The darkness in Alex's room wasn't just a lack of light—it was weight. Thick, unmoving. A presence that pressed down on him, filled his lungs, wrapped itself around his limbs like wet cloth. He lay there, eyes open, staring into the void where the ceiling should be, caught in that purgatory between sleep and wakefulness—when the world is quiet and the mind refuses to be.
For days, his grief had been dull and colorless. A low, gray buzz. The emotional equivalent of static—constant, numbing, inescapable.
But tonight, the static cracked.
Something inside him—some weary mental barrier—gave way, and without warning, the past surged in like a flood.
He wasn't in his bed anymore.
He was back in The Blue Ghost.
The bench seat under him squeaked faintly as he shifted. The fabric was threadbare and warm beneath his legs. The stale scent of cold fries and pine-scented air freshener hung thick in the cabin. Outside, the city lights shimmered through a dirty windshield—fractured stars smeared across glass.
And then, clear as if he were still there, he heard it.
Leo's laugh.
Not an echo. Not a memory.
The actual sound. Loud. Wild. Alive.
It slammed into him like a punch to the chest. That laugh—unfiltered, unstoppable—was pure Leo. Charged with adrenaline and triumph, vibrating with the joy of a dream coming true. It filled the car, filled the air, filled him.
They were still riding the high of the radio. Their song, their name, played to the world for the first time.
Alex could see it—Leo in the passenger seat, half-turned toward him, practically glowing. He had that stupid energy he got when he was overwhelmed, the kind that turned into showmanship.
"One can't help but observe," Leo had declared in a gravelly, mock-serious voice, gesturing grandly with one hand, "how the dissonance in the synth line subtly echoes the disillusionment of an entire generation. It's a bold, postmodern rejection of—wait, is that a donut place? Pull over. I need a cruller."
The shift was so Leo—from fake rock critic to sugar-crazed child in a blink. Alex remembered laughing. They both had, wheezing and breathless, half from the joke, half from the ridiculousness of being them—kids who had done it. Who had made a song that mattered, even if just for a moment.
It was a perfect fragment. Untouched. Unspoiled.
And then it turned on him.
Just as suddenly, the memory cracked. The laughter didn't fade—it twisted.
Because now, layered beneath that bright moment, his mind forced another image into focus: Leo, days later. Quiet. Pale. Diminished. Sitting in the cafeteria, alone, eyes ringed in sleepless bruises. No spotlight. No voice.
And Alex had walked past him.
The joy shattered into shards.
I saw him happy, the thought screamed, violent in its clarity. Then I saw him hurting. And I walked away.
The guilt, once dull and ever-present, now pierced like a knife. A brutal, unrelenting stab that radiated outward from his chest. He felt it with every heartbeat. An ache, a fire, a scream without sound.
The scene played again in his mind—Leo waving half-heartedly, Alex brushing it off with a pat on the shoulder. The phone calls ignored. The silence left to fester.
A loop of failure. A reel of what he didn't say.
He curled into himself, fists tangled in his hair, forehead pressed to his knees. The air felt too thick to breathe. The room spun—not with motion, but with unbearable memory.
A strangled sound broke from his throat.
"I'm sorry," he whispered into the dark. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so—"
The words meant nothing. He knew that. They bounced off the walls and vanished into the black. They were too late, too small, too easy.
But he said them anyway. Over and over. A litany of regret. A desperate offering.
His hands pressed against his eyes, as if trying to blot out the vision playing behind them—but it didn't work. Leo's face was still there. So was his laugh. So was the hollow that had followed.
The memory was no longer a gift. It was a verdict. A sentence without parole.
Leo had been there, alive, vibrant. And Alex had let him slip.
The pressure built again—guilt turned to panic, to helplessness, to something worse. A rising wave inside him, thunderous and rising fast.
He didn't know what to do with it.
He only knew it was going to break.