Suicide, Skittles and Skates [✓]

Chapter 22

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

"Alex, do you remember when mum would say don't ever trust anyone who doesn't have any fears?" my sister asked me as she curled up on the sofa, her voice quiet with tiredness.

I smiled at the random question looking up from my position sprawled on the floor and quoted my mother with the exact words I had heard a million times as a child. "If you're not afraid of anything, you can't possibly believe in anything either."

Alice nodded slightly before closing her eyes and falling asleep, a smile still on her face from my answer taking her back many years into the past.

Alex's head was swimming with memories that night.

He had woken up suddenly – his hands clammy and heart racing – with the same reoccurring nightmare of the moment his sister died. It had been a while since he saw it so clearly in his mind that he had almost forgotten just how haunting it was. Things were much better now, there was no doubt about it but it was as though his mind was reminding him that he'd never be quite okay again.

Knowing he needed to go back to sleep, he tried to calm himself down and lay in his bed reminiscing. No matter how many times he tossed and turned, his mind continued to play flashbacks stuck on the same scenes over and over again like a broken record. They weren't even the bad scenes of the shitty parts of his life. On the contrary it was all the happy moments that were running through his mind, the good times with his Alice, Lacey and Tyler when they were younger that he couldn't stop thinking about.

But that was worse in a way; as though his subconscious was haunting him.

Although things were much better with Lacey and Ty than they were a month or so ago, things would never quite be the same without his sister. With a heavy heart, he turned over for the millionth time and squinted at the luminescent figures of the clock on his bedside cabinet.

6:13 am.

"Great," he mumbled as he reluctantly pulled himself out of bed. There was no point even trying to sleep anymore and so he grabbed a faded maroon jumper from the corner of the room and slipped on some vans. Grabbing his phone, keys and camera which he pulled around his neck, he trudged out of the door, flicking his hair out of his eyes in the slight wind.

Recently, all the pictures on his camera's memory card were for their Art project and so it was refreshing to take photographs just for the sake of it without having to adjust the settings to take a perfect shot or to think too much about it. Alex looked through his viewfinder and took a few random pictures of the sky, roads and people rushing past to get to work. Before long, he found himself at a park near his home. Small and secluded and with a tiny canal, it was the perfect place to take some more photos in order to clear his mind and distract himself from his nightmares.

Although it was very early in the morning, the park had a few people loitering around. There were a couple of university students walking through clutching Starbucks cups, joggers with headphones in their ears oblivious to the world around them and frazzled mothers, holding tight to the hands of their sleepy children dressed in school uniforms.

Catching sight of a lone duck pecking at some bread a passer-by had thrown near the canal, Alex walked over quietly and zoomed in as much as he could. Trying not to startle it, he began to take a couple of pictures experimenting with the angles when a familiar figure caught his eye in front of him.

Dressed in what were obviously her pyjamas – but somehow managing to look like a supermodel in them all the same – Hannah was running around the edge of the park just ahead of him. Her eyes widened in recognition when she caught sight of him kneeling on the ground and she slowed her pace to jog towards him.