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On the day Darius finds Brooklynn in the jungle, he’s sure that he's having a nightmare.
Nothing makes sense. The seconds and minutes and hours blur together, rendering time meaningless, making him feel like he's drifting through a vacuous sea of fog and red and blue flashing lights. The blanket that is slung over his shoulders weighs him down, constricting him, making it harder to breathe than it already is. Somewhere in the abyss he can feel the cheap fabric of it scratching against his goosebump-covered arms. Mindlessly, he feels himself swatting it out of the way, onto the grass. He doesn't need it; he isn't cold. But almost immediately, it is replaced, and he finds that he doesn't have the energy to remove it again.
People talk to him, and also amongst themselves, but their words are another language, the cadence unfamiliar and indistinguishable through the constant roaring in his ears. Somehow, they determine that Darius must have arrived after the fact, most likely late to meet Brooklynn for a hike, or something similar, in the jungle. They're half-right, but he can't bring himself to confirm anything.
At some point, he thinks, he’s led inside an ambulance. Pushed gently down onto a sticky leather gurney. More people – paramedics – approach him, moving his arms and gently tilting his head in different directions and asking him too many questions that he can't even comprehend. He jolts as the cool metal of a stethoscope is pressed against his chest.
Through it all he sees only one thing: Brooklynn’s arm, lying bloody and stiff in the grass.
Nothing else around him matters.
Brooklynn is dead because of him.
One day after Darius finds what’s left of Brooklynn in the jungle, he wakes up and is nearly blinded by the white lights of a hospital room.
The roaring in his ears has dulled. He can hear voices now – in the hallway outside, there’s a nurse, two police officers, and two older men that he takes a second too long to place as Brooklynn’s parents. One of them is crying, his head buried into the other man’s shoulder, as his husband stares straight ahead with empty eyes. One of the police officers is speaking to them in a low murmur, but Darius can't make out what she's saying. He isn't even sure that it matters.
“How’re you holding up, kid?”
Darius’ body jerks towards the door involuntarily, breaths haphazardly dislodging from his throat as he wildly twists around, searching for the threat he’s sure is there. He almost runs – to where, he doesn't know; he just has to get away, they’re not safe, he has to get Brooklynn and get out of here – but suddenly a gentle hand closes around his wrist, pulling him back down onto the bed.
His eyes dart upwards and find one of the police officers, staring at him with somber eyes. Darius’ heart continues to pound in his ears.
“Hey, now,” he says. “It’s okay. You’re safe.”
Safe? Darius almost wants to laugh. The concept of safety is ridiculous – of course he isn't safe. He hasn't been in who knows how long. He hasn't felt safe since he was a child. Around every corner, there’s another monster waiting to take something away from him. This is just the first one in years that's succeeded. Darius was stupid not to see it coming.
“What can you tell us about last night?” the cop asks. “About… your friend. And what happened.”
“What… happened?”
This is the first time Darius has used his voice in probably twelve hours, and it shows. His throat is still scratchy from when he screamed it nearly raw, the words slicing it open again as they're painfully clawed out.
“We found your friend’s – we found her,” the officer says clumsily, “in the grass, not too far off the main road. Something had been… after her. Do you know what it was?”
Yes, Darius knows. Darius saw it. Darius couldn’t stop it. “It was a dinosaur.”
A dinosaur. One of the creatures Darius had dedicated his life – and his father's memory – to protect. One of the creatures he used to swear up and down needed to be shown compassion and understanding.
For some reason, Darius starts laughing. He doesn't stop. He doesn't even notice when the medicine knocks him out.
Two days after, he sees his friends.
Kenji is the first one at his bedside. Turns out that he’d been at the hospital ever since the attack – of course he had, as he’d arrived with Darius' parents – but for some reason, he’d never come into the room.
“They… weren't sure you'd be able to handle it,” Kenji says awkwardly, glancing past Darius at the wall behind him. “Having too many visitors. I kinda think they only sent me in today because your parents went down to the cafeteria and they didn’t want you to wake up alone.”
Kenji’s words are confusing. Someone sent him to Darius’ room? He hadn't come on his own?
He can't bring himself to speak. It's okay though, because Kenji doesn't seem to want him to. He rambles on, desperately trying to stifle the awkward tension and drown out the beeping of all the machines.
“Sammy and Yaz are on their way, too, and Ben started the drive back from school this morning, so he should be here soon.”
There’s something wrong with Kenji’s voice. Something hidden beneath the surface; something his friend is trying to stifle. His tone is clipped, the words too distant, too formal, and Darius has already noticed that he doesn't seem willing to look him in the eyes.
Something is strange, but Darius can't really place what it is. He thinks about it for the next several hours. Long enough for Sammy and Yaz to arrive, and for Darius to see how Kenji runs to them without hesitation, burying them both into hugs that it seems to take hours for him to pull away from.
Long enough for even Ben to get there, and for Kenji to pull him back out of the room, leaving the girls to sit and keep Darius company.
When time stretches on, and he doesn't come back, Darius realizes what the problem was all along.
Kenji never wanted to be here at all.
Three days after, Darius is deemed well enough to be released from the hospital.
He has no serious injuries that anyone has told him about, and by now everyone is convinced that the shock has worn off and that he’ll recover better from his own bed at home. But Darius isn't so sure. Sometimes, he still can't tell if he's awake. Some moments he feels like he's still stuck in a nightmare. The car ride home is silent, and even though Kenji is in the back seat next to him, it feels like he's a million miles away. His mom tries to fill the silence with the radio, but a news story about the dinosaur attack comes on almost immediately, and she nearly runs them off the road in her haste to turn it off.
Brand is waiting at home, acting overly cheerful, and after about two seconds in his presence Darius feels suffocated, the urge to crawl into bed and pass out building stronger and stronger. So he heads for his room, and he’s pretty sure that his family and friends try to speak to him on his way out, but he doesn't stop to listen.
He climbs under the blankets and lifts them all over his head like a burial shroud, letting the darkness consume him.
Days four and five are tricky, because Darius is aware some moments and back in the jungle for others.
His friends come over each morning, and on day four he's able to talk with them and even eat – and keep down – some eggs and toast. But on morning five, Ben turns on the television, and for some reason, the cartoon mouse that's running away from the cat becomes Brooklynn, screaming and crying, calling out for Darius desperately as she tries to escape from the dinosaur whose glowing eyes track her through the trees, radiating out from the screen, rendering Darius nearly blind.
Brooklynn isn’t fast enough.
And then there’s dirt, and grass, and blood, and Brooklynn is still on the screen, except in pieces, and there’s this deafening roaring that starts in the television and breaks through into the room, embedding itself right into Darius’ brain– it’s so close, and so loud; it won't stop–
“Darius!”
He can't breathe. He can't see. He can't think. He’s pretty sure someone is screaming.
Time leaves him again.
He is lost to it. The roaring consumes his senses once more, the screaming dies down to a mindless ringing in his ears, and finally, what feels like hours later, it all fades into darkness.
When he wakes up, he's in his bed. The world is dark again outside his window. His mom is at his side with a glass of water, her heartbreak clear in every move she makes.
She holds him close as she whispers to him, quiet support and reassurances that he doesn't deserve, and after she finally gets him to choke down the entire glass, she gives him one more kiss on the top of his head and gets up to leave, flicking the light off behind her.
By the morning, his friends have gone back to their hotel, and he learns that Kenji went with them.
He can't do this.
Everybody keeps telling him that it’s the day of Brooklynn’s funeral, and he can't do this.
He doesn't understand. He doesn't get how it's here already; how the universe not only stole Brooklynn away from him, but has also made the time without her pass like a harsh breeze that’s slipped between his fingers. Days have gone by; and yet, Darius cannot account for most of that time. It's been a dark, wretched haze that's moved both too slowly and too quickly, and he just can’t comprehend how there's still an eternity to go. Every moment, every second, that passes now will be one without Brooklynn in it. He's never heard of anything so unfair, so daunting, in his life.
There’s no body, of course.
Nobody could find any remains aside from her arm, so whatever is left of his friend sits in a small urn at the front of the room, next to a framed picture of her back when she still had pink hair. She’s smiling in it, and that stings, because it’s a reminder of how she was once so bright and full of life.
She isn't anymore. What used to be Brooklynn is now nothing but a pile of ashes.
The room is full of people – Brooklynn’s parents, holding each other and crying in the front row; the rest his friends, holed up together in the back of the room; and countless people who knew and loved Brooklynn scattered throughout the large middle section. And yet, Darius has never felt so alone. He hides away in the very back corner, and no one bothers him.
All throughout the service, he can't stop thinking that this is nowhere near the funeral that Brooklynn deserved. He clings to that thought, because the only other one his mind seems willing to provide him is that she shouldn't be having a funeral at all. He should. He’s the one that should be nothing but ashes in an urn.
Brooklynn didn't deserve this.
There are many days that follow afterwards without Brooklynn in them, and many ways that Darius continues to miss her once her funeral has come and gone.
He writes her letters that he’ll never send. Calls her, and leaves voicemails that she’ll never hear. Scrolls through all of her social media, even though she’ll never post again. He watches her follower count slowly go down, knowing how disappointed she would have been.
He never forgets Brooklynn, and he remembers her in a lot of different ways. But his thoughts stay the same – two of them the loudest, and most persistent.
She didn't deserve it.
It should have been him instead.