We walk together down the hallway, each one of us trying not to meet the other’s eye. I’m trying to piece it all together, trying to get everything straight in my mind. Did that really just happen? I can’t help but wonder. Is this really all a nightmare?
We walk together down the hall and everyone stares at us. I bet they’re wondering why we’re both wearing blank stares on our faces. They’re wondering why we aren’t being loud, yelling our greetings at the top of our lungs while we pass familiar faces in the hall. But, how could we when something so devastating had just happened?
We’re walking down the hall, bumping into people as we pass and not even acknowledging it. We can’t acknowledge it. If we let the world in, it will crash all around us.
We’re walking down the hall, ignoring the laughs of our classmates. “How can they be laughing,” I ask myself, “when this tragedy just occurred? How can they be laughing when this thing just happened that I can’t even bring myself to think?”
We’re walking down the hall, and we walk out the door. That’s when we see it; the thing that is going to keep us both up at night. It’s a scene that can only come from the movies.
We walk out the door and into the rain that’s as wet as our tear-streaked faces. We look out and see our friend; the one that was always able to make us laugh. The one that was both childlike and extremely mature at the same time; the type of person that was always looking for the best in people.
And there he was, lying in the street with EMTs surrounding him. All we could do was gape as the EMTs started doing CPR. Then, as quickly as the car that had come down the street just 30 minutes earlier, it was over. The EMTs zipped up the bag that held our friend’s body and left, but what they didn’t know was that it also held the hearts of the two girls that had known that boy best.