[A/N] Hello my darlings. I meant for them to meet this chapter, but the chapter was turning into the length of three. I need this transitionary chapter because I want to feel like everything is settled before some more intense stuff begins.
Next chapter will be on time though, Friday evening (GMT) and they do indeed meet.
I waited patiently by the tree, every muscle relaxed against the uneven surface propping me halfway up. I'd vomited all down my shirt, my feet were bare and the moment the flashlight shone from behind I could see the tinge of blue in the nailbed.
I might have been cold but for some reason I wasn't feeling it anymore. My hands didn't tremble as I barely lifted them, my hair did not stand on end, and although I felt like dead weight, and my bruised ribs stung at my side, my swollen nose distinctly numb, I did not shiver.
There was a lot of commotion as I was lifted up, a couple tries failed, someone came back with a towel, then as they tried to engage with me there was a call to the ambulance services.
It wasn't that I was depressed, I just didn't have the energy to speak. I felt like sleeping, so I did, and only woke up as someone was shaking me, the concerned mascaraed eyes of Emma, and more torches as the ambulance workers moved through the woods towards me from behind, while I still faced the lake.
I wasn't on the ground.
In my mind I was still floating in the water, face down, looking at the bed of the lake, in that slick black ink. Breathing in the liquid ice, floating alone in the darkness.
My position never changed even as I was lifted up onto a thin stretcher and velcroed in.
They kept speaking to me in friendly tones, trying to engage with me, it was a long walk back to the main road and as much as they tried there were still students that came out and saw me being carried away, whether or not they from my school, I couldn't tell, it was too dark and I didn't care.
Inside the ambulance they took my blood pressure and covered me in an odd metallic blanket. The light inside that ambulance was so bright it burned my eyes.
"Hello, Elliot is that right? My name is Shelly. Can you tell me what your birth date is young man?" A friendly ambulance worker asked me, brushing thick black curls out of her face. Warm brown skin and gold spectacles, a little tinge of glossy blue on her lips.
I eventually told her my birth date, she said something to her co-worker along the lines of delayed reaction. That I might be in shock.
"Can you tell me what happened? Do you remember?"
I nodded. Someone leaned over me and attached one more seatbelt as the ambulance started moving.
"They threw me in a lake from the bridge."
"Some of the other kids?"
I nodded.
"Do you want to maybe write down their names? I can get you a pen and paper."
I continued to just stare at her, then eventually shook my head.
Shelly frowned but looked over at her co-worker and said nothing. "What happened to your face?" She asked after a moment.
"They beat me before throwing me in."
Shelly stared at me.
"Okay... Well I'm going to check if that nose is broken alright?"
I nodded.
"It might hurt a little." She reached up to put her fingers on my nose, it didn't hurt, I couldn't feel much. Or maybe it did and it wasn't reaching me somehow. "Can you breathe fine through it?"
I nodded again. I couldn't but it was probably just swollen and I couldn't be bothered the give more information.
She kept pausing to look at my eyes, and whatever she was seeing she wasn't seemingly very happy with.
"Looks like it's probably not broken, if it is broken it's not out of place, nose fractures usually heal very well, but we'll put some ice on it. Lie back honey, okay? Lay down and rest for a bit, we'll get to the hospital soon and we can do a full check up there. Alright?"
I nodded.
"You want someone to talk to we can do that when we're there okay?"
I nodded again.
"The people from the camp say they're letting your parents know about this but can you give us their information? Because we're obligated to let them know that you're coming with us as well alright?"
I sighed slowly, but eventually wrote down my home phone number in the notes app on her phone.
I hoped they forgot to call them. I didn't feel like talking to them.
As I laid there I closed my eyes to pretend to be sleeping, to avoid any further questions.
Everything felt exhausted, from my toes to my lungs, my brain felt slow and clear, almost empty, and yet I couldn't actually fall asleep as we drove down the road.
"Should we get him out of those wet clothes now?" Her colleague asked.
"They'll put him in a gown when we arrive."
"And the police..."
"Yeah, let them interview him after they've looked him over first. He's acting very dissociative."
"Shock. We should probably check if anything else is broken, he might not notice."
"Mm..."
I remained quiet the rest of the ride, opening my eyes only as they moved me from the ambulance bed out onto a hospital stretcher. I would have told them I could walk, but I didn't have the energy to, and no one asked me if I could.
I sat there on the stretcher, part of a trolley with wheels, in the A&E as we were passing through it, for a moment while they squared things up with the other medical staff inside.
I felt strange sitting there, soaked and battered and still cold, in a room full of people each one a different size, shape and colour. A lot of them continued as before, some of them looked over at me. One woman started wailing about something in the other end of the room and I watched her.
I caught the slight scent of faeces in the air, coming and going, and the musk of an older man who walked in hunched over a cane, before being moved suddenly through the connected hallway.
The rest of it all was a bit of a blur, the tests, the X-ray of my ribs, the cannula and the IV that beeped at me throughout the night. Someone was scheduled to speak to me but they decided it would be better for me to rest first and speak in the morning. This someone was not the police, evidently, as they arrived an hour later at midnight to ask me questions.
The following morning a psychologist sat with me and asked me more questions, which I answered with as much detail as I could summon, and tried not to sound as flat and disconnected as I felt.
After he left in the evening my brother and Irene came to pick me up, with my father still at work.
Colby chatted to me for a while, but I didn't say much back. He smiled but looked awkward and eventually stopped, favouring the window for company.
Irene said nothing on the drive home, but when we stepped back into the house she stopped me and pressed her lips together.
"I may have overreacted in our last phone call..."
"Did you find Milk?" I replied immediately.
"No, and... I still think it's your responsibility to find him, but I shouldn't have shouted. I got a little fed up. Clearly this camp thing wasn't a good idea and I'll contact the school about that. It's very unfortunate what happened."
"I'll make some flyers and put them up."
She went still, watched me for a moment, as if waiting for a different reaction, and then nodded slowly. "Are you okay?"
I thought about that. "I'm thirsty." I realised, and moved past her toward the kitchen to fill up a bottle to take up with me.
She followed, her footsteps unusually quiet. "Well, I'm glad you're not blaming us, I was worried you would take that route, that's normally your reaction to most things."
I chuckled lightly as I filled the bottle and closed the lid.
Because it struck me, now for the first time for some reason, that she was cursing her own reflection.
I turned to look at her, looking at me strangely, I wasn't sure whether I'd felt any warmth for her in the past but if there was anything more there it was gone now. Her face had lost all its features in my eyes, a blank canvas, unpaintable.
"So the school called when-"
"I need to use the laptop." I told her.
She blinked. "Colby has it. He needs it. The school wants to know when you'll feel comfortable returning and having a talk with them."
"Okay." I replied, because I couldn't be bothered to say anything more, and left the kitchen.
It was a family laptop, but it spent a lot of time in Colby's room because he used it for actual work, unlike me. So regardless of the phone rule he sometimes stayed up and played games on it into the night, and I'd always been pretty embarrassed about the fact that I, as the older brother, felt like I got less privileges than him.
I knocked and entered.
"Elliot?" He looked surprised, laying hunched with his back against the headboard and the laptop on his lap. He removed his gaming headphones. "Uh, what's up?"
"I need the laptop." I walked over quietly.
"Oh, I'm in the middle of... uh..." He looked me over.
I never really thought about how I must have looked, I'd been punched in the face a couple times.
He logged out of his account on the laptop and closed it and handed it to me.
I took it and moved to leave.
"Hey!" He called from his bed.
I turned around and looked at him.
He sat up properly on his bed, frowning at me and passing a glance between his knees and my face.
"Are you actually okay? 'Cus you look kinda... you're kinda quiet..."
I faked a yawn. "Tired."
He nodded slowly. "Okay... but like, we can hang out if you're feeling down. Mom is probably right about school, and we're in different year so... but at home I can find time if you like..."
I blinked at him. Was I paranoid now or was I finally realising that Irene was rubbing off on my half brother, because there was a strange vanity to some of the things he said that felt clear as day to me now.
In the past I'd always felt like I judged him badly because I'd wanted some of the respect he got, wanted some of the care, and that had been embarrassing enough that I presumed whatever the situation my brother was probably right, and if he wasn't then he meant well, judging him badly was evidence that I was a bad brother.
Now I looked at him and felt almost the same as with Irene. The features on his face were melting, blurry and confusing.
"I'm busy." I said quietly.
"Oh-" He put his legs over the bed. "What're you-"
I closed the door.
Back in my room I got to work quietly, uploading the images from my phone. Practically every image was of Milk. There was so little else to care about. Some pictures of the sky, of the notes the teacher had told us to take a photo of, of a doodle I drew.
My chest squeezed tight. There he was, Milk's head between my legs as I sat on the bed, looking up at me. Milk wrapped up in a blanket. Milk on his belly. Milk attacking one of his toys. Milk covered in dirt outside. Milk's head on my chest as he lay on me, soft and fluffy and seemingly so content.
I wondered which picture to use, to show him clearly, and also remain in people's heads so they would remember him, and come back to call me.
I put together all the relevant information, a picture of his large self sitting on my desk on an open textbook of mine and another closer image of his bright, panting, tongue-out smile.
Instead of hurting now my chest felt like it itched or something, everything felt unusual, even the way I was moving.
My head felt quiet like it had never been before. The mutter of emotional thoughts, bitterness and concern that had run through my head like a stream at high tide before was now a bare trickle. Silence.
[A/N] Thank you warmly to the Wattpad Creators Program, and my patrons who are the reason I am able to write these books. Love you guys.