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It’s careless, really, and completely Julie’s fault. She and Luke are in the middle of a writing session… which somehow turns into a tickling session, which turns into both of them tumbling off the couch. In the process, Luke’s elbow slams hard into Julie’s abdomen. She’s left coughing and gasping, curled in on herself on the floor as both arms wrap around herself. It takes too long to catch her breath; as the blinding pulse of pain fades into a determined ache, she comes back to herself slowly, and remembers how to inhale. By the time she’s able to push herself upright, all three of her phantoms have clustered around her. Their eyes are wide, faces set in concern.
She waves off Luke’s frantic apologies with one hand, keeping the other wrapped tight around her stomach. “Ow, gosh,” she mutters, wiping tears from her eyes. “That felt like I was dying!”
Their faces change immediately, but it’s too late to take the words back. Julie’s heart sinks; it stutters, turns over in her chest, and pulses with a wave of regret.
“Don’t worry,” Reggie says lightly, before she can say anything at all. “Dying feels way worse than that!”
“Yeah,” chuckles Alex, shaking his head. “If you can talk, you’re probably good.”
Wide-eyed, Julie’s gaze swivels over to Luke… but he just has his head down, refusing to meet her eyes.
“I’ll get you some ice,” he declares, and poofs out before she can get a word in edgewise.
Horrified, Julie bites down hard on her lower lip. She looks between Reggie and Alex, fumbling with the right words for an apology… but the stricken looks from seconds ago have disappeared, like glitter in a windstorm. Their only focus is on helping her. As they hoist her back up onto the couch, encouraging her to lean back and go easy on the inevitable bruise, they don’t say another word about it.
So, Julie doesn’t say anything either. Clearly, it’s something they’d rather not think about.
Some things, she supposes, are better left in the past.
If only it were that easy.
They never really talk about it, is the thing. It’s… not something that comes up. Not while playing music with Julie. Not while haunting the beach, or the boulevard, or the Molinas backyard. Not while exploring the twenty-first century, and figuring how many things have changed in their absence. With so many new things on their plate, dying seems… unimportant, somehow. It’s easy to shove to the back of their minds, to not talk about it, not think about it. While their time in the dark room felt like an hour while they were living it, a funny sort of dissonance has come after — it feels much longer than it was. Memories from twenty-five years ago are simultaneously as fresh as they were yesterday, and like trying to recall something from a distance.
Yeah, that happened just a few months ago… except it didn’t, and they’ve been dead for decades, and the alleyway they died in is now pristine and paved and painted in bright murals. Except Reggie’s grave is overgrown with weeds, and Luke’s parents have gone grey, and Alex’s little sister hasn’t spoken his name in years. Except their memories feel like another lifetime, some days, and the end of the story is so distant, it may as well have happened to someone else.
Some days.
Some days, it’s all fresh and sharp, memories painted in vivid color. Some days, it feels like it happened yesterday; it feels like it’s still happening.
They don’t talk about it then, either.
Honestly, Luke doesn’t remember much.
The before is easy; that’s clear as day. It’s the during that gets all twisted, that muddles itself in his head like the blur of a bad dream. Patches of darkness taint the memory, like a redacted version of his own demise. He has the easiest time not thinking about it… because he can’t really remember, after the first taste of iron in his mouth.
The night was cool --- strange for Los Angeles in the middle of summer. The Sunset Curve boys were decked out in heavy clothes and hoodies against a practically nonexistent chill. The excitement was overwhelming, sending Luke itching out of his own skin; he could have stripped off his hoodie right there and started bouncing on that decrepit alleyway couch. It was their night — to become legends, to finally make it big, to prove their dream was worth chasing.
(To finally make everything they’d been through count. Alex, having to flee a house that couldn’t call itself a home, a family that no longer called him their son. Reggie, going home every night to an atmosphere that smothered him, showing up at practice with dark circles under his eyes and bruises on his arms. Luke, watching his parents from the shadows, never able to come back into their hearts until he proved he could really be something --- that all his dreams were worth dreaming. Tonight, they would put it all behind them. They were going to mean something. To be somebody, together… and prove everyone who tried to put them down wrong.)
“Eat up, boys,” he said, raising the street dogs in a toast. “Cause after tonight… everything changes."
He remembers the trust in Reggie’s eyes, the warmth of his smile… the hint of earnest hope on Alex’s face, as they toasted their hot dogs like kings.
The first bite should have been the clue. Those dogs didn’t taste right, man.
Luke didn’t know it at the time; he probably would have even noticed, so caught up in his own adrenaline rush, if Alex hadn’t been the one to point it out. “That’s a new flavor,” his friend said, and Luke remembers how his stomach gave a strange little jump at the words. A sour, almost metallic taste lingered in his mouth. The first bite had barely even gone down his throat, and for some reason, he was sweating.
“Chill, man,” said Reggie, “street dogs haven’t killed us yet.”
Again, Luke’s nerves vibrated with an uneasy humm. He remembers so clearly, looking down at the hot dog and wondering. Why does it taste like that? Should we be worried? Do we have enough cash to get something else to eat? Is it worth performing on an empty stomach?
In the end, it came down to this: his pockets were empty, and he was hungry.
So, Luke pushed the bitter taste to the back of his mind, and took a huge bite.
He didn’t want to taste the dog. The more he forced down his throat, the stronger the nasty flavor got… and the more his stomach seemed to protest, clenching and roiling, as though trying to block out an intruder. Sweat prickled on his neck, lining his temples. Luke ran a hand over his brow, swiped it over his face, and could taste it. Salty sweat, greasy street dogs, and something else — god, it tasted like guitar polish!
Reggie, finishing off his last bite, paused to clear his throat and wince. “Geez,” he muttered, “I could really use a soda right now.”
Luke’s own mouth was bone dry. That only made the flavor worse. He swallowed, trying to force the taste out, to force breath into a chest that suddenly felt tight… but all at once, the lingering flavor was almost overwhelming. He slumped forward, head in his hands, as his insides roiled.
At his side, Alex made a weird noise, almost like a grunt. Luke forced himself to look over. He was just in time to see Alex massaging his chest, a grimace on his face.
“You okay, man?” Reggie said.
Alex huffed, lowering his head. “Heartburn or something…” His voice sounded strained. “I dunno.”
Luke squeezed his eyes shut, then, against a sudden wave of disorientation. The nausea came on almost instantly; dizziness wasn’t far behind. When he slumped against Alex, his friend made a tiny noise of pain, pushing him away. Luke was left without an anchor in a suddenly thrashing sea.
It was all he could do to sit there, swaying, as the world started to blur and dip around him. His entire body suddenly felt like it had been tossed in a furnace. His clothes were too heavy, too constricting. Somehow, Luke managed to squirm out of his heavy jacket. It was hard — his body wasn’t moving right, limbs not responding the way they should. As soon as he was free, he doubled back in on himself as his roiling stomach protested the movement.
Luke’s shoulders trembled with each wave of nausea. The more he fought to breathe through the discomfort, the stronger it became. At his side, he could hear Reggie’s mutters turn to moans; Alex’s was breathing in his ear, harsh and heavy. Luke heard his own groan, felt Alex respond in kind --- and suddenly his friend was pulling away from them.
That scared him. He didn’t want to lose Alex, because something was wrong, something was —
(He didn’t know he was dying yet, but he sure knew.)
“Alex,” he muttered, forcing himself to lift his head. Somehow, the familiar name felt strange leaving his lips. The world was blurry, all the lights in the dim alleyway too bright… but he could still make out Alex, on his left, curling into himself at the end of the couch. His face was chalk-white, glistening with sweat. He had a hand pressed over his mouth, even as his shoulders trembled with barely suppressed nausea.
“Something’s not — oh god,” Alex gasped, jerking forward, chest pressed to his knees as his face contorted in pain. “S- something’s not — right…”
The first cramp ripped through him like fire, then, and Luke’s vision whited out.
He doesn’t remember much else.
He remembers Alex falling over the side of the couch, curling into himself on the ground. He remembers the spike of panic, just before his own stomach contents came surging up his throat — remembers not even being able to double forward, being sick all over himself. Remembers Reggie’s whimpers at his side slowly getting fainter and fainter… remembers slumping over on the couch, tasting chemicals and iron.
Luke remembers looking up. The sky was brighter than he’d ever seen, and the stars… oh god, the stars. There were so many of them. He was adrift in a sea of stars, removed from the sickness, removed from his own convulsing body… their brightness called out like a song. The melody spoke to him; it carried him away. He was meant to be one of them.
He remembers Reggie’s voice, pained and panicked — “Luke!” — remembers choking on something, gagging and gurgling, until unfamiliar hands suddenly flipped him onto his side.
A flood of something hot rushed up his throat. Luke lurched forward, choking on iron.
And as the blood spilled past his lips, he remembers looking up, and seeing his own face.
MISSING. LUKE PATTERSON, AGE 17.
Oh, he remembers thinking… and then, with a twist in his chest worse than any in his stomach, my parents are looking for me.
(He’d seen the posters before, of course, but had ignored them, always lowered his head and looked away… there would be time to deal with that later. Time to apologize for all the pain he caused --- time to come home. It wasn’t the right time, yet, but soon…)
Laying in a pool of his own blood, Luke sort of… faded out.
He doesn’t remember what happens after that.
Everything comes in flashes.
Sirens, lights… pain. More pain. Only pain.
A loud voice in his ear, “Stay with me, kid!”
The feeling of slipping… was someone crying? Was it him?
Darkness, a relief from the fire burning under his skin… dark. So dark.
And then a jolt, forcing him back to life with an agonizing gasp. Luke spasmed, convulsing on the ambulance floor. Bright lights. So much yelling. Alex and Reggie, laying side by side, their hands clasped and bodies trembling. Alex gaped up at the sky with wide, glassy eyes; crimson stained his gasping lips. Reggie was utterly colorless, his pupils blown wide and face freckled with blood.
Alex’s eyes slipping shut. One of the paramedics shouting over Reggie’s body. Reggie trembling, convulsing, and then Luke —
Darkness, again.
Another jolt. Even more agony. His head slammed back against the metal ambulance floor, and he was aware of himself crying.
His friends were lifeless beside him.
No, no, he remembers thinking, please no, not without them, it can’t just be me, I don’t want to be alone —
He remembers a woman hovering above him, her voice in his ear. Her hands were on his face. Mom?
Oh, he wanted to say everything. He wanted to apologize. He wanted to be held.
But he was out of time.
As he fell into darkness once more, the world faded into all-consuming emptiness… and with the emptiness, the pain melted away.
Luke stays up late into the night, sometimes — sitting on the roof of the studio, knees drawn up to his chest, as he looks up at the stars and tries to remember.
He can’t, really. Not much of anything after the first bursts of pain.
The worst part is, he’s grateful.
There are the things he can’t forget, the things that stick with him no matter what. He doesn’t remember watching Alex and Reggie die… but deep down, some subconscious part of him knows he did. They died, and he couldn’t save them. They were in agony… it was his idea to get street dogs, his idea to run away, his idea to hurt everyone and leave them with nothing but grief, and...
Guilt, it turns out, lingers long after their heartbeats faded away. It can never be buried; it will never turn to dust.
He’s glad he doesn’t remember anything in detail, because the pain of remembering might literally kill him all over again.
Instead, Luke’s happy to leave it behind him. All the little details can slip through the cracks. They’re not important. They have music again, after all, and it’s not like they’re dead and gone.
None of it matters.
(If he tries hard enough, he can almost believe it.)
Alex could remember if he chose to, probably.
He chooses not to, because he actually likes to keep himself sane, thanks.
His actual memories, after the first twinge of pain, are blurry. From the moment he felt himself doubling forward, waves of nausea ebbing and sweeping him away… from the moment he lurched, unable to keep his dinner down as it spilled between his knees… from the moment he felt himself tumble off the couch, hitting the pavement and writhing there like a poisoned beetle… it all feels like a dream. One of the nightmares that feel vivid at first, but fade and fade the longer you’re awake, the further you get from them. One day, Alex hopes he won’t be able to remember anything at all.
For now, it’s all just… hazy.
He remembers the burning feeling as it began in his stomach. It was like nothing he’d ever felt before, the pain sharp and insistent. An allergic reaction, was his first thought, and he wondered if he should reach for his pack, go digging for his epi-pen… but no, this was something else. Something that tied his stomach into knots and set his chest on fire, made his clothes feel too heavy as they clung to his body. It came out of nowhere, and spread just as quickly.
An icy hand of panic gripped him — of course there was something wrong with the hot dogs, of course, they should have listened to me but of course they wouldn’t — but even as anxiety spiked in his throat, he didn’t have time to feel it past the nausea. It… was overwhelming.
He thinks he was the first one to get sick. It’s hard to remember. The sensations are dim, the imprint of memory distant. If he tries, he can almost taste the lingering sour flavor of the hot dogs as it forced its way back up his throat. He can almost hear the shouts of alarm from the other people in the alley — because of course they weren’t alone, of course people were around to witness, and he remembers thinking they needed help, but not being able to force the words out his burning throat…
Most vividly, he remembers looking down and seeing blood hanging in glossy strands from his lips.
Alex thought he knew what fear was, before. He really had no idea.
No matter how distant the dream grows, the terror he felt in that moment will stay with him forever.
After a while, his vision began to blur at the edges. Everything felt distant, aside from the pain. The pain existed over everything else, drowning and swallowing it all up; it consumed everything Alex was, leaving him only as an afterthought.
Every time he convulsed, more poison spilling past his lips… every time his gags turned into coughs, and his throat swelled until he could barely breathe… every time the kind lady kneeling beside him on the filthy concrete rubbed his back and spoke soothing words, trying to keep him calm… every time his eyes met his bandmates’, across a distance that may as well have been oceans wide, and he saw his own pain and terror mirrored in their faces…
Every time the world tried to drag him back, it only grew fuzzier. It felt, Alex remembers thinking distantly, like he was slipping away.
He doesn’t remember the paramedics. He doesn’t remember the ambulance ride. It’s all hazy, a fog of grey and black and bright red spattered on his pink hoodie… somewhere, from a distance, he remembers Reggie crying. He remembers people shouting, remembers someone urging him to stay with them…
But the pain swallowed everything, and left nothing behind.
Alex didn’t sink, or float, or get swallowed up.
It just felt like… dissolving away.
Like he was never anything at all.
“Will you stop it?” he mutters, turning away from his friend’s insistent gaze. “I don’t want to talk about it, okay? We’re dead. We died. Bottom line. Thinking about how it happened isn’t going to do anything except make up miserable, so let’s not, okay?”
Reggie’s expression doesn’t change; he just looks very serious, and a little sad. It’s unnerving, coming from him. Alex clamps down on the guilt in the pit of his stomach.
(Because he doesn’t remember much, but he can’t forget the way Reggie was curled in on himself in that alleyway, face twisted in pain, tears glistening on his cheeks… how Alex wanted so badly to help him, to help all of them, but didn’t even have the strength to push himself up. It’s not his fault that they ate bad street food, of course; it’s not his fault no one else thought the dogs tasted funny; it’s not his fault they died. Still, Alex couldn’t do anything to help his friends in their final moments, and that’s the part he’ll never quite get over.)
“I was just…” Reggie frowns down at his ragged fingernails. “Wondering. Y’know? It’s not like we ever really talk about it.”
Alex sighs. When he speaks again, his voice is gentle. “Yeah, Reg, probably for a reason. Who wants to think about something so…”
He can’t help the shudder that runs through his body --- or the wave of nausea, an echo from the past. It would be easy to get caught up in it, swept away by the mists of a dream… but a hand on his shoulder grounds him. When he looks up, Reggie’s lips are pressed into a thin line. He still looks too serious.
“You’re right,” he says softly. “Better we leave it behind us, I guess.”
The problem is, Reggie remembers everything.
Every last detail. The texture of the sticky couch beneath them... the sour stench of the alleyway… the way his jacket felt so heavy all of a sudden, how his shirt clung to his sweat-stained body. The chill of the night, rapidly fading away… and even as the final bite travelled down his throat, it almost burned, and the heat it brought was like nothing he’d ever felt before.
It was like a fever sweeping over him all at once… and he knew that wasn’t possible, but he remembers pulling at his collar, swiping his brow, thinking, aw man, am I coming down with something? — right before his stomach flipped backwards.
Reggie remembers the details because he can’t forget them. Maybe he remembers so the other two don’t have to (because he suspects they don’t, not the way he does — they don’t flinch at the flashing lights of an ambulance, or shudder as a concerned question echoes in their head, or hear the crunch of a potato chip and remember the sound of breaking ribs).
Reggie kept it all in his head, until he couldn’t stand it anymore. Then he wrote it all down. Everything he recalls, everything he saw and felt and can’t forget… in back one of his beat-up old notebooks, stashed in the loft where he knows no one will look.
Something in him needs to remember. He’s not sure why.
Maybe it’s because he held out the longest. Which wasn’t fair, really. He scarfed down that hot dog quicker than anyone else, with way more enthusiasm — didn’t even stop to think about the taste. Which was honestly pretty gnarly… but what do you expect with street food? They’re hot dogs served out of the back of a car. You’re not going to get five star cuisine. Seventy percent of the food Reggie ate was at least a little questionable, and his rationale was always, “well, it hasn’t killed me yet.”
There’s a first time for everything.
He was still licking his fingers clean when his stomach gave its first twinge. His first warning sign — wailing sirens and bright red, flashing lights, something is wrong. Reggie brushed it off easily enough, because he’d honed ignoring problems to an art by that point. Hunching forward, he turned a grin on his companions… but it slowly dimmed at the sight of his best friends.
Alex was rubbing his chest, looking pained. Luke wore a sheen of sweat like stage makeup, downright glistening with it; he already had an arm tucked around his stomach. Reggie swallowed past a throat that felt like sandpaper. Unease bloomed in his own chest, slowly, like a half-dead flower. He ignored it.
“You okay, man?” he asked, though a part of him already knew the answer.
Alex brushed it off, blaming it on heartburn… but a low, angry noise from his stomach begged to disagree. He hunched forward, and that was when the pains clearly began in earnest. Alex tensed and whimpered with every tiny cramp, wrapping his arms around himself. Agony etched itself in the sweat across Alex’s face… in the haziness in Luke’s eyes, the heady flush to his cheeks that had nothing to do with excitement… the way they both buried their heads in their hands, waging war against waves of sickness.
Doubling over was all Reggie wanted to do, too… but as the first cramps rolled through his stomach, he forced himself back, instead. The couch felt like concrete, and the impact startled a moan from him — oh, it just made the nausea worse, and being touched hurt — but as he wrapped both arms around himself, it felt good to be looking up. Maybe a breeze would hit his overheated face… and maybe he wouldn’t be so tempted to lose his dinner if he wasn’t staring at the ground.
Alex was the one to lose it first. A groan, a gag, hastily pulling his hand away from his mouth… and then vomit was spilling between his knees to the concrete below. The sight of him made Reggie choke, unbidden; he lurched over the side of the couch, and heaved for a few seconds, nothing coming up. That wasn't a relief. If anything, he emerged feeling even sicker. The sight of Alex shuddering at the other end of the couch only confirmed that something was very, very wrong.
“Alex,” Reggie gasped. “Are you ---”
He was cut off as his best friend gave a strangled, agonized sob.
“It hurts,” he gasped, “it hurts so bad!”
Oh man, Reggie thought, dread setting in.
And then his stomach surged. Reggie choked on a gasp, and finally lost his dinner over the side of the couch.
There wasn’t much he could do from there.
The world spun around him like the last call on a Tilt-A-Whirl. It made his head pulse, stomach lurching and leaping up his gullet before sinking back down again. Over and over, until the struggle to keep it down wasn’t even worth it. Reggie lost count of how many times he was sick, eventually. He lost count of the sobs coming from his friends, their moans and whimpers with each round of nausea… his body was rebelling, self-immolating by the second, and his mind just couldn’t keep up.
He caught sight of Luke squirming, breathy whimpers escaping him as he tried to wiggle out of his heavy coat — “‘s too hot,” he slurred, “can’t take it,” — and Reggie clumsily helped him free before the material could suffocate him.
“Something’s really wrong with us, man,” he spoke into the side of Luke’s head, when his best friend drunkenly slumped against him. “We g-gotta get —“
But he couldn’t continue that thought before another cramp ripped through him, worse than any of the others. It stole his breath, his sense away; for a minute, he was left reeling.
He didn’t realize he was crying until he felt hot tears on his cheeks.
That was the same moment Alex tumbled sideways off the sofa, and Luke gave a shudder before being sick all over himself, though, so it didn’t matter.
As soon as they went down, the gravity of the situation became apparent. Reggie remembers the moment it hit him, with all the force of a train — they weren’t just sick, they were dangerously sick, and needed help now. Somehow, he managed to get the attention of another couple further down the alleyway — who hadn’t dug into their street dogs yet — and gestured for them to call 9-1-1.
(A part of him wondered if he was overreacting, even then — he hated hospitals, would do anything to avoid them — but his gut knew the truth. This was serious.)
Reggie’s head pulsed and spun, stomach letting out an angry groan. He squeezed his eyes shut, seeing white for a moment as another burst of pain rolled through him. He was only distracted by the feeling of Luke’s hand knotting in his shirt. A low moan slipped past his friend’s lips, as he bent his sweaty head into Reggie’s shoulder.
“I want my mom,” Luke gasped.
All Reggie could do was hold him, even as his friend shuddered with another wave of sickness. “It’s okay, Luke… we’re g-gonna be okay…”
(He knew it wasn’t true. He could taste blood in his mouth.)
Alex was laying sideways on the ground, curled into himself. He looked… something in Reggie’s mind spiked through the haze of pain, sharp and terrified. He looked like roadkill in the street — run over and left for dead. Alex squirmed weakly on the pavement, lurching with a new round of sickness every so often… but his strength was leaving him by the minute. He could barely move.
And he was so pale, the blue of his eyes standing out fever bright in his colorless face. Pain seared into every worry line, every hint of a smile and stitch of familiarity. It washed the fabric of his friend out, turning him into something unrecognizable. Reggie’s spinning head couldn’t comprehend it. He curled his body towards Luke on instinct, eager for grounding — Luke was their leader, after all, the boldest of them all — but Luke was fading too.
Reggie took in the fluttering of his best friend’s half-conscious eyes, how his breath caught in his chest like each one was a struggle. He murmured Luke’s name, pressing a hand to his burning cheek. Luke didn’t even stir.
Strangers were running around, trying to help as much as they could. A woman in a red shirt was on the ground beside Alex, helping him to sit up; someone was talking to Reggie, trying to find out their names, but he hurt too much to reply. All he could manage in return were whimpers, interspersed by attempts to speak that were almost incoherent.
Then, Luke started to convulse beside him, and his best friend’s name was startled out of him unbidden.
Maybe it was a seizure — maybe he was just choking, Reggie couldn’t tell. When a stranger flipped Luke onto his side, a rush of crimson spilled past his lips. Too much blood, Reggie remembers thinking, even as his hands were stained with his own. Luke’s eyes were hollow, empty; he was looking, but wasn’t seeing. Alex’s eyes were shut.
Reggie wanted to stop seeing, too, but he didn’t know how. If he closed his own eyes, he was too afraid they’d never open again.
He was the only one to see the ambulance arrive; a single ambulance for three boys, and he remembers the scramble of the paramedics to figure out how to load them all in. Reggie recalls the cool of the ambulance floor beneath him, the press of Alex’s body at his side, the paramedic’s knee digging into his hip as she knelt over him… it was all so crowded, so chaotic, and the shouting almost drowned everything else out.
They kept asking questions; Reggie tried to reply, but after a while, he couldn’t hear them anymore. The pain was getting worse by the second; it was a fire inside of him, burning his guts and reducing his organs to ash, leaving nothing in its wake. He gasped, he writhed, he whimpered… and there was nothing to ground him, even as blood filled his mouth, and he could feel himself drowning.
Alex was very still. On the other side of the ambulance, the female paramedic was doing chest compressions on Luke, forcing him back from the brink. His body jerked, shoulders slamming against the metal floors… something cracked beneath the paramedic’s hands, and even then, Luke didn’t stir. It was taking him too long, too long.
Reggie tried to call his friend’s name --- but another burst of pain rolled through him, whiting everything else out. For a moment, Reggie knew nothing at all.
Then, a hand closed around his own.
It was like being tossed a life raft in the middle of the sea. The pain ebbed; his senses flowed back to him. When he turned his head, he met Alex’s eyes… and to his surprise, his friend’s gaze was locked intently on him. Tears streamed down Alex’s colorless cheeks, mixing with the sweat and blood staining his lips…
Are we dying? Reggie remembers wondering, for the very first time.
(He'd always been a little slow on the uptake.)
But Alex’s hand tightened around his, and instead of fear, he felt like everything would be okay.
He didn’t feel the seizure coming on. It happened all at once — suddenly, the world just went blurry, and from a distance, he was aware of his own body convulsing. Someone was screaming; someone was trying to pull him back. But everything was melting away, one detail after another: the heat broiling under his skin, the bitter taste in his mouth, even the pain… until the last thing he could feel was Alex’s hand, still gripping his.
That disappeared, too.
The ironic part is, for every little detail he remembers… Reggie’s pretty sure he went first.
It’s not like he likes to think about it, don’t get him wrong! Really, he’d prefer not to. Reggie doesn’t dwell. Most days, it’s easy to push all the bad things out of his head — to shove them in a box, stuff them down, and pretend they never happened at all.
So, he tries not to speak of it. If his friends don’t remember, or choose not to, well… he’s not going to force them. The world is big and different and exciting --- there’s so much to keep busy with, instead of living in the past.
Sometimes, though, the memories are just a little too loud, the colors too vivid to be ignored.
Reggie doesn’t know why it happens, but it scares him a little. On those days, he wants nothing more than to be alone.
He’ll go to the beach, alongside the shore he used to live on, near the pier he would hide under whenever the fighting got too loud. Watching the ocean helps settle his thoughts. In and out, in and out come the tides… and they never stop. They never lose their rhythm... even after twenty-five years.
His friends find him there one afternoon, on a really bad day. They don’t ask any questions… just curl up beside him, leaning their shoulders against his own. Luke’s head falls against his shoulder (Reggie remembers the way he clung to him) and Alex sighs towards the horizon (Reggie remembers watching the light fade from his eyes).
It’s more peaceful than they deserve. Reggie wouldn’t trade it for the world.
Leaving it behind is easy; forgetting is the impossible part.
Her mom doesn’t like to think back on her old days as a paramedic much… but Flynn knows she remembers it all.
That’s just the way Momma’s mind works. An elephant's memory. Sure, she hasn't been on the job for over two decades now — she was working as an EMT while putting herself through med school, so the leap to doctor came easy — but those days aren’t ones she looks back on fondly. Flynn can tell, every time her face darkens at an ambulance siren; every time she sees a clip of paramedics working on TV and shudders.
Saving lives in a hospital is one thing. Not being able to save them — on a street, in an alleyway, having them die under your hands — is another.
Flynn never asks, but there are days she doesn’t have to.
Momma walks across the living room while Flynn’s working on her laptop one day, and accidentally catches sight of the screen. She freezes. Natural teenage instinct sends Flynn spinning around, eyes wide and a protest already on her lips — but it’s not like she’s looking at anything bad! She’s got one of the old Sunset Curve articles pulled up, doing some more research into Julie’s band… and how they died.
Momma stares at the picture on screen like she’s seeing ghosts.
“Umm…” Hesitantly, Flynn lays a hand on her arm; it shocks her out of whatever trance she was in. “Hey, you okay?”
“Why are you looking at that?” her mother demands, taking a seat across from her. Flynn hesitates, without knowing why. There’s a strange shadow on her mother’s face — haunted like the dark corners of Julie’s studio, like the quiet of the Molina house in the months after the funeral.
“A… school project,” Flynn says. “They’re just this old band from the nineties, who —“
“Died.”
Flynn was going to deflect with, “never made it big”, but yeah, that works too.
She stares at her mother, eyes wide. A question lingers unspoken on her lips… but she doesn’t have to put it to words, not really. Momma is too quick.
“What do you want to know?”
She’d only been on the job three months, come the summer of ‘95. Celeste never planned to stop at paramedic. The goal was always all the way through med school, and then to the hospital floor… but med school cost money, and she wanted to prove she could handle herself, so paramedic was an easier goal to shoot for.
She’d still be saving lives, she thought, and that made it worth it.
Looking back, Celeste was naïve. Just a kid — twenty-six, the age where you think you know everything, but know nothing at all. Just a kid, working alongside a partner with a decade of experience, learning on the fly every chance she got.
She was just a kid, and the boys in the alleyway were even younger.
They didn’t know what they were pulling up to. The 9-1-1 call had been vague, made from a nearby payphone — something about vomiting teens, possible food poisoning. They figured one ambulance, a few fluid packs, maybe a stay overnight in the hospital if any of the kids were really bad.
As soon as they hit the scene, it was clear they were in over their heads.
The boy on the ground was barely conscious, slumped over with his head in a stranger’s lap. He was colorless, tachycardic, breathing coming in shallow gasps. Pink foam bubbled at his lips — like bubblegum toothpaste, Celeste remembers thinking, before her horrified mind registered that it was blood.
“Please,” he slurred, stirring as she assessed his vitals. “My friends, you gotta — gotta help them.”
On the couch, two other boys were slumped — one on his side, curled in on himself, the other slumped forward like a forgotten ragdoll. They were both stained with sweat and blood; the boy in leather was vomiting between his knees. When Celeste ran to take his pulse, he jerked at her touch, and let out a whimper that made him sound painfully young.
“We’ve got you. We’ve got you. Can you tell me your name, kid?”
His murmur was incoherent. He managed to lift his face to her, revealing blown-out pupils and glassy, frightened eyes, before lurching forward again.
Her partner Justin, tending to the boy in a sleeveless shirt, caught her gaze. His face read everything she needed to know — no way was this simple food poisoning.
The bystanders filled them in on what they could. The boys had eaten hot dogs from a street stand, apparently out of a car; they’d gotten sick immediately, and hadn’t stopped since. Twenty minutes of violent illness before the ambulance arrived, and they were already like this? Her heart beat double-time in her chest as she and Justin hustled two of the boys — the blond kid and the sleeveless one — into the ambulance. They were out of room, no place to even put the stretcher… but Justin shook his head, and declared there was no time to wait for backup. “These kids have to go now,” he said.
So, they folded the ambulance and laid the two boys flat out on the ground. It was the only way.
When Celeste ran back for the kid in leather, she found him laying sideways, cheek pillowed against the sticky leather of the couch. His eyes were half-open, fluttering weakly. When she laid a hand on his shoulder, he didn’t stir.
“God, kid, come on…” His vitals were weak. When she tried to lift him up, he moaned.
“Reggie,” one of the bystanders spoke up. “He said his name was Reggie.”
“Reggie?” she asked loudly. That got a response; the boy twitched. “Can you walk with me? We’re gonna get you to an ambulance, but I need you to move, okay?”
Somehow, bracing most of his weight, she was able to get Reggie to the ambulance and lay him out flat next to his bandmates. He clung to her neck like a child, barely conscious but desperate not to be left alone. She brushed the dark hair back from his brow, and tried to rouse him with questions — how old were they? Did they have anyone to call?
“No one,” he managed to mutter, in response to the last question — and then a name that might have been “Bobby”. She couldn’t get anything else out of him.
Justin had to drive. They didn’t have any choice. The kids had to get to the hospital ASAP. Celeste was the one who stayed back --- crammed into a suffocating metal tomb, as three young boys died before her eyes.
Just as the ambulance lurched into motion, the sleeveless boy started to convulse. That was the start.
Celeste scrambled to keep up, but there was only so much she could do. She resuscitated the boy twice; there was no room to shock, with everyone crammed so close together, so all she could do was compress him. His ribs splintered under her hands as she forced the life back into his body. In the chaos, she could barely keep up with the blond boy slipping; his pulse just kept getting weaker, and no amount of adrenaline could bring him back.
She lost Reggie first, gasping and spasming in her arms like a dying animal. He was crying up until his last breath; she felt his heart stop, and noticed his hand fall away where it was clutching the blond boy’s own.
He followed a moment later, with nothing more than a shudder. A stream of blood ran past his lips, eyes wide open and staring up at the ceiling.
Celeste only realized she was crying herself as she looked down at the final remaining boy — the sleeveless one, the one who kept trying to slip away on her — and watched her own tears splatter onto his cheek.
He turned his gaze up to her, hazy and distant. He looked so young, so afraid. Crimson lined his dried-out lips, and his pupils were blown wide enough to consume all color. For a few seconds, he could only stare at her, frozen — she wondered if she’d lost him already. Then his mouth began to move, a breathless imitation of words.
“Come on, kid, stay with me,” she urged, squeezing his hand as tight as she could. “Please…”
“Mom?” he exhaled, voice little more than a whimper.
Celeste’s heart caught in her throat.
“Mom,” he said again, his eyes staring straight through her. His trembles were getting more violent, as though on the verge of seizing. “‘M s-so— ‘m sorry.”
“It’s okay, honey,” she whispered. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”
“Don’t wanna… be alone…”
“You’re not alone,” she replied, squeezing his hand tight. “I’m right here with you. I’m not going anywhere.” A pause for breath. “Just stay with me, okay? Don’t go anywhere. Stay right here with me.”
“I’m sorry…” he breathed again… and then it all went quiet.
She fought to bring him back one last time — fought for them all — but it was no use.
From the moment the ambulance reached them, they were already gone.
Celeste didn’t learn their names until later. She didn’t learn the name of their band, Sunset Curve, or that they were to play their star-making show that night. She recognized Luke Patterson’s mother weeping at his funeral, as she lingered respectfully near the back row. She saw Reggie Peters’ bright eyes mirrored in the face of a little brother, much younger than he was, solemn beside his casket. She saw Alex Mercer smiling up at her from the obituary section of the local paper, and remembered him pleading with her to help them .
Some things, you never really get over.
Some things, you never forget.
No matter how much she wishes she could.
Memory is a funny thing.
It wears away slowly, like stone borne down by the tides, weathering out the details and dimming the vivid neon of recollection. It lingers — much longer than you’d like it to, sometimes — and follows no set rules, no code of conduct. Sometimes it teases. Sometimes it evades. Sometimes it lingers on the very edges of your consciousness, its whispers too quiet to hear, and never rears its frightful head until the worst possible moment.
Memory can be a curse.
It is a responsibility… in the boy who holds all the vivid details of the past so his friends don’t have to; in the woman who, 25 years later, still leaves flowers at the graves of children she couldn’t save.
It is a burden to the boy who tries his best not to think of it at all, but can never truly escape it.
It is a phantom to the boy who can never quite reach it, but feels it’s weight on his shoulders all the same, hears the whispers of guilt in his ears.
In the end, perhaps it’s best not to ask, not to wonder… to have nothing to remember at all.