Chapter Fiveish?

Ryan clasped his palms behind his head, bent over so that his elbows were resting on his knees. There, sitting outside the police station on a bench, he began to weep with his head between his legs. He mourned her loss, his aching heart. He wanted her in his arms. He tore himself up, wishing he had done something different, something that would have saved her life.

Why didn't he do something before? His mind plagued him, asking him questions he could never answer. The guilt bore him down.

Where was she now? Will she even know me when they are finished with her? What good can come of police involvement? Why didn’t I tell her the truth? Why didn’t I tell her that I loved her? Why didn’t I make her stay?

“God damn it!” He sobbed aloud. The tears ran cold off of his face. He watched as a tear ran down the bridge of his nose and dripped in practically slow motion to the unforgiving concrete below, where it became destroyed like his heart suddenly was. Lights, blue and red, flashed on the concrete below him. Slowly he breathed out, watching as his breath became a smoky gray in the cold night and looked up.

An impala owned by the state police pulled to the curb and stopped. Two police officers climbed out of the car. One was a woman who looked exhausted and seemed unhappy with the situation. She stood by the driver’s side door, muttered something over the top of the car to the other officer, then climbed back inside and sat behind the wheel. He could still see her face amongst the glow of the computer screen before her. She was cursing.

The other officer opened the door on the back seat and forcefully pulled out a man still struggling against his handcuff restraints. Ryan stood expecting to see the face of the man they thought was guilty of Alex’s disappearance. However, he received a rude awakening. Ryan gasped. The 'suspect' he had been told to expect was none other than her own best friend, the best man at their wedding, their team member,
"Rob. . ." He breathed the name scarcely louder than an exhale, scared to finish the name. Scared to make the situation true by recognizing it. "Hands off you oaf!" cried Robert. He pulled away from the cops. "We'll have none of that. Remember your rights son. You only make things worse by these childish actions now. Have your lawyer fight for you," the cop was old beyond his years and overly comfortable with suspects. He handled Robert efficiently like another simple protocol to be followed. Time was of the essence. Does Robert even know what is going on? Ryan zipped up his coat further and his eyes connected with Robert’s as the officers pulled Robert up the steps and out of the dark into the brightly lit cinderblock building. Before he was pulled inside, Robert said three words unforgettable words to Ryan.

“How could you?”

The night was dark again.

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"We came together simply and for the soul purpose of dying. Oh, how we yearned for it, tasting it like the flower tastes the pale yellow light of the sun but never grabbing for it, simply being driven, everyday by it. As that ghastly yellow light would move across the burning sky, we would reach, extending our arms and spreading our wilting pedals out to catch more of its poisonous rays. Yet we were still rooted in life and could not escape that of which we were, as weeds are to the garden of life.

You could see it, in the way we walked together, talked about everything as if it were nothing. It was because it was nothing. We could feel nothing, sense nothing! It was possible to stand side by side on a cliff holding one another’s hands and still not feel each other. Yet, we could feel death. Always, we could feel death. It filled our lungs, pulsed through our veins, made us so alive in it. It cried out to us for us to join it, become a decomposed nothing, yet for some reason we did not join it.

It was like a blanket we could not throw off. A blanket we could not remove and could not see from behind. It blinded us from what was on the other side, yet we clung to it like a child would to its mother. Death was all that we had left in life, and we loved it. No, love would be too grand for death. We lusted after it.

Alex had her moments where she could escape from the blanket, but without meaning to, I would drag her back under. I would show her the darkness from which I hid, and she was seduced by its tragic mystery.

And so it was, we came to love death."

Robert was crying. He could feel their awful truth serum tearing him apart. It made him say all the things she had made him promise never to tell anyone else. He had ruined her.

As Ryan stood behind the one way glass with the inspectors, he was horrified. Ryan realized his awful mistake. Robert was innocent, framed accidentally by Ryan’s carelessness. However, Ryan did not say anything could not say anything, because he was glad that Robert was behind bars. Ryan wanted to keep Robert there, to know everything that had gone on behind his back when he had been away fighting in the war. He wanted to know how Robert had stolen her away. How Rob had held her like only he should have. Known her in ways that only Ryan himself, felt that she should be known.

Chapter One-Part One

Alex stared out the window.

What was outside the window was not particularly interesting, nor were any of the things Alex was able to see. In fact, the more Alex stared, the less interesting the world outside the glass became. This became so true, that she could no longer even concentrate on the images that passed before her eyes, she could not think of what was merely a foot from the very place she sat inside. Perhaps it was because the teacher's lecture had become harmfully boring, or perhaps it was because Alex could not force herself to care about history on any given day of the week; for whatever reason, it could not be ignored that she continued to stare out the window for such an extraordinary amount of time that the rest in the room may have come and gone, and Alex would not have known it.

Now, while Alex, in all her non-concentration had failed to notice her peers, they had most certainly noticed her. How could they not? Her face that was not beautiful, but pretty in a profound and almost god-given sense, she carried her quiet demeanor, her self-assured walk, and of course there was her tight blouse pulling across her skin drawing every male's attention to her well formed body. All these things were Alex. When one thought of her, they pictured her, sitting silently in that classroom as the sunshine poured through the window onto her, basking her in afternoon glow. It was then that her doe brown hair caught the light that slipped through the blinds onto her in such a way that it lit up her hair color as if it was brighter than everyone else's. Her whole image became cast on some sort of light yellow canvas in each person's mind.

It was because of this, that the teacher, Mr. Andrews, incurred a frequent problem of trying to get his students to pay attention to the lesson. It seemed that almost each day he had to tear his students away from the girl that sat next to the window. He had often thought of moving her to the back corner, but something always kept him from doing so. He was also captivated by her. The way she never seemed to care about his class and did not care to pick up the material and learn at all what he had dedicated his entire life to. How she discarded his lessons with what seemed to be complete respect and determination! She was brilliant, it was clear in her test scores, but Jonathan Andrews had known that from the first moment he met her. He did not blame the students for their disinterest, for he too could barely keep from staring at her during a class that seemed to drag on for days.

Despite how much Alex loathed the history class, she never seemed to be in a hurry to leave. She arrived on time, amongst a group of excitedly talking teens who bustled her into the room in some sort of pubescent tornado. From what he could tell, she was never speaking, or perhaps he discarded it because he could imagine her speaking of the latest Hollywood scandal or new sandals. When the bell would ring at the end of class, the rest of the room would move, like worms, squirming against each other, all trying to cram their way through the door at the same time. Alex would simply slip her notebook into bag, stand, walk out and softly coo to her teacher, "Have a good day Mr. Andrews."