O N E
The sun shone down on the casket, setting off a gleam to the sleek black that could only be accomplished with the backdrop of death. Simon stood with his hands clasped behind his back, a blank expression masking his face. To his right, Bethany dabbed at fake tears with a tissue. James had his arm around her, a solemn look on his features.
Everywhere else, most people showed the same thing; expressionless, bored, and sweaty from the heat. Besides Simon and the dead girl's family, they only pretended to care. She was their classmate, after all.
They lowered down the casket, people slowly walking back to their cars. Simon stood frozen, staring as the dirt began hitting the thick wood. It sounded like a death march. You're next: it whispered. He jumped, someone touching his shoulder. Mrs. Carteel, the girl's mother, stood tear-stained and worn in front of him. She offered him a tired smile.
"Thank you for being here, Simon," she said. "I know she was your best friend." He lowered his head, allowing the grief to shadow his face. Tears began to form, but he blinked them away. He wouldn't cry. Not here. Not where everyone could see. Mrs. Carteel looked to where the casket was almost fully covered by soil. "She loved you. You were like a brother to her."
He choked back a sob. A brother would have been there. Stopped her from going. Helped her. Instead he'd ignored it, ignored everything. He had failed her. So blissfully ignorant. So stupid.
"We love you, too you know. You're family." She dropped her hand, patting him on the back. "If you ever need anything, let us know."
He felt awful. He was supposed to say those things; not her. She lost her daughter; he just lost a friend.
"You too Mrs. Carteel. Anything I can do, call me ." Call him. Just like Addie had tried too. Had called him, but he was to drunk to pick up. Called him for help, and received nothing. No answer. Alone.
She gave him that soft, sad smile again and nodded, turning to her husband. His head in his hands, shoulders shaking. Broken. She hugged him tightly, silently crying with him. Addie had looked so much like her.
Simon felt the tears pool again, a sharp pain stabbing through his chest. Turning, he practically sprinted to the near-empty parking lot. As he passed the headstones, he thought about how Addie will have one just like it. She would be nothing but a name and a date to be remembered. The press would have a field day with this.
"Seemingly perfect seventeen-year-old dies under suspicious circumstances." Going to school would be torture Monday. It was no secret Addie and Simon were friends; the camera crews and the attention were more than he could bear right now. Inside or outside of school. They wouldn't be permitted to go onto school property, but the gossip and attention from his peers would be more than enough to set him on edge.
He reached his car (if you could call it that) and sped down the road to the beach, finally letting the tears fall when he parked at Cooper's Peak. It was one of the few places he came to hide. It was rare anyone was ever up there, and the only other person he shared it with was Addie.
Gosh, Addie. Why?
There was no note, no clues, no reason why she did it. Police thought it was murder. They brought Simon into questioning several times, implying that he did it. They never really looked any farther than that. In their neighborhood, mysterious deaths weren't uncommon, but it wasn't usually to someone so young.
Sighing after several more minutes of pathetic sobbing, he backed out of the parking lot, heading home. His mother wouldn't be there, as usual. Work became the object of her full attention when his dad left three years ago. Her job came before everything; Even her son. Addie would always be there to make him laugh when he had days like this. It made everything all the more depressing to know that she would never make him smile again and that he would never see hers.
He slammed the breaks down as he went to pull into the driveway. A woman was standing there. He blinked, then shook his head. No. That's impossible. She disappeared years ago. The police said she was as good as dead. He leaned over the steering wheel, his hands gripping it until his knuckles turned white. She was older, much older than when he last saw her. That is if she were the same person. But she couldn't be. She was dead.
She started to approach his window. The closer she got, the more she resembled the little girl he used to know. When she stopped beside him, he realized "woman" was hardly true; She was no older than eighteen, tops.
Still old enough to be her, he thought.
The girl grinned, a mischievous, conniving grin as she stood there. "Long time no see," she said. He gulped as his stomach dropped. That smile. The look on her face that screamed trouble. It was the same smile that had flashed through his brain over a billion times.
It was her.
