Y’know that feeling…where you lose somebody, and they take a piece of you with them that you never knew you had. I’ve felt that before…
What had it been…five in the morning when I had gotten the phone call? Well…my mom had gotten the phone call; it had been his mother calling. Wailing at my mother crying and sobbing, about how her son had gotten into an accident. Her daughter, my best friend…maybe more to me.
I’d known Daniel my entire life…sometimes it felt like Dan was my life. We’d gotten the phone call so early…I had complained about waking up at five on a Saturday. I don’t even think I fully comprehended the words that left my mother’s lips as she trembled slightly, not wanting to upset me.
“Sweetie…Daniel got into an accident, a car accident. He must have been out late…drinking or something, and it just went bad.” She muttered, her lips moving as little as they had to. It was only moments after this that my heart started pounding, and I felt more awake than I wanted to be.
“Well…it was just an accident, right mom?” I asked, not noting the franticness that was creeping into my voice now. “Y-You said it was just an accident…you can fix an accident!” I said, yelling by the end of it, and not caring about how my mother cowered slightly, the phone beeping in her hands. I could tell by the look in her eye that it hadn’t been just any accident, I had lost him…and I wasn’t getting him back.
Her hazel eyes bore into my green ones, and I held in the urge to cry. I wasn’t going to cry in front of my mother…
There was a pause, and the next thing I knew I was in the laundry room, pulling on a pair of jeans, and tugging a shirt over my head. Yanking a pair of socks off of the dresser, and going to half-a** putting my shoes on.
“Damien where are you going?” came a meek voice, from where I had left my mother in the kitchen. I pulled a hoodie on, not answering her all at once. Where was I going? I didn’t really know, all I knew was that I wanted to be out of here, and I wanted to be out of here now. My house didn’t feel like a home at the moment, it felt like a prison. I needed to escape, and go vent all these emotions that were dragging at my chest.
“Out.” I said, as I turned and stared at her. “I can’t be here right now mom…I’m seventeen and I don’t even have a permit, so I’m not taking the car!” I snapped, knowing even then that I shouldn’t have been snapping at my mother that way.
There was a slight jangling noise as I grabbed my house keys off of the kitchen counter, out the door in seconds, and not caring about the cold that was biting harshly even through my thick hoodie.
I didn’t know where I was going…just somewhere I could escape, someplace I might be able to scream without drawing attention to myself. I needed to let all of this pain out, before it started to eat away at my insides. If it hadn’t already started, that is.
I lived in the city, so would finding a place where I could yell be all that hard? Pray tell it wasn’t a huge city, it was just…a city, a town maybe. That isn’t really that important though, letting all this pent up pain out…that was what was important.
It felt like I had been running for hours on end, even though it had probably only been five or seven minutes. When I stopped I was out of breath, my breath showing in the cold air, a foggy mask in the dark air. I had found myself under a bridge, one of the bridges that pedestrians walked over, on the scenic route. Probably the nicest place in town, and I was going to scream my lungs out in that place.
“Why the hell are you so stupid?” I yelled, as I punched a fist hard into the cement that held the bridge up. “Drinking really!? You’re smarter than that Daniel…why the hell would you go and throw away your life!?” I yelled, my fists hitting harder against the cement again and again.
I must have screamed and punched at that cement for at least half an hour, when I stopped my knuckles were bloody and raw, and sore from the initial contact with the bridge.
I sank down onto my knees, before I let my back rest against the cement that was now stained with my sanguine blood. Blood that had once gave me life, and made my skin flush…now tainted across this gray rock, a reminder of what had happened.
I was crying without even realizing it, and my hands were against my eyes. It didn’t take long for the soft cries to transform into sobs, sobs that wracked my body and made it hard to breath.
My crying fist lasted a lot longer than the violence I had just performed on the cement I was leaning against.
After I had cried all the tears my eyes would allow, I pulled my knees up against my chest. Leaning my chin across them, a few stray tears trailing down my cheek every now and then. I had lost him…and I felt some realization come into my head as I really thought about this.
How could I have lost Damien? He had been my best friend since I moved her in 6th grade, and I felt as if I could trust the boy with my life. I stared down at my knuckles now, my nose scrunching up in slight irritation at the sorry state that they were in.
I was realizing a lot now wasn’t I? I was realizing how much my knuckles hurt, and I was realizing that my eyes stung like crazy. I was realizing that the bloody smell and taste in the back of my throat was coming from my cut up knuckles. But I realized something now, that I wish I had realized forever ago. I realized that…
“I love you…”