“You said you were a friend of his?” Ray asked again like she needed more clarification than what I’d given her.

That makes two of us.

“We met a long time ago,” I said, not knowing what the right answer was. I had no clue what we had been, only what we didn’t become. “Preppy saved my life once,” I told her for the sake of giving her something about my connection to Preppy. “more than once.” I laughed and wiped a fallen tear from my cheek.

Preppy suddenly sat up with a startled roar, his arms shot out and before I could swallow down the frightened sob threatening to escape from my mouth his hands were wrapped tightly around my throat. Squeezing, squeezing, until I saw stars and my windpipe was closing under the power of his relentless hold.

The pressure behind my eyes was building until it felt like they were going to pop from my head. I felt the blood vessels exploding in anger under his relentless hold.

I couldn’t even scream. Preppy pushed me roughly. My shoulder blades stung as I crashed into the wall. A colorful plastic clock fell from its nail and bounced off the top of my head before falling to the floor. An eerie rendition of ‘someday my prince will come’ played slowly from the clock as Preppy stared intensely into my eyes with all the chords in his neck taught and his teeth gnashed together. I search his eyes for some flash of recognition, but it wasn't there. I knew by the deadened look in his eyes that it wasn't me he saw, to him I wasn't even there. He squeezed my throat tighter. His hips pinned me in place. I grew weaker and weaker by the second. There was no fighting back. There was no way to win.

I was going to die, and if I could've laughed, at that moment I would've because my final thought was that at least I got to see Preppy before my death, even if he was the one killing me.

Using his grip around my throat as if his hand were a collar and his arm my leash, he lifted me off the wall and for a second I felt as if he were going to let me go.

Instead, he slammed me back, harder. This time it was a shelf of coloring books that rained down on us. There was shouting, an inaudible legion of voices both male and female, but they started to fade just as quickly as it came.

Suddenly, the pressure around my neck was gone, and I dropped to the floor, gasping for air I can't seem to find. The shallow breaths I did manage hurt like someone set fire to my throat. It was shitty breathing.

But at least I was breathing. My vision slowly returned and the voices that seemed so far away only moments ago were now right in front of me.

King and Bear had Preppy by the shoulders. They hauled him against the opposite wall toward the bed. He screamed, loud and awful. The sound shot right through me. It wasn't until they wrestled him back onto the bed when he spoke actual words. “Motherfuckers, get off me! I can’t. I can’t!” His screams turned into sobs, and I watched as his resistance slowly left his body. His eyes rolled back in his head, and his body went limp. After only a few seconds his chest began to rise and fall steadily, and he became a passed out pile of thin limbs hanging off the mattress.

The second I knew he was safe I darted from the room, my hands wrapped around my injured throat. I bolted out the front door, temporarily blinded by the sunlight, and by HIM.

“Wait!” Ray called from behind me, but I didn’t stop. One foot in front of the other until I was in the car and speeding down the road at twice the legal limit.

I pulled over into the first parking lot I came across. A drug store. I killed the engine and dropped my head onto the steering wheel. Sobs escaped me. Cries of both relief and confusion erupted from me like a volcano of pent-up emotion. After sitting there in the car for what seemed like only minutes, I finally gathered myself together enough to be able to sit up straight and check the clock. Nope, not a few minutes.

A few hours.

I wiped the tears from my cheeks with my fingers. Then, out of nowhere, as if I had no control over my emotions or reactions, I started to laugh. Preppy...was alive.

He was alive.

My laugh grew louder. Manic. A high pitched cackle even I didn’t recognize. The entire situation was unbelievable. Unreal even. Absurd. Surreal. Beautiful.

A fucking miracle.

So much for closure.

CHAPTER TWO

DRE

I stood on Mirna’s driveway and inhaled deeply, taking in all the smells that I’d missed over the past few years. The salty water from the Gulf of Mexico in the not too far distance, the oranges from the dozen or so groves one town over, and the mouth-watering scent of bar-b-que that I could practically taste in the air from a nearby roadside pit.

All the smells of Logan’s Beach.

All the smells of home.

But it felt off. Like the sky shouldn’t have been so blue. There shouldn’t have been any picture perfect white fluffy clouds floating across it either. It felt wrong that stoplights still changed from red to green and back again, and that kids on rusted bikes chased the ice cream truck down the street, the broken speakers playing a haunting version of a typically upbeat tune.

Don’t even get me started on the fucking church bells.

The funny thing about life is that even though something entirely earth-shattering rocks you to your core, something that shakes you off your access, the world around you somehow doesn’t feel the impact.

Or it doesn’t give a shit.

Meanwhile, there I stood, out in the blazing sunlight, on the most beautiful mid-summer day, waiting to be hit by the meteor that killed the dinosaurs. I was on edge, twitching like it hadn’t been years since I gave into my heroin cravings. I loved everything about Logan’s Beach but couldn’t bring myself to enjoy it. Almost like I felt guilty that I could smell these amazing things while Preppy couldn't. Not now in that bed and probably not from wherever he'd been for the last year.

I had to put an end to my thoughts before they got ahead of me. Closing my eyes tightly, I shook off the thousands of bad things running through my mind.

Two little kids chose that moment to zip down the street laughing like rabid hyenas. One was on a bike, towing the other who was sitting on a skateboard. They reminded me of how much fun I used to have with my stepsister when I was younger.

I gave them my best mental middle finger.

Not because they deserved it off course, but because I had no idea how to put one foot in front of the other, and they were having the time of their lives.

Maybe I should hang out with them.