Silverlighters (revised version as I edit)

10

     10

There is no way to explain what followed, or how we got through it. I’d known Chris for less than a week and never expected the devastating impact his death would have on me.

Especially as I learned more about that night. As I tried to piece it together and make sense of it.

The way they seemed to know what was about to happen.

And then there was the boy who saved me. A boy no one else had seen.

His silver eyes haunted me every waking hour, and followed me into my dreams.

The night of the accident, I pulled out the diary my mother had given me, Chris’s tragic death causing painful memories of her to resurface.

Unable to sleep, I flicked through the blank pages.

Then I started to fill them. I was still scrawling frantically as the sun came up, my hand aching, but I couldn’t stop.

It was like I was possessed. As though my words would help me find the answers.

As though they had some hidden meaning I couldn’t yet see.

In those early days, it was as though we were wading through thick, murky waters as we tried to find our bearings. Tried to accept the unbelievable, a weight pressing down on us. Reminding us always how final death was. How it could strike anywhere, anytime.

At first, my father wouldn’t let me out of his sight, and refused to let me return to school. I knew what he was planning.

I could see it in his eyes before he even told me we would be leaving.

I had no idea why – horrible things happened all the time. And of course he wouldn’t talk to me – wouldn’t tell me why he was so worried.

But for the first time he seemed reluctant to speak the words out loud.

I refused to talk to him about that night. I was so frustrated with him and his damned secrets. And I was sick to death of moving.

I told myself it had nothing to do with Jonathon or the feelings he stirred in me. That it was because I wanted answers. I wanted to know what they knew.

Then Mr. Allen’s wife came forward, telling the police her husband had been missing since the night Chris was killed.

That she hadn’t come forward because she’d been hoping it was a coincidence.

The fact he’d been seen drinking earlier that night, and that he owned a black car meant it was far more than a coincidence.

My father relaxed his grip on me, allowing me to return to school in time for the memorial service.

I would have gone anyway.

Beck latched onto me the moment she saw me, but Melissa didn’t want to know about any of it. She refused to talk about it. As though she could just make it all go away.

Death does funny things to us, that way. It twists our perceptions. Distorts our view of the world.

I was in unchartered territory as a gaping gulf separated the two of them.

Beck clung to me, blaming herself as she relived that night over and over again.

She blamed herself. But I blamed them. They knew. Somehow they knew. And they did nothing to stop it.

I knew I had to confront them. But at the time I had no idea it would bring me and Jonathon closer together.

That I would see a side to him that betrayed the cold, uncaring gazes on their faces at the memorial service. That I would soon find myself falling for him.