_{junkyardteen.}

_{she  failed  to mention the times where she looked out over the parapet and caught a glimpse of  kallie  beneath the water.    how she looked peaceful.    floating,  hair  fanned out  around her,  staring up at the world.    like she was just waiting for someone to  join  her.    remembers wading in to pull her out,  and how the water clung to her clothes and skin.    it was lukewarm.    a comfort to gooseflesh.    she hadn’t  realised  she was  cold  until that moment.}

_{fresh out of the hospital,  bullet did a little research on the care of coma patients out of morbid  curiosity,  and came to the conclusion that maybe some of what she experienced had outside influence.    (    for example,  someone she isn’t familiar with  touching her body  without explicit permission.    realistically,  she knows the alternative might have  killed  her,  or at the very least,  would have let all that bacteria fester until it caused  infection.    semantics notwithstanding,  she could chalk up the warmth of the water to being  bathed  regularly.    but,  she couldn’t rationalise seeing kallie like that.    knowing without  knowing.    )}

_{❛     …  underwater,  i guess.     ❜}

_{she closes her eyes.    takes a breath.    envisions kallie with her long hair in loose curls,  a light  tint  on her lips and that bright gaze,  crystalline blue.}    

_{kallie made her  delete  the photo from her camera roll because she didn’t like the  angle  it was taken.    but she couldn’t delete the memory.    picturing her like that instead of a decomposed mass of bone and sinew might have been the only thing keeping bullet from shattering.    (    why does this always happen ?    when will it stop ?    and how can she move forward when everything she  sees  is kallie ?    )}

_{she takes another drag off the cigarette before flicking it out of the window.     ❛     it wouldn’t’ve mattered.     ❜     head leant back against the seat,  turning to level a gaze with the detective’s.    hollow,  tired.     ❛     she was already dead ‘n findin’ her sooner wasn’t gonna  change  nothin’    ––––     ❜}

_{maybe it  wouldn’t  have changed anything :   kallie was dead from the moment she stepped foot outside beacon that night,   her fate sealed in blood and lake water.    but it would have spared bullet all that waiting.    the  not knowing,   the long,   dark void of uncertainty,   the what - ifs,   the remnants of  hope  as fragile and breakable as the bones of a fifteen - year - old girl.}

_{sooner  would have meant danette leeds had something to say goodbye to.    that her child’s body still had a face,   instead of    —    and she wouldn’t have  wanted  to see that,   right ?    wouldn’t have wanted to remember her daughter like that,   rotting,   desiccated,   unrecognizable.}

_{(   and  bullet  doesn’t need to remember her  best friend  like that,   either.    needs to remember kallie how she looked in that photo she showed him at the station that first time.    full of light.    smiling.    alive.   )}

_{‘     i know.     ’       she looks  exhausted.    wrung out,   like she’s seen the world die and live and die all over again.    it’s one of those times where she looks a hell of a lot older than she is,   and it makes him heartsick.    the scar on her neck is more visible when she leans back but he doesn’t look at it,   doesn’t let his eyes wander.    can only begin to  imagine  the kind of bullshit questions she probably gets asked about it every day.}

_{there’s no shame,   none at all,   in  survival.    but the mark of a  private hell  is no one else’s business.}

_{no one’s to wear but hers.}

_{‘     —    take ‘em.     ’       despite the twenty dollars he’d just given her,   he passes over what’s left of his pack of cigarettes.    more than half - full.    the car’s still idling outside a café,   colorless in the rain.       ‘     you want somethin’ hot to drink ?    they got good coffee ‘n whatnot in there.    you already  know  i’m payin’.     ’}