revision of the flash fiction originally posted at Station 9
My friend died yesterday.
I was in class when I first heard the news. A student had been hit by a careless truck driver while crossing the street in front of the school.
Died instantly.
Once emergency responders arrived, they declared him dead on site. A few students saw the body before they took it away. Even fewer recognized who he was and passed the information to staffers and faculty.
The accident became the rumors of the day. Students referred to him as, ‘that kid.’ Some teachers acknowledged the accident. Others, not at all. Not many knew his name. He was a quiet guy who kept to himself, similar to me. It’s a wonder the two of us met in the first place.
Other than that, the day proceeded as normal. The school didn’t cancel classes or declare a state of emergency. It was a freak accident; other students were not in danger.
I talked about it with a few of my girl friends. Not very much. It was assumed he was an underclassmen, since none of them knew him. I had yet to find out it was a friend of mine who got hit.
Yesterday was also a busy day. With winter break coming up, all the teachers, without fail, decided to cram their tests and assignments into the last week. Thus, I could not afford the time or energy to throw a pity-party for the mystery student.
In Calculus, I had a test. In Chemistry, lab assignments. In World History, a test later that week. I skipped lunch to meet with my counselor. I needed to give a speech in French class. Et cetera.
Coincidentally, our school scheduled a fire drill near the end of the day. It was quite inconvenient, interrupting exam time for English Literature. The teacher, as irritated as she was, postponed the exam.
I was thankful for that. Not because I felt I had studied poorly, but because of what happened during the drill. One of my best friends ran up beside me as it ended. I had a class with her the next day, so I assumed she wanted to talk about the project we were turning in.
When I saw her face, I felt something was wrong. “Don’t worry about the project,” I assured. “We finished everything long before our classmates.”
“No, I’m not concerned about that… The… accident in front of the school building today. You heard about it, right?”
“Who wouldn’t have?” We kept on walking.
“You… know who that was?”
“I heard it was one of the underclassmen.” I turned my head and saw her face had grown pale.
“…Was he… a friend of yours?” I asked.
“No, I hardly knew him.” Her reply was slow and calculated.
“…Then, you know who was hit?”
She hesitated for a few moments before proceeding. “Well… I suppose you would’ve found out sooner or later…
“You knew him.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Who was it?” My mind hastily searched for every underclassman I could possibly know.
“The guy you sat with at lunch everyday.”
I stopped walking.
She stopped as well.
There was a moment of silence between us.
Other students kept walking.
“…Oh…” I eventually murmured. “That guy…”
“I’m sorry… I shouldn’t have—”
“No, it’s okay… I just… Give me some time to think about it.”
She quietly nodded, and left me alone.
The rest of the day passed, and I walked home by myself as usual. Some of the neighbors were routinely outside during this time, in their front yards or arriving home from work. They would greet me every time, and I would greet them back with a smile and a wave, as a good girl should.
I got home and found a note from my parents. They would be coming home late, and I could make my own snack in the meantime. Instead, I went upstairs, plopped down my backpack, and undressed. Sitting at my desk, I spread out my notes, but didn’t start working. For a long while, I rested my elbows on the desktop and stared at my papers, winding down.
Suddenly, a drip of water soiled one of the pages. I looked up, expecting a ceiling leakage, only to realize my diluted vision. Before I knew it, I began to sob, quietly at first, then wailing loudly. My head collapsed down into my arms and onto the papers scattered across my desk. The tears wrinkled and ruined them, but I couldn’t afford to care.
All the pent-up stress that had built up inside came out at this moment. When my parents came home late in the evening, they found me asleep at my desk, my head still buried into my criss-crossed arms. The curtains were still open and the desklamp on. They knew enough to leave me alone.
That night I dreamed a strange dream. I was a little child again, sitting in a bus with other children. We were all in uniforms; a school field trip. As kids, we were mischievous, of course; yelling across the aisles and to kids on the other side of the bus. My friends were jostling around me, in an innocent jest with each other. Despite the chaotic and hearty atmosphere of this bus, I felt an emptiness inside; the yelling and jeering slowly becoming distant echoes as light flooded everything around me, until there was nothing but white.
That was when I came to a realization with myself. It all made sense, why I unexpectedly broke down. I had been anxious—anxious to find out who died. And I had lied to myself that I was fine, that I was stressed out because of the tests and exams and lab experiments and project assignments and…
Once I reflected on my day, as I always did, every evening, in my room—where I could drop my masquerade—it was then when it hit me the hardest.
I never got to tell him I loved him.