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Juliet's eyes were milky white and too round for her soft, porcelain face. They stared at him—no, not at him, but through him—and he couldn't bring himself to look away. It felt like she saw the nasty, ugly parts of him that he hid.
She looked the same, but different. She was still dressed in her school uniform: her white blouse snug against her torso, her blazer unbuttoned, and her skirt covering to her mid-thigh, and her knee-high socks still soapy clean. Her hair—the same hair that was currently in his pocket, Marty thought—was matted and tangled, with dried up blood.
"I can explain," Warren whispered, "It's not what it looks like."
He had almost forgotten that Warren existed. He was kneeling beside Juliet, his knees planted in the dirt, and his fingers running through his hair. Warren looked different, too. He looked tired and restless all at once.
And then, and only then, did the situation start to weight heavily on his shoulders and chest. It felt like a boot had pressed on his ribs and crushed him. He had stepped into something private and perverse. His breath caught in his throat. He examined the situation, from the point of view of a fly on the wall: Juliet's corpse, two boys: one kneeling, the other standing, woods, dried up blood, shaky hands... It was too much.
"She's-dead, isn't she?" Marty asked.
It was a stupid question to ask. Of course, she was dead. It was clear: with her once blue eyes turned white, like they had rolled into the back of her head, and her face now gnarly and thinning. Her mouth was no longer pink but chapped and blue.
"It's not what it looks like," he repeated, "It was an accident."
It didn't look like an accident. How could it possibly be an accident? How do you accidentally visit the body on more than one occasion? How do you accidentally not tell anyone? But instead, he asked: "What happened?"
Warren continued to pull at the roots of his hair, letting it dip in front of his teary eyes. He looked like a mess. But Marty couldn't help but think that this was the most beautiful he had seen him. He looked like a beautiful disaster.
Warren sighed, "I asked her if she wanted to come here... to this spot here. It is—was my favorite spot in the entire woods." He could see why he liked it, it was a beautiful spot: with mellow greens and deep browns, there was trees that covered the skyline, and the sound of a creek rippled through the air. It was a beautiful place to die, Marty thought. Warren continued, "One thing leads to another and we started to fool around-we didn't go all the way. It wasn't anything more than that: making out. But it must have meant a lot more to her than me. She asked if were were a couple after... I should have said yes, but I didn't. Maybe then this wouldn't have happened."
