~Preface : A Good Cry~

When I first heard about it, I wasn’t exactly sure what was going on until I started to cry. Everyone was dressed in black, and the dreary rain did nothing but pile on the depression. Whose idea was it to have a funeral on a rainy day? I offered Mom a tissue, and she took the whole box. It was funny in its own way, but looking at my brother laid out in his coffin was just too much. Talking about Mark in the past-tense just seemed so wrong.

He was only fifteen. That was way too young to die, but what did I know? I was only fourteen. Some distant family members came up to Mom and I and apologized for our loss. This wasn’t the first funeral I had been to. Mom sometimes dragged me to these things when an officer she knew died in the line of duty. We didn’t cry at those funerals, probably because those few men and women who had died weren’t related to us by blood. Or maybe it was because the circumstances were different.

I could hear the rain pounding on the roof and a howling wind. There was this cousin of mine who was about five, and he was asking his parents what was going on. He was so cute and innocent that it broke my heart when his parents explained death to him. I walked over to Kathy, but she was crying too hard to understand a word she was saying. So I just left her alone and went to the bathroom. When I came out, I heard my aunt and uncle talking to each other. I just stayed out of their sights and listened.

"Mike’s not coming?" she asked. "Why? Where is he? His own son…"

My uncle shook his head. "All she said about it was, ‘Project Hope.’ That’s no excuse--even if it did explain anything at all."

They suddenly fell silent as I decided to go back to the wake room, and I could tell that they were watching my back. Now that I thought about it, I had only ever seen my father in pictures. I couldn’t recall a single memory of actually having him there with me. This room was just a see of black in a room with pale orange walls. I could smell the sweat in the air with the ceiling fan rotating now. My eyes darted from face to face, not recognizing anyone, as I tried to find Mom. I found her and ran to her with tears welling up in my eyes. Some watched me run and asked what was wrong, but it wasn’t anything that Mom couldn’t fix. A single hug was worth at least a thousand pain killers.

She embraced me and tried to calm me down. "What’s wrong, honey?"

"I want Mark back," I whispered. "I want him back right now. Make him wake up. Tell him that he’s going to be late for school or something. Tell him that he’s failing geometry."

Mom smirked as she stroked my head and rocked me back and forth. Mark had perfect attendance at school since kindergarten. He loved school and loved learning new things. He always made the distinguished honor roll being a straight-A student and was in so many club activities. Mark was a classic over-achiever, and he was always content with himself. He was a good sport about things, too, and took failure and critiques gracefully. Right now, I feared most that Mark would be forgotten.

I loved and admired him so much that I was an over-achiever in school like him. Mom led me over to his coffin and held my hand. There wasn’t going to be anymore Mark reading his mystery novels. There wasn’t going to be anymore Mark breezing through his science and math homework. This was terrible. Mark was just an innocent freshman on a field trip for ROTC. He didn’t do anything to deserve this. I could honestly say that Mark had never teased or bullied anyone in his life.

Others will die or have died as well, but this was my brother, my favorite person in the world. Now he was dead and never coming back. The worst thing was, I couldn’t blame anyone. There was no way this could have been foreseen because things would happen beyond my control or my mother’s control. I silently offered one last prayer to Mark while tightening my grip on Mom’s hand. Sure, I was being childish. I wasn’t afraid to admit it or act it.

Mom looked at me and wiped the tears from my eyes. "Lindsay, your brother is still wishing for all of us to be happy. You know what they say. What doesn’t kill us can only make us stronger."

I finally woke up from this depressing reminisce. It had been a while since I had a dream like that. When I heard that sweet sound of freedom, I sprung up with my textbook and dashed out the door. I walked down the hallway from Coulombe’s room and found my locker. After opening it, I stuffed my books inside and shut the door. I went into the nearest stairwell passed an oblivious teacher scolding a student for something and immediately stopped.

My mother was here examining a something on the floor, and I knew this wasn’t some dream gone wrong. I hear rushed footsteps from behind and turned around to see two teachers looking through the window of the door. I asked her what was going on, but all she said was that this was a crime scene. A crowd of students tried to gather in the stairwell, but the teachers blockaded the doors with their bodies. I had a feeling that word about this would travel faster than light. After all, nothing interesting ever happened in this school.

"What happened?" I asked, my voice shaking.

"What do I do for a living? Sheesh, I thought someone was keeping this stairwell off limits."

I swallowed hard and looked around. "Where’s Conan, Parker, and Kristy?"

Mom sighed. "I had to pull the two lovebirds off duty, so they’re on their way. Parker’s questioning the teacher who found the body. Go home, Lindsay."

I moved closer to get a better look at Mom’s crime scene. I had scene crime scenes on the news and in pictures of the newspapers. Some had more blood than other and most certainly more than this one. The real thing was just indescribably horrifying for a first-timer. My mouth was suddenly dry, and it felt as if my knees were about to give out on me. Breathing was pretty hard, too, and I wanted to vomit when I saw the crime scene. At the bottom were a cell phone, an inhaler, and a plastic water bottle. A liquid, probably iced tea, was spilled all over the steps. Other personal items were scattered all over the floor from her expensive-looking Prada handbag.

On one of the steps was a puddle of blood dripping off the edge. The body of a teacher I vaguely recognized was sprawled all over the floor at the bottom of the stairs. Her long brown hair was soaked in her blood, and there was a huge gash in her forehead. There was some traces of a burn mark on her left face cheek. Shiny drool ran from the corners of her lips. Her shirt had a few spots of wet spatters on the front, as if she had spat her drink up. Mom circled around the body a few times, like a vulture savoring the moment before it ate road kill. I don’t really know how I was able to walk.

An announcement finally acme over the PA system, saying to keep out of Stairwell 4. That was a little too late. An empty bottle of medicine was rolling across the stairwell landing. I walked over to it and picked it up, and I suddenly wanted to vomit. That wasn’t my brightest idea because I was technically tampering with a crime scene. Mom scolded me, but I wasn’t listening to her. My brain was in the process of producing a scenario to explain this mess. Mom swiped the medicine bottle from my hand and stuffed it into a plastic bag. She seemed a little irritated, which was natural. There was no way Mom would listen to my words at this point.

"That medication is part of the crime scene. You touched it, so you just tampered with a crime scene! Is this sinking in at all?"

I blinked a few times, and I spoke with a stronger voice. "You have to explain the burn mark if you want the truth. That burn mark sticks out. It’s inconsistent with this picture. If you piece everything you see together, it’s logical that she consumed something and spat it out. The forty-seven-year-old Homicide lieutenant should believe in her fifteen-year-old daughter’s reasoning skills."

Mom said something, but I fell to my knees and finally threw up. I let the medicine bottle fall to the floor and roll away. Mom rushed to me and asked if I was okay. I didn’t think I answered her because I was throwing up all the food I had eaten that day. My throat and stomach were on fire, and my eyes were watery. When I wipe the corners of my mouth and tried in vain to stand up, I realized that my entire body was shaking. Mom hugged me, and I gradually stopped quivering.