In the Middle of the Bed (A Saira Collings Story)

April 18, 1995 (Lucas's Story)

You get a lot of really fantastic bad ideas when you're drunk.

I have no clue how I got to the party. I remember seeing someone die, though.

I remember wriggling between the high schoolers' legs, so small and short no one would see me if they didn't look. I don't know if that was a mercy or a curse.

I remember making it to the backyard. All the high schoolers, mainly seniors and juniors, are crowded around the pool. They're all laughing and cheering. When I make it to the front of the circle, I see two boys in the pool, both with knives.

One boy feints to the left, then upper cuts to the right. The other boy deflects the blade, then jabs towards the other's eyes. Both boys are stumbling around, drunk off their asses. Who got the idea of giving them knives and making them fight? Even from this distance I can see their glazed eyes and smell their horrible breaths.

Then, the second boy makes a leap. The first goes down, below the water. Everyone except me cheers. Red color starts billowing outward from the center of the pool, where the two boys dove, and still they cheer. Then, when only one boy surfaces, people start to realize that something's wrong. 

"Lucas! Someone call 911! Lucas!" A few kids scream. Some boys jump into the water, but I just stand there. I can feel the life of the first boy-Lucas, they call him-draining away like his blood into the water. "He won't make it. He's already too far gone," I whisper. A few kids hear me, and turn to look at me with wild eyes.

"How do you know that?" one boy asks, while a girl screams,"How the fuck did you get in here? Get out, runt!" I blink at her, and say,"The cops will come. They'll make arrests. Especially the person who hosted the party, and watched a boy die." My words seem to impact the girl. She stumbles away, and I turn my gaze back to the pool.

The boys are dragging Lucas's body onto the side of the pool. They succeed, and a few girls faint from the sight of the blood. I walk over slowly, calmly, the most wise and young person on this property.

I watch Lucas's face as his life fades from his body. His throat bleeds scarlet blood.

The other kids rush around, scared out of their wits. I simply watch, a ghost in my own skin, as his blue-white apparition rises from his body. I look down at his eyes, and see their utter darkness and absense of life.

I look back up at Lucas, and see him staring at me. "It's a rush. All of this information-it's extraordinary," he says, his voice calm and level. "Information?" I ask, inching forward towards his ghost.

"Yes. You learn things when you die, Saira Collings. The light people talk about? It's actually information. Names. Numbers. Words. Everything you need to know about death. About the people you'll be bound to. About the people that will affect your afterlife. I saw you, mostly, Saira. The person who watched me die who is so young, who stayed calm amidst the chaos, who is the only one sober enough to know what's happening. What happened."

Lucas clutches his wrist, and starts rubbing his palm across a scar on his wrist. "What's that?" I ask, pointing at his scar. Lucas looks down at his wrist, where the thin line cuts neatly across the place where the special vein lies. He looks back up at me, and says,"A scar from my past. I tried to die. I didn't have the guts to. But I'll take a scar on the wrist verses a slit throat any day."

I blink at him, confused about why someone would want to die. Lucas shrugs, as if he can read my mind, and says,"The dead are wiser than the living, Saira. Always remember that." With that vague and completely random statement, Lucas dissolves into smoke.

As I'm lying in bed later that night, after sneaking away from the party, I wonder why someone would want to die. I look at my own wrist in the moonlight, and see a bright blue vein winding its way up my arm and into my shoulder. I put my arm back down on the bed, and gaze outward at the moon.

Lucas's scar traverses its way across my right hip bone, arcing to my front and back. I don't flinch at the pain of it, though the claw-like nail I feel against my skin makes me want to. I simply lie there in my bed, gazing at the moon, wondering why someone would want to die.

If only I knew that in a few years, I would become that someone.