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She couldn’t sleep. Even surrounded by her friends, all breathing and alive and deep in slumber, every time Ashlyn shut her eyes, the image of Tyler’s terrified face as he hurtled out of that car door haunted her. The image of Aiden’s face when she picked the rubble off of him. The look in his eyes and the way his smile dropped when he realized what was happening.
She couldn’t remember a single thought that crossed her mind at that moment besides the single-minded goal to get Aiden. Get Aiden. Get Aiden.
Her feet took over before her brain could, and she was running toward the debris, throwing her hands onto the rocks, covering them in deep scrapes without even noticing. And when she lifted that first piece of the ceiling off of where she saw Aiden fall, her world tilted on its axis.
Blood was everywhere. There was a chunk of his skin taken out of his cheek, bleeding profusely, and a deep gash across his neck; his eyes were slightly open, and his face was sans the usual grin. It was the stillest she had ever seen him, and if it weren’t for Taylor’s urgency, she wasn’t sure how long she would have spent staring at his lifeless body.
Picking him up from the rest of the rubble was done in a blur, and she remembered how rapidly his body was cooling and getting lighter as she carried him under the table. The last thing she recalled seeing in the phantom realm, however, was Aiden’s face cradled in her arms, previously still and peaceful and calm, now overtaken by a horrifying smile that split across his face.
His eyes opened wider than seemingly possible and shot up to her, his grin resembling something that she dared not speak into existence.
Ashlyn’s eyes shot open again, unable to remove the image stamped into her mind.
She remembered those moments after she awoke, only some hours ago, when she saw Aiden convulsing on the floor, surrounded by his family. Ashlyn had never been more afraid. And when she heard him speak, his voice shaking and raspy, attempting to reassure all of them when he was the one who had just died in front of her, everything felt as though it was coming crashing down.
She gripped onto him harder than she had hugged anyone, afraid that if she loosened her fingers on his shirt for one second, he was going to slip away.
She stared up at the dark ceiling of Aiden’s house, cataloging everything she heard, felt, and saw to distract herself. The crickets, making loud music outside, her back on the hard floor, not quite cushioned by their sleeping bags, the warmth of Aiden’s side, just barely against her, and his foot hooked over her ankle.
She jolted slightly when she heard a rustling beside her, shaken from her trance. She closed her eyes again, feigning sleep for as long as she could with Aiden and Tyler’s faces staring at her from her mind’s eyes.
Ashlyn felt a warmth being removed from her side as Aiden, whom she previously assumed was sound asleep, rose. Once she knew that the boy was fully up and about to walk away, she peered her eyes open slightly, watching as he made his way toward the kitchen.
She cautiously rose from her own sleeping back, conscious of Logan, Taylor, Ben, and Lily sound asleep nearby, and made her way to the kitchen.
Her bare feet on the cold kitchen floor made her shiver, and she watched as Aiden grabbed a cup from the cupboard and filled it up with sink water, suddenly struck by the fact that he lived in this mansion and was so familiar with it. She couldn’t imagine how lonely a big place like this was when his parents were away, as they often were.
She pulled out a stool at the island, and Aiden nearly jumped out of his skin at the sudden noise, holding his hand to his chest.
He looked tired, too. Worn down. She’d never seen his eyebags as big as they were at that moment, weighing down his face with the burden of their building sleepless nights. Although the scrapes from the phantom realm wouldn’t show up here, Ashlyn felt them radiating off of his skin. His eyes were unfocused, lost, looking straight through her, and if she looked close enough, she could see the roots of his hair growing out.
“Ash,” he laughed, a smile that wouldn’t reach his eyes dawning on his face, “you scared me.”
She frowned, bringing her knees up to her chest. “I can see your roots.”
His hand reached up for his head self-consciously, his smile dropping into a grim frown. “Guess I’ve been a little busy.”
Gosh, she was inept. She had been planning on getting up to ask how he was feeling, not to insult his appearance. She was fully aware that she looked no better than he at that moment.
Ashlyn played with the ends of her braids nervously. “Sorry, I just–”
“No,” Aiden cut her off, “I’m sorry.”
She furrowed her brows, taking her knees down from the stool as Aiden ran his hands through his hair.
“You have nothing to be sorry about, Aiden,” she insisted.
There it was again, Aiden supporting everyone around him before himself. He was the one who had just been killed, what could possibly be about to apologize for?
He squeezed his eyes shut. “Just… listen. You’re too good for me, and this is all my fault.”
“What?”
“I just… I saw you walk onto the bus that morning, and something inside of me knew that that was it. I’ve never had real friends before, and if I hadn’t started pestering you in the first place, we would have never gone to Savannah. This is all my fault, Ash. You make me a better person, but I’m holding all of you back. I’m reckless and I’m selfish. I don’t think before I do things, and I’m okay when that ends up hurting me, but when it hurts you ? If I had the chance to go back, I’d stop myself, I swear–”
“Aiden. Stop.”
She was standing in front of him now, and she slowly eased his hands out of his hair. “You know I’m not good with words, so I’ll just say it bluntly: all of you are my friends. This situation was no one’s fault, and even though it sucks, not everything that has come out of it has been all bad.” She squeezed his hand. “Right?”
Aiden nodded slowly, a real, small, private smile gracing his face. “Right.”
Ashlyn’s skin itched to capture a genuine smile from Aiden on camera, the corners of his lips lifting, raising her spirits, but she was already too late as a more sheepish, embarrassed smile replaced his old one.
“Sorry,” he grinned, “I’m totally concussed right now.”
“Yeah,” Ashlyn whispered, images of his bloody figure flashing across her mind, “let’s go dye your hair?”
Aiden nodded, letting her drag him up to the large staircase before he started leading them to the bathroom.
She didn’t want Aiden to bare his heart to her when he wasn’t even aware of what he was doing. The concussion had made him delirious, and Ashlyn was sure that if he remembered this conversation in the morning, he’d be filled with regret.
She sat Aiden down on a stool in his bathroom, got out the supplies, and began re-dying his hair in silence. Every streak of bleach replacing the brown growing in seemed to lessen the tension in his shoulders; he looked like he was on the verge of falling asleep.
When Ashlyn was done with the color and had begun rinsing out his hair at the faucet of the tub, he finally broke their peaceful silence. “When this is all over, I’ll leave.”
She paused in her ministrations, the cold water pruning the tips of her fingers that she could still feel stinging from the rubble in the phantom realm.
“We’ll talk about this tomorrow, okay, Aiden? I don’t think you’re in the right state of mind right now.”
He nodded slowly, eyes drooping shut as Ashlyn shut off the faucet and began drying his hair.