Chapter 13: Take

The night it happened.

Emily.


I was the first to discover his body,

 

lucky
me, right? Those few months
had just been filled with luck. I guess
I shouldn’t have been so shocked when
I saw my best friend/true loves
body

 

sprawled
 out across the carpet in
a broken form, with his brains splattered
on the wall behind him. At first I thought
about laughing, thinking it was just
 one

 

big
joke. This was something straight
out of one of those crime scene investigation
TV shows. Afterwards I considered murder.
And then I saw it, set off to the side, that gleaming
white envelope, neat handwriting reading ;
Emily

 

Before
I had even touched the paper
the tears began to fall. I had hoped
and prayed it was some sick twisted
letter from the person who had
shot

 

the
only person in the whole wide
world I could rely on. I knew that’s
what it had to be. This wasn’t my
best friend actually ending his
life.

 

He
couldn’t. Maybe we weren't as close as
we had been before lately. But I still loved
him. Once the thought of laughter or murder
passed, anger settled in. How could he leave
me with a mess like this on my hands? How could he
run

 

away
and leave me with the remains,
to keep it all from crashing down?
I reached down and picked up the
paper with shaky hands. I had
 to

 

read
over it several times, once
out loud to convince myself that
it was actually happening.
He had done it in my
bedroom,

 

in
my house. He wanted me to
be the first to see what he had
done. The letter stated that he
left a message for the
secretary

 

at
the police department,
confessing to the accidental
manslaughter of Jonathon
Miller. He had left out all
of

 

our
names, but obviously later
on people found out I was involved
seeing as Tyler failed to include why
he would be alone in an
community

 

center
so late at night. They needed
someone to unleash their anger out
at anyways, someone to point fingers
at and despise. Lucky me I went
insane

 

before
I could be thrown into jail. The
letter also confessed the love for me that
Tyler had been keeping a secret, after breaking
my heart. Funny how all secrets just f**k things
up

 

when they’re supposed to make things easier.

 

 

The second person to witness the horror


was my mother. She had already been
crying and I tried to understand            

         how

 

she’d already seen the body. That’s
when I saw her envelope. I crashed to
the floor. Just how                                 

        many

 

times could a person get
hurt in one night? I awoke
a few hours later, feeling like
I'd taken a thousand               

                          hits

 

to the heart.That was no dream, no
fanciful daydream. Two reports
of death in one night.                       

                Could

 

this really be happening? The
2 most important people in my
life, melted over my fingertips
and through the cracks in just                         

                 a

 

few hours. 2 funerals in the same
week. My father was killed in battle
by a landmine. I supposed it was           

                      good

 

that he wasn’t taken in by the rebel
forces and tortured. But still,
daddy’s little                           

                                         girl

 

couldn’t rid the nightmares of
explosions and flying parts
of her once live hero. I felt

 

like all God was doing was
trying to break me down and
all everyone around me would

do was take, take, 

                   take.

 

 

 


 

 

I remember it clearly.

 

Me, my mother, my half brother
Peyton, Tyler’s family and friends
all crowded around the burden
filled coffin. His sister wasn’t

 

even there, some excuse about
camp. That’s when the seed of
hate was planted, and she later
pushed on and watered, until it

 

blossomed and flowered into
pure loathe. I didn’t cry, I hadn’t
shed a tear. I couldn’t and I
didn’t understand. The only

 

thing I was able to shed was
sanity. It was as if that seed
Abigail so gracefully planted
had taken a turn for the worst

and that’s when I first heard anon’s voice.