We all just stood around it. None of us could find the strength to actually do what we had came up here to do. All around us were reminders of what used to be, what still should be in our minds, but those memories weren't just memories anymore. They were the only things we had left of our best friend. Everything else was tainted, especially this room. Everything else held traces of his downfall, his self destruction, and ultimately his death.

“I-I can't...I just...” Steph's frightened voice shook with tears as she looked everywhere but the spot on the floor.

Rae still wouldn't say a word. She just stood there, like she didn't believe this was happening.

In truth, none of us did. At one point in time, Leon had seemed like the most stable one of us. He was the one everyone had turned to because he seemed so strong. I had clung to him ever since I was five, Rae, Steph, and Ethan had for at least four years.

After his dad was diagnosed with cancer and he found out he was adopted, we did notice he started to change, but we never imagined it would lead to this.

The more we thought back to his last few days, the more we noticed simple little things that we should have caught on to. I had noticed the scars, I knew they had been self inflicted, but he avoided it ever being brought up again. He would get upset, and trying to help seemed to just make things worse. But the more we thought about it, the more we realized that we had gone about it the wrong way.

He was different from us, not in a horribly wrong way, but a simple personality variation. We ran to each other when something was wrong, more specifically we ran to him, and that's where the difference made itself evident. He stayed strong for us, but when the time came that he needed someone else, he didn't know how to get that help with out feeling pathetic, because in his mind he was the one who was supposed to be able to handle anything.

Every time he turned us away when we offered our help, turned into a plea for us to stay anyway. Every line on his wrist had a meaning, a different story behind it. We knew that because that's just the way Leon was. Everything he did always ended up having a clear purpose, everything he said had some value to it. So the entire time we thought he was finding his own way of coping, he was crying out for help. Every time he said he was fine, we made the worst mistake we possibly could. We believed him. Maybe it was because we weren't used to seeing him in misery and needing help, maybe we wanted to believe he was fine, either way we never should have turned our heads. The image of Leon lying on the floor, begging for help was not something I could picture. That is, until a couple of days ago.

We had walked into his room to find him on the floor, a needle in his arm and his wrist shredded by the knife at his side. It wasn't a suicide. It was an accidental overdose. That was verified by the autopsy and the thirteen other deaths that happened within twenty four hours of each other, all having one thing in common: heroin. His dealer had made a bad batch, and as it turned out, none of his customers could handle it. He killed himself as soon as he found out Leon had died.

So now we were surrounding the bloodstain that was left behind, with the intention at first being to clean it up. There was no way we were letting his parents do this. His father wouldn't even get out of bed anymore, his mother just shuffled lifelessly around the house, tending to her bedridden husband. But none of us could find the strength to do it either.

But it had to be done. I swallowed and grabbed the rag and cleaner from Rae and Steph. I sprayed the dark mass completely, then scraped the carpet. As soon as the wetness penetrated the fabric of the rag, I choked. It wasn't just carpet cleaner. The dull brownish red that was coming up and tainting the snow white rag was my best friend's blood.

Tears poured down my face as I kept scrubbing. Leon, my best friend, the one who was like a brother to me, was gone. Tomorrow was the last day we would see him. He would be cold and pale, his eyes sewn shut, lowered into the ground, never to be seen again. We would go from seeing him almost everyday, to only seeing the occasional picture or his name engraved on a tombstone. Sobs erupted from above me as everyone else let go. It wasn't silent regrets and wishes of more time, it was complete agony and loss. And it was still no where close to what we wanted to do. We wanted to scream, to punch the walls, to go over to wherever his body was now and beg him to come back. Tell him that we were sorry for not doing more, for not catching the little signs of how miserable he was. We wanted to tell him that he couldn't leave us, that he was needed here. But it would all be useless, words that meant too little, too late. The one person they would have meaning to was long gone with no way of coming back. And that crushed us.

At least we had the comfort of knowing that it was painless. Despite how helpless he looked, strewn across the floor with blood seeping from his arm and wrist, he was smiling. The heroin had banished any sense of pain or fear. But at the same time, we knew it was a lie. His death wasn't sudden, it was a slow agonizing process that turned just getting through one day too hard for him to handle. His death sentence had started when his dad was diagnosed with cancer and he learned that his real parents had been murderers, thieves, and drug dealers. His time was slowly ticking away, and nobody else knew, maybe not even him.

My hand stopped moving as I crumbled on the floor. I buried my face in my hands and cried. Rae grabbed my shoulder and pulled. I knew what she wanted. It was what we all wanted. We had to get out of here. We had to get out of his room. This wasn't the room we had all laughed and joked around in. It was the one he had turned into his own prison, the one he locked himself in when he had to deal with the panic attacks and the emotional distress that led him to heroin and cutting. The air was still thick with confusion and frustration. But it wasn't us, it was what he had left behind. It was like the room was cursed.

Everything he owned was like that. His car was still sitting idly in the drive way, his perfect brand new Corvette, glinting in the sunlight, as spotless as the day he left it. People who just passed by thought that Leon's parents must be keeping the car for themselves, but as soon as they got closer to it, even if they didn't know that its owner had passed away, they could tell that it would never be touched. Within three feet of the car was an ominous feeling, the air got cold and stiff, and the car changed from something straight out of a magazine, to something straight out of a horror film. No one could even get near it, much less get in it and drive it off. His parents couldn't even bare to look it at. To them it was a reminder of how they had unknowingly helped him feed his addiction. But no parent dreams that their sixteen year old son would die of an overdose. Leon's parents definitely didn't.

His dad was shattered by that. To him, he was one of the main reasons his son was gone. It wasn't anything he had control over. He had never asked for cancer, but it was one of the major things that caused Leon's downfall. Luke couldn't get past the fact that it was Leon's fear of losing his dad, not his dad himself that was the cause. Even if he knew that, Luke loved his son. He was constantly on edge trying his best to do whatever was best for Leon. Since Leon knew he wasn't his real father, Luke had it engrained in his head that he had to make up for it somehow. Leon never left his thoughts, and now, that was the worst thing that could possibly happen. His wife was the same way. We all knew that if they kept this up, they wouldn't make it. They would grieve themselves to death. Christmas was in a little more than two months, but their most cherished gift had been taken away.

It seemed like he left an enormous hole. At school, teachers would literally stop teaching and just look at the desk he used to sit in. It was never taken, always empty. It had the same feeling as his car. Everyone stayed out of it. Even imagining some one else sitting there didn't seem right. But the same people still sat around it, because like in his life, they were drawn to him. Not only that, but we knew that he had grown to hate being alone or feeling any sense of abandonment, so if we moved away, we would hurt him even after he was gone. And we just couldn't do that.

A few months before all this, he probably would have laughed at it. If it had been something else that took him away, if he hadn't been in so much suffering before he died, he would think we were crazy. I could picture him now, I could practically hear the words in my head. His somewhat deep voice would be low yet a little high at the same time. He would sound like a father correcting his children. I could see him standing against the wall in his room, or sitting on his bed nonchalantly leaning back on his arms with that smirk on his face. His pale baby blue eyes would get a liquid look to them. “You know, some people believe that when one person dies, another one takes it place. Some one comes along that can fill the void left behind, whether it be a new person or just some one else that has been there all along.” His eyes would light up and sparkle, and a genuine laughter would come to his voice. “How's that supposed to happen if you keep making the void I left visually open? Sit in my desk, drive my car, hell, paint my room green and fill it with toys for your little brother, D. Just don't make it obvious that I'm gone. I had my life, and even if it wasn't as long as others, I'm fine with it. There's no point in you being miserable, too. I'm not worth that much pain. Move on.”

And with that he would leave. He was always somewhat dramatic in the things he did, whether he realized it or not. But it kept people near him, because he was like a precious stone, always fascinating to look at.

But the precious stone had been dashed against something harder over and over again, each hit making a little crack. He broke from the inside out. Each little thing chipping away at him on the inside, until finally he just shattered.

And the worst part was, everyone was too busy thinking that it couldn't happen in the first place to notice. We had all watched him break, we had all watched him die, and we did nothing to stop it. Because we just didn't think it was possible. And now...

He was gone. He had left behind the frustration and misery. Maybe he did want people to remember he was gone, or more importantly, he just wanted people to remember him. Fading away to just a memory once in a while was too close to being forgotten. And he didn't want that. He didn't want to be abandoned, he didn't want to be alone. He just wanted someone to be there for him like he was for everyone else. But he didn't know how. No one did.

Just a little side note: this is a 'what would've happened chapter' (I guess you could call it that.) to my story When Everything Went to Hell. So if you wanna read Leon's actual story, it posted on my profile. =] Hope you enjoyed.

Plz, review! Ily guys!