Part Seven

We were all in the living room, standing to one side. Marilyn was in the crowd dancing as she kept looking at me and James had just rolled his eyes. Her moves were suggestive but for some reason I wasn’t keen on hooking up with her again.

Jasmine walked towards us and I could see that she had been drinking too much. I didn’t want a confrontation over Sarah but she stumbled into my arms and giggled non-stop as I steadied her. She chose that moment to kiss me in front of everybody, she was also Sarah’s best friend and I pushed her away. I could feel Sarah’s eyes on me and when I looked up at her she had tears in her eyes.

Sarah walked up the stairs and I just stood there, watching her go. Her aura slowly turned black, and I froze. Death. Confusion took a hold of me because Sarah had never been to my house, yet Death had been lurking there.

I chalked it up to being emotional and angry and I convinced myself that my imagination was playing tricks on me. I walked back to where James and Sam stood and another drink was pushed into my hand as the conversation focused on the summer holidays.

Twenty minutes later, that nagging feeling hadn’t gone away and I excused myself. I walked up the stairs, following Sarah’s scent and turned the corner. I could smell something out of place and I walked toward the guest bathroom.

I had been to Sam’s house so many times that I knew the layout of his house as well as I knew my own house. My heart was pounding and I scented Death. My worry increased as the hairs on the back of my neck rose in trepidation.

“Sarah.” I knocked on the door lightly. I couldn’t hear any movement in the bathroom. “Open the door and we’ll talk, okay.” I tried to keep my voice even and calm. The same smell filtered through the door, but it was stronger this time.

I tried to ignore it, the smell not making sense to me at that moment. “Just open the door!” I was yelling and pounding on the door when the realization hit me. Blood. I smelled blood. The door was locked and I was pushing against the door.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and James pushed me to the side. We had a weird telepathic connection and he’d felt my distress. James kicked the door down and Sam appeared at the end of the hall, having followed James.

“What the hell–” Sam had initially followed him because James had been acting oddly. One minute they were talking, and the next James zoned out and ran up the stairs. He’d thought James was going to be sick but then he witnessed James kicking down the door.

The door flew open, and we rushed inside. Sarah was lying in the bathtub, blood oozing from both her arms. She had slit her wrists. Vertically. Her eyes were closed and Sam rushed to the toilet and started throwing up.

I had my hands over the cuts but there was so much blood. I was in the bathtub with her and I barely registered James on the phone. I could hear the voices of people as they congregated in the bathroom and I tried to block their view of Sarah.

Her blood was literally spilling through my fingers and everything felt unreal. I was there, but I was also not there. Everything felt like a blur. Paramedics pushed me aside to work on Sarah, one looked for a pulse while the other one started bandaging her one arm. He shook his head and took the bandage off again.

They lifted Sarah out of the tub and I knew she was dead. I couldn’t hear her heartbeat any longer. A single tear slid down her cheek, an image I would never forget for as long as I lived.

James had called the ambulance, and then my father. He took me aside and Malachi was there, wrapping himself around me and hugging me to his chest. They carried Sarah out, covered by a blanket, through a throng of people.

Everybody was looking at me, my hands and shirt were covered in Sarah’s blood. Her one arm jostled loose, and you could see the cut on her arm where the blanket didn’t cover it.

“We need to leave,” Malachi said, more to James than to me.

I was in a trance, doing things on autopilot. Malachi spoke to a police officer and told him that he would bring me to the police station in the morning to give my statement. The officer looked at Malachi, and then at me, and nodded his head. He realized I was in no state to talk to any of them.

The tears just came, they rolled down my cheeks and I couldn’t control my emotions anymore, or maybe I didn’t want to. I was numb and dead tired. I had no idea how I got to bed or how I could have slept, but I did. Karani sat crying with me until I fell asleep.

I was seventeen and Sarah and my baby were dead. The clock had chimed twelve times and it was a new day. James and I had turned seventeen just before spring break.

Malachi had taken me to the police station the following morning. We went into an interview room and waited. They asked me what had happened, and I told them a version of the truth. I’d seen her go into the bathroom. She took a long time and James needed the bathroom as well, so I knocked on the door. When she didn’t answer the second time, James kicked the door in because we were worried about her.

A week later, the police had spoken to me three more times, but I kept my mouth shut about the pregnancy. I didn’t know if anybody else knew, apart from me and James. I knew that news of the pregnancy would break her parents’ hearts. I wondered if I should tell Malachi about it since Garrick would, the moment he did an autopsy and discovered the fetus.

My father had barely looked at me that week and Karani just hovered. Malachi had been working late a lot and I felt very guilty. I knew that he would call me into his office very soon, and then he would demand to know every single detail.

I wouldn’t be able to lie to him, not to his face. It didn’t take long for the summons to come and I walked into his study, filled with dread. Malachi motioned for me to take a seat in front of his desk, and I sat down with a heavy heart.

“Speak.”

I decided to tell him the absolute truth, every bit of it. By the time I was done telling my story, there were tears in my eyes and Malachi didn’t look like he wanted to kill me anymore.

“I’ll always love you, Kiran, no matter what.” Malachi rounded his desk and he pulled me into a tight hug.

“She was pregnant, Dad,” I whispered, ashamed of myself.

“I know she was,” he replied and hugged me tighter.