What Was Left

My hands shook on the steering wheel. The streaking drops pounding on the windshield did all but distract my racing mind. My eyes moved in spasms, barely seeing, barely functioning as frantic shots of fear panged through my chest, threatened to paralyze my body and choke my breathing out. The speed with which I barreled through the dark, soaking back road seemed to slow with every push of the pedal. Nothing could propel me through the night as fast as I wanted, as fast as I needed.

They had found him.

He had disappeared not long before. I couldn't discern days from weeks anymore, so I couldn't exactly tell how long it had been since I'd seen him. We didn't know what had happened. I knew it had something to do with a drink; with some friends; a bad conversation with his girlfriend.

She was at the hospital already.

They found him face down in a ditch near a campsite. He and his friends had gone there for a good time. Drinks and drugs, although I knew he didn't participate in the latter, were present. The place was like a secret hide out… I guess he'd only visited a few times.

He only ran off when things got bad.

They all got rowdy… maybe there was a fight. The next morning no one could remember seeing him go to bed. They called for him, but he was nowhere to be found. His family missed him and called the police. I wondered why he didn't respond to my texts anymore. Leslie called me to ask if I'd heard from him.

She told me where he'd gone.

When his family told us he was missing, we tried to laugh it off. 'He's a crazy kid, that Justin', we said. He'd stayed at Leslie's only the night before. She told me about their fight. We decided that he'd taken some time to cool off. She worried that he'd run off with a random girl. We pretended he would show up after a few hours. But he didn't.

We waited for them to tell us he was safe.

Leslie and I went to his house every day. She sat with his parents; I stayed with his siblings: Kylie, the youngest; Charlie and Matt, the twins; and Tom, the oldest. Kylie always looked up to me as the older sister she never had, but I'd never felt the role so strongly as when she laid her blond head on my chest and whispered, "Sarah, make him come back." Charlie and Matt tried to be grown up for Kylie, feeding the numb and nervous parents and cleaning the desolate house. Tom was the strong front of the entire movement. He met with the police chief and held Mrs. Smith's hand when she cried, and when everyone finally couldn't ward off their mortal feelings of exhaustion and fell asleep, the two of us sat at the kitchen table like soulless shells of beings, staring at the phone between us like dogs sick of a bone.

For some reason I looked to him to tell me Justin was safe.

Justin was my best friend. I don't know why he ever wanted to hang out with me; I was so boring. I was younger than him by three years, and where he partied and had fun, I stayed at home and did my homework. He was cool and I was normal. That's just how it should have been. But he took me under his wing when I was young; sometimes I felt like he was trying to mold me into a better version of himself. I tried my best to make him proud, and his advice was never unheard. Those days when he was gone I felt like my heart had been torn out. I simply couldn't imagine what it would be like to feel like that forever. But today they found him. Today they lifted him out of the mud near that campsite, that safe haven.

He wasn't responding. He was bruised and broken.

Tom had called me to tell me what had happened. He was waiting at my house to bring me to the hospital. As my little Volvo screamed down my neighborhood road, I prayed over and over in my head that my best friend be okay.

For me. For Kylie. For Leslie. For Tom. Please, just be okay.

Tom's face was pale, tired and anxious. As I sloppily crash landed my car in the street in front of my house and sprinted to the passenger side door of his Honda, I wondered if I looked so sick as well. I was just a little surprised when he wordlessly began down my road at a slow pace. Despite my better judgement, my eyes flicked to the speedometer. It read only twenty miles per hour. Then my stomach bottomed out; my heart and lungs and guts and innards were all ripped out and went spiraling down into a swirling vortex situated deep in my abdomen.

I realized Tom was scared.

I studied his profile. He was similar to Justin, with the same sloped nose and strong jaw. He had a deeper brow and darker hair, as well as a sort of focused look in his eyes that Justin never seemed to be able to wrangle and control. Pain and confusion glared out of his every wrinkle and line, but the look of strangled, confined hope was not lost in any of it. The strong front he wore had taken its toll. He, too, needed to know now. He, too, couldn't confront a life where his brother was nowhere to be found. In the back of my mind, I felt Kylie's warm head on my shoulder. I don't know what possessed me to do what I did.

I reached out and touched his hand.

It was only supposed to mean reassurance, to be a sign that I was here, that although we were living this nightmare we weren't living it alone. He glanced at my fingers, and then into my eyes. I was childishly afraid for only a second that he would rip his hand away, that he would glare at me angrily and tell me that this could only be done alone. But the message I found in his eyes was the same reflected in my own. Slowly, he wrapped his fingers around my own. We stared out the windows, watching the rain pound unceasingly around us.

He didn't let go.

We rushed to the emergency floor, and the second we opened the doors Leslie reached out for an embrace. I held her and told her he was going to be fine, he was going to wake up, she needed to hang on, that it was okay; it was okay. She shook and shuddered and asked if she could be forgiven. The way she melted in my arms embodied the helpless love that was ironically breaking all of us down. I prayed in my mind that she would be able to see her boyfriend's smile again.

I prayed that she didn't have to suffer over the words of a petty fight for the rest of her life.

We waited in the lobby for what seemed an eternity. Kylie and Matt were sleeping in the chairs, Charlie and Leslie sat dumbly staring at the walls. Tom and Mr. and Mrs. Smith chased the doctors around the halls, trying to get an answer, if any, about their precious brother and son. I tried to remember what Justin's voice sounded like when he laughed. I tried to imagine what he would say when he saw me disheveled and relieved. I couldn't see anything but the torn and ruffled piles of tabloids piled up on the end table before me.

When the doctors finally called Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the sun was rising.

They rushed to their feet, and instantly Leslie began to cry. Suddenly I felt like an ugly sore, a seriously out of place object. I soared out of my body and watched in slow motion as the tear drops began to fall and the others crowded the doctor, desperately whispering questions they couldn't stand to be answered but couldn't live without an answer to. I couldn't see why tears hadn't wet my cheeks yet. I couldn't tell if I could handle whatever truth was about to be dealt. I stood up, picked Tom's keys out of the jacket he'd carelessly tossed on a waiting bench, and walked to the garage.

I considered leaving right then.

I sat in the passenger side seat of the little silver car. My eyes burned and ached as they watched the sun slowly peak above the horizon. My ears searched the silence for an answer. What would happen to all of us? What could we do? Golden light washed over me, bathing me in a coat of warmth. I squinted into the light, and then looked up. Tom was walking towards the car, his hands in his pockets. He opened the driver's side door cautiously and slid into the seat. He looked at me for a long time.

"He's going to be all right."

His words echoed all around me, seemingly hitting me everywhere but in the brain. I tried to look at him, but I could only see a smudge of where the world should have been. And then I let out a sob, and a warm tear trickled down my cheek, leading the procession for the multitude of others that came after. It felt wonderful. It felt free.

I heard him move quietly.

He reached his hand behind my head and let me rest against his chest. I cried against him, all the emotions of before rushing out of me like a hurricane. He held me tight, like a child holds a favorite stuffed animal, and finally he brushed my hair aside. He smiled into my eyes, and he didn't try to say a word.

He kissed me.

It said everything.

We were what was left.

And the sun let in more light.