For one moment, every one of the fifty students surrounding the catastrophe was silent. Then the sound of a camera lens clicking served as a catalyst for all hell to break loose.

Julian couldn't take his eyes off the sight. The blood poured out of the guy's head like it was a soap dispenser that had just been activated, except it wouldn't stop. The blood wouldn't stop flowing.

The blood.

Blood.

He heard voices, screams, but they weren't deciphered in his brain. The girlfriend cradled the guy's head as she yelled something at Julian, her tears racing the blood for who could fall faster. She kept trying to get the guy to look her in the eye, but she knew he wouldn't. Julian knew he wouldn't.

The coke bottle he had just been holding was replaced with empty space in his hand. The remnants were scattered around the scene, the finishing touch being jabbed in the guy's temple, the bottle cap marking its place. Any step forward would result in the penetration of glass into the sole of your foot.

He could have sworn he watched. But his hands were stained with the evidence of his crime.

"You killed him!" a distant voice shrieked. He couldn't tell if the voice was broken just in his brain or from the emergence from her throat. Julian was unable to move any part of his body, including his stomach, which prevented Julian from throwing up.

He should have been running. Apologizing. Something.

Instead, his body did what it knew under pressure. It fell.

***

No matter how many blankets they gave her, Esperanza would still be shaking. She had gone through nine of her fingers, and she was currently biting her way through the nail of the last. Whenever she thought she was done crying, her eyes filled up again and she broke.

She gave up on wiping her tears away a long time ago. It wouldn't stop more from coming. In fact, it cleared up space. Welcomed them.

And she didn't care.

The cops tried to ask her questions, but she couldn't let out any intelligible information. Her parents tried their best to do the job for her, but they didn't see what she saw. Nobody saw what she saw.

Esperanza felt the touch of Scottie's arm around her shoulders. She held onto that feeling, not sure when the knowledge of that sense would go away. She had never seen that kid before in her life, and she doubted that Scottie had either.

The tears fell once again. Esperanza gripped the edges of her blanket with her stubs where her nails used to be. The look on Scottie's face when he had been hit, when the blood rushed out of his arm... he looked so confused. He had no idea why that was happening. And when the glass-

She prayed that this was all a bad dream. A really, really bad dream.

***

When your boyfriend dies, a lot of people pretend like they gave a shit about you and him before he died when in reality they couldn't tell you the first letter of his name.

Esperanza had realized how true this was throughout the rest of the night. Missed call after missed call from people she had spoken to maybe once, overheard conversations from the other witnesses about how "Prescott was a friend to everybody and would be missed," acquaintances telling Esperanza that she was a great girlfriend to him and she did what she could do.

The worst came from people saying they were close to him, when they maybe said three words to him all year. Those people made Esperanza want to slap them across the face until their words flew back into their throat.

His friends didn't need to tell people that they were friends. They knew it.

"It's a tragedy, really," said Sasha, a girl Esperanza knew just barely from around school. She was talking to a group of students, none of them Esperanza recognized from the group of witnesses. "I didn't see what started it, but it couldn't have been much. Prescott was a good person. The kid was probably jealous or something."

"Yeah, that kid was always a fucking creep," commented a tall guy Esperanza had never seen before. "He wears a suit around the school, you know? And he's always staring at me. Like he wants me to go down on him or something. Goddamn fruitcake."

"Dashawn, we get it. I just can't believe it. How did he hit Prescott like that?"

"I mean, I can believe it. He was short, but you saw Prescott, didn't you? Guy is tiny. Like, his arms were practically all skin and bone. I'd be surprised if he could lift his girlfriend's tit!"

Before she knew it, Esperanza had left her blanket behind and her right hand made sharp contact with the tall guy's cheek.

"Don't say a word about him, you fucker!"

She felt the grip of three sets of hands pull her back before she could get the rest of the words out of her mouth. The guy, Dashawn, held his impacted cheek, an angry shock filling up his eyes. Esperanza stared at him with narrowed eyes, and didn't break her stare until a crowd of people blocked her view.

Esperanza felt the touch of fabric hit her shoulder once again. Scottie's touch faded from her sensory memory for the moment, replaced with the cold, damp contact that the shock blanket gave her. She expected to hear a lecture about physical violence, but no such conversation came. Esperanza fell asleep while still in complete consciousness, her gaze set forward towards the chaos of people, cars, and police tape.

She wasn't sure when exactly she made her way back to her bed at home. She remembered brief stills of trees through the car ride and the sound of her front door clicking open, but nothing concise enough to form a complete story in her mind.

But there she was, layered in blankets and head rested on no less than five pillows.

Esperanza's phone buzzed endlessly. She could've easily checked to see who they were from, or just shut off her phone entirely, but she didn't move a muscle. She listened to the humming slowly lulling her to go to sleep.

It wasn't until about 4am that the phone finally stopped vibrating. She probably should have at least closed her eyes, but to her, the vast darkness of her room made no difference than if she had been staring at her eyelids. And at least when she kept them open, she didn't have to squeeze her eyes to let the tears fall.

Scottie had been Esperanza's first and only boyfriend. A year and a half of dating, four years of friendship. Esperanza wasn't sure who fell first, her or Scottie, but what she did know was that she loved him far before she was in love with him. Esperanza never thought she would have been able to trust someone so deeply. It was almost easy for her to come out to Scottie, for it was as if she was just coming out to herself. He had never asked her if she was still interested in him now that she was bisexual, or if she wanted to date a girl as well as him. He just understood.

When she heard the doorbell ring, she chalked it up to her having auditory hallucinations from lack of sleep.

It rang again.

Esperanza sat up in her bed for the first time in hours. She adjusted her shirt sleeve, waiting. And sure enough, the sound of a high-pitched cling filled her ears once more.

Despite what her brain told her, Esperanza stood up. She dragged her blanket around her, and reached towards the door handle, and froze for a moment before opening the door.

The hallway wasn't pitch black, but it was hard to make out anything through her squinted eyes. She held onto the handrail as she stepped down the stairs one by one. Another doorbell ring.

Esperanza forced her eyes open a few millimeters extra. She faced the brown exit in front of her. She wasn't sure what she was waiting for, but she knew whatever it was would never come. She took the handle in her hand, and swung the door forward.

Even though it was still dark outside, there was no mistaking Prescott Greenway standing right in front of her.