Chapter 6

We found a bedroom, where me and Pierce slept on the floor, and Natasha slept on the bed.

None of us did much sleeping.

At about 10:30 Pierce was asleep, but I was wide awake with fear. I just didn't see why he tried to hide his own, but he did it so well.

I heard Natasha get up and take a flashlight out of the room, and a few minutes later I followed. I found her at the table that we were at earlier, looking down at something. She must have heard me come in, so she wasn't surprised when I took a seat next to her.

There was a picture cradled in her small hands. A picture of a slightly younger Natasha and a little girl holding hands on a beach, with huge smiles on their faces. I never had a sibling, younger or older, but when Natasha saw me looking at the picture, she broke out in tears and buried her face into my shoulder.

Between her sobs were things like, "I loved her so much" or "she was perfect". I couldn't relate at all, but all I could do was be there, so I did.

* * *

After I half-guided, half-carried her back to the room, and she fell asleep, I had dreams of my own.

I was sitting at the kitchen table in my house, but today felt special, I looked around and realized, I was at a birthday party. And I was the birthday boy. The only people at the table were my dad and Pierce.

"Happy Birthday to you, Happy birthday to you-" they sang as mom brought my cake in. Eight candles. The cake was poorly shaped like a wrench, but I loved the fact that they knew me so well. I looked around the table, and a seven-year-old Pierce said "Come on and blow out your candles, Garry!"

Then I knew that this wasn't a dream, this was a memory, a memory of what I commonly think of as the best day of my life. I blew out the candles. "Yay! Cake!" Said Pierce.

The memory shifted.

I was on the roof of my house, ten years old. Pierce was over at my house, so he was sitting next to me. "What do you think high school will be like, Pierce?" "Don't get ahead of yourself, man." He replied. "Do you think we'll have girlfriends?" "Well, hopefully not more than one, but yeah, why not?" "Do you think that you'll be better at guitar?" "Are you kidding me? By then, I'm gonna have a band!"

The dream shifted again.

The scene from Natasha's picture was unfolding in front of me, from the photographer's point of view. They were running down the beach, careless and energetic, never parting hands.

Then I saw all three scenes crumble and burn as my birthday showed me sitting at the table alone, instead of the roof was Pierce crying over the locker I was in, and young Natasha alone on the beach, looking lost and confused.