I swung my car into the apartment complex's parking lot and turned the ignition off. I pushed the car door out and slammed it behind me, rushing into the building. I didn't even bother waiting for the elevator, opting for the stairs instead. I wasn't in the best of shape, and Pete lived on the fifth floor, but I needed to get to him and I needed to get to him quick.
After running up the five flights of stairs, I burst through the door marked with a big, black 5 painted on it and into the hallway. I looked right and left, sweat beading on my forehead and my chest rising up and down rapidly as I tried to draw air back into my lungs. I made a break for the right and ran down the hall, skidding to a stop in front of the apartment I knew to be his.
I folded my fingers into the palm of my hand and brought it up to the door, pounding it against the wood. "Pete! I'm here! Open up!" I shouted, neglecting the fact that there were other tenants on the floor that were presumably all sleeping.
I took a step back and waited for the response I anticipated to receive. Any response would do - the door opening, him yelling at me to fuck off and leave him alone, just as long as I heard or saw something.
But no, I was only met with the bittersweet sound and feeling of silence. I began to panic. This only meant one of two things. Either Pete had actually gone through with what he told me he was going to do or he was simply ignoring me. I preferred the latter, especially in this situation, but with knowing me, it was probably the former.
"Come on, man, let me in!" I yelled, sending another round of knocks echoing down the hall.
"Hey asshole, why don't you shut up and go to bed?" A voice rang in my right ear. I turned my head and saw one of Pete's neighbors peering their head out of the apartment. It was evident they were pissed at me, their eyebrows furrowed together and bags underneath their tired eyes. "Pete's not here."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"You just missed him. He left a few minutes ago," They disclosed to me, stepping out into the corridor and crossing their arms over their chest, "And you want to know how I know? Because he walks like a fucking elephant. I swear, he has no respect for us or the people who live on the floor below us."
"Do you happen to know where he went?" I inquired, abandoning Pete's apartment door and approaching his neighbor.
"Why do you care?"
"Because he's going to kill himself if I don't go and stop him," I explained, my heart rate not getting any slower. If anything, it was growing faster. So fast that I felt as if my heart would explode out of my chest at any moment.
They chuckled, which threw me off. "What? Why would you want to stop him? You and I both know he'd be better off dead, kid."
"No he wouldn't be," I argued.
"Oh really?" The neighbor sneered, as if they were challenging me. I nodded my head, my lips pressed tightly together and my hands clenched into fists by my sides in attempt to keep myself from hitting the stranger square in the face. "Well I'd like to see you try and find the fucker. Do you know how big Chicago is? Let alone how dangerous it is at night? If he didn't kill himself, I'm sure someone else did for him by now."
I stared at the person before me angrily. How could they say such things about someone they barely knew? Sure, Pete might not have been the most pleasant neighbor to have, but that didn't give someone the right to say that he was better off dead. No wonder Pete always said what he did to me. It was because no one believed in him. No one except for me.
"We'll see about that," I said before walking away from them back towards the staircase I had raced up no longer than five minutes ago.
"Hey, if you do find him, tell him he needs to get an air freshener or something?" The neighbor called out to me, "The smell of his apartment is lingering into the hallway and-"
I turned to look at them and raised my middle finger, pushing through the door that led to the stairs. I darted down then, my second time trekking the stairs that day. I don't think I'd ever run so much before in my life.
I broke outside and rushed up to the driver's side of my car, noticing for the first time that Pete's car was missing from its parking spot. My shoulders slumped as I realized this only worsened the already shit situation. If he took his car, he could've gone anywhere and - recalling vividly how he drove and how bad my luck was - was probably already halfway across the country. I heaved a sigh and leaned forward, resting against my car door.
I was never going to find him.
He was going to kill himself, if he hadn't already. Or, like that damn neighbor claimed, someone else did it for him.
Tears began to form in my eyes, the thought of a world without Pete devastating. As much as I hated him when we initially met, he was the best thing that had ever happened to me. He and those meetings. Despite my frequent accusations that those meetings were a waste of my time and they wouldn't help me, they did. I didn't want to die anymore. I had something that made me want to keep living. I actually had a lot of things that made me want to keep living, and one of those things was Pete. If he wasn't there, I'd have one less reason to live.
Living in a world without my best friend wasn't an option.
I needed to find him.
I needed to stop him before he'd do something I hope he'd regret.
I needed to find him before he killed himself.
