angry. I could feel the rage filling me up as I cursed the universe or whatever god decided this was supposed to happen exactly one year to the day that my world fell apart. Some force compelled me to move, and my body jerked forward as if pulled on a string as I made my way to Jason first, staring into his sightless eyes. Reaching down, I cupped his cooling cheek in my palm for two slow heartbeats, icy breath whooshing from between my parted lips.
Words flew through my brain, words I didn’t recognize in a language I didn’t know. They were clear and insistent, and so I spoke them aloud.
“Idcirco praecipio tibi ut vivere!”
I screamed the words through the whipping, swirling wind. Thunder crashed, nearly drowning them out, and lightning slammed into the side of the bus, rocking it like waves.
I did the same to Michael, Norman, and Freddy. I touched their faces, and the cold fled my body and seeped into theirs. I chanted those words over and over again, and each time I did, lightning struck the ground inches from the bus.
It was just a touch. I shouldn’t have, they were dead. I should have been screaming. I should have been stumbling back out of the bus and waving down an ambulance. Instead, I was caressing the dead, saying our last goodbye that I’d never really fully be able to do.
As my fingers left Freddy’s cheek, that coldness in my bones intensified. I felt frozen and slow, so I staggered backwards, toppling over onto what was left of a bench seat. My head hit the wall of the bus, and my eyes rolled to the side where I spotted a pale hand sticking out of a pile of torn metal. I grasped the hand with the slim fingers that were all too familiar, and it was ice cold, unfeeling and dead. I squeezed my eyes tight and repeated the words one last time, giving it all I had until my body felt like giving up.
I knew I was dying then. I knew it better than I knew my own name. So I finally looked down, brought my palm to my abdomen, and pulled away fingers covered in thick, warm blood. I should have been afraid. I should have felt…something. Anything. But I only felt cold.
As my mind began to wander and my consciousness waned, the last thing I could remember with perfect clarity was the orange fog that continued to pour into the bus like water, filling it up until I could no longer see the corpses of my oldest friends. The world went silent before it all fell away.
One Year Earlier
“I have to be there, Mom, all my friends are expecting me to show up. I’m the only person in my school who never shows up to this stuff. Besides, I’m almost eighteen. I think that’s plenty old enough to go to one small Halloween party.” Gripping the back seat of the car, I leaned forward, begging as if my life depended on it.
“Absolutely not, October. We already talked about this. I don’t want you out on Halloween, and that’s final. When you do turn eighteen, you can do what you want, but until then, you follow my rules.” Mom turned her head slightly, her expression stern and telling me without words that we’d reached the end of the discussion.
I sat back into the leather seat with a scowl, my arms crossed over the fabric of my cheer uniform. Annoyance bloomed in my chest and simmered just like always. It was like she wanted me to resent her. Literally everyone at my high school would be at the party. It was being held at the old barn on Mill Street. Maddie had been practically on her knees begging me to go with her. The guys would be there too, and we had a lot to talk about, like where our relationship was headed and such. So many secrets to finally spill…
I’d done some things that I wasn’t proud of, but I wouldn’t apologize for following my heart. I refused to be sorry for stolen kisses and secret touches. The only thing I was sorry for was not being completely transparent with the guys. I needed to be straight with them, and I’d thought this party would have been the perfect time to do so, but apparently, my parents didn’t care.
Our friendships were changing. If I was being honest, they’d been changing for a while now, but it was time we figured out what to do about it. There were four of them and one of me… It was all so confusing, and someone was bound to end up getting hurt. Probably me.
I didn’t know how to tell all four of them that I’d kissed each of them separately behind
