A few stragglers from the parking lot had wandered over to see what was happening. I heard their whispers. I heard my name. I heard Billy’s.
“Sir, I need you to calm down. Do you know how to perform CPR?”
“Yes.” I had learned in school and had never been more grateful for those few hours I’d actually paid attention.
“Good. I’m going to talk you through it, okay? I need you to do what I say. Hang on. The ambulance will be there in two minutes …”
***
Two minutes was a long time.
It had been too long.
I was surrounded by flashing lights on the side of the road, watching through wide, bewildered eyes as a handful of cops searched my car—Stone Temple Pilots’ “Big Empty” playing on the radio—and the paramedics zipped up a body bag.
Billy was inside.
“It’s not him anymore,” I could hear Gramma saying as the paramedics took Grampa away. “It’s just his body.”
But it had looked like Grampa then, and it had looked like Billy now. Just … different.
Empty.
Cold.
“Soldier Mason?”
I looked up at the man in a police uniform through eyes that couldn’t stop tearing up. “Y-yeah?”
Maybe it would’ve been more respectful to stand. But I didn’t have the strength in me. Not after I’d watched my closest, longest, oldest friend die beneath my pressing hands.
So, the cop sat beside me instead.
“I’m sorry about your friend,” he said quietly, folding his arms over his knees.
I just nodded, unsure of how I would ever look at Billy’s mom again.
God, who’s going to tell his mom?
I imagined her receiving the news, imagined her pain and screams and tears, and I started to cry again, unable to find it in me to care that this cop and all of those people against the fence behind me were staring.
“My name is Officer Sam Lewis. But you can call me Sam if you’d like.”
I didn’t call him anything as I pulled my knees to my chest and pressed my forehead against them.
Fucking hell, Billy. You fucking idiot.
“Look …” Officer Sam laid a hand against my back. “I know the last thing you want to do is answer my stupid questions. But you know I have to ask them.”
Somewhere beyond my realm of thinking, a little voice told me to run and to not stop until every person in this shitty town forgot my name. But there was no forgetting a guy named Soldier, and that was just another thing to blame my mother for.
“So, do you think you could answer a couple of questions for me, Soldier?”
I lifted my head and watched as the ambulance, void of its siren, drove away with Billy in a body bag. A second cop car drove closely behind it, and I presumed they were on their way to deliver the heartbreaking, life-changing news to Billy’s oblivious parents. They would blame me, and they would hate me, and they wouldn’t be wrong in doing either.
It was all my fault.
And it seemed that Officer Sam agreed.
“Don’t you have to take me down to the station or something?” I asked quietly, sniffling.
“Nah, not yet. We can chat here for a couple of minutes … as long as you’re cooperating.”
I pulled in a shaky breath and nodded. “Okay.”
“So, you have a lot of pills in your car,” he said. “Are they yours?”
My brain worked quicker than it ever had before. If I said no, he’d ask whose they were. I could tell him they were Billy’s, but Billy was dead. I had killed him, and whether he was here to fight for himself or not, I couldn’t do that to him. I refused. No, I’d have to be honest and tell him they were Mom’s. She’d be arrested—oh my God, they’re going to arrest me—and she’d go to prison. But Mom wouldn’t survive jail … but I could. I was younger, stronger, more resilient. Mom would let it break, destroy, kill her, and I couldn’t live with that.
I was supposed to save her after all. It was all I knew how to do.
So, with a shaky breath, I closed my eyes and nodded. “Yes.”
“What were you doing with all that stuff, Soldier?”
“I was going to The Pit.” It wasn’t a lie. That was exactly where I’d intended to go. But I wasn’t going to sell them all. I’d wanted to get rid of most of them. All I’d wanted was to make enough money to pay the stupid fucking rent, and the rest would be gone. Thrown in the lake, flushed down the toilet—gone.
But Officer Sam didn’t know that.
“That’s where the high school kids hang out, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“You sell to high school kids?”
“N-no …” But that’s exactly what you’ve been doing, Soldier. It doesn’t matter how careful you’ve been. It doesn’t matter how good your intentions are. It doesn’t matter. Don’t be a fucking idiot. “Yes,” I gasped, breathless, like the word had been pressed from my heart with every life I’d been helping to destroy.
The life I had ended.
“Okay.” Officer Sam sighed, disappointed. “And what happened? You sold one of those to your friend and …”
“No. I didn’t sell anything to Billy. H-he … he just took one, and I don’t know. I was talking to him, and … he p-passed out or something.”
“But he took one of your pills,” Officer Sam confirmed, speaking slowly, and I nodded. “All right.”
He stood up and said some shit into the transmitter on his jacket. Shit I didn’t understand, shit I barely heard. I was too busy staring at the dirty shoulder of the road, where I’d laid Billy’s lifeless body. Where I had pounded on his chest and tried to make him breathe, begged for him to take a fucking breath. God … he should’ve fucking breathed because it was my birthday, and it wasn’t fair, and none of this was supposed to happen to me or anyone, and yet …
It had.
Dammit, you should run, my mind told my legs. Officer Sam is over there, talking to whoever the fuck, getting ready to slap the cuffs on you, and you have an opportunity to book it. Just run, run, RUN until you can’t run anymore, and even then, keep running.
Yet I didn’t. Because beneath all the shit I’d gotten myself into, beneath the mess I’d made of my life, I was still a good person. I would always be a good person. And I had killed my best friend, and I knew I had to pay for it.
“All right, Soldier Mason,” Officer Sam said with a sigh, like he regretted what he was about to do, and I thought, Maybe he knows I’m a good person too. “On your feet, man. Hands behind your back.”
I had seen enough of those cop shows where the perpetrator fought their arrest and the cop had to throw them against the car and slap the cuffs on.
This wasn’t one of those moments.
Officer Sam read me my rights as I stood there with my eyes on the patch of dirt where Billy had died. He cuffed my wrists and asked if they hurt and apologized when I said they did a little.
He loosened them slightly, enough to keep the circulation moving in my hands, and I muttered, “Thank you.”
Then, he walked me to his car, asked me to crouch down, placed a hand on my head, and assisted me in getting inside.