Well Maybe Venting Is The Right Word - Tumblr Posts

andre answering his home phone and having to hear the worst news he’s ever received in his life.

cal committed. he didn’t wait until zero day. he didn’t warn andre. he didn’t do it with andre.

when andre hears the news, he drops the phone, listening to the plastic break as it hits the floor. he looks at the kitchen table, in his back pack, and in his jacket, but he cannot find his keys anywhere. fuck it. andre opens the door and begins running to the gabriel house.

his legs are sore from track and workouts, but andre can’t feel them. he feels like he’s flying. he’s getting too close to the sun, burning and burning until his wings completely melt.

when he gets to the gabriel house, about eleven blocks from the kriegman house, cal’s siblings are sat in the yard with some police officers while his parents are stood in each other’s arms while talking to another officer. his mom looks destroyed. his dad keeps glancing at the front door, waiting and hoping for his oldest son to stand up and walk out, begging for this entire thing to be a joke.

andre runs past them; he pushes officers away from him and almost punches one square in the nose. he makes it into the house and into the hallway that holds cal’s room. he can see inside. there is blood everywhere. cal’s face is destroyed.

despite all the destruction, andre swears he can feel cal’s heart beating, even from a distance. he feels it in the floor, in his chest, and in his head. he can hear it louder than his own heart.

after all of his running, andre collapses. his knees hit the ground with such force that they might break. he curls into himself, holding himself in an embrace that is impossibly tight.

the only things that stay still are andre’s eyes. everything else is moving around him and he’s shaking, but his eyes are still trained on the boy on the ground in front of him. the sight burns itself into andre’s brain. andre begs himself to look away, even clawing at his cheeks, but he genuinely cannot. it is horrifying.

in the moment, no one knows that andre will soon follow cal’s fate. they don’t know that the boys will share a wake. they don’t know that they will be buried next to each other only days apart.