Stereos

When Peyton had gone to call her friend AJ, she couldn’t find the number. In her cell phone there was no record of her friend, and in her address book a page had been ripped out.

“You seem a little bit defensive, Peyton. Why is that?” Stephanie asked calmly, her pen hovering above her paper, but her face calm.

Peyton thought carefully, staring at the rubber spider plant on the small table beside Stephanie, and then at the shrink. “Because if she was my best friend, why isn’t her number in my phone?”

“How did you know AJ was your best friend?”

Peyton sighed. “Well, not my best friend – Alex is my best friend. But I know AJ and I were close… she was in my dream.”

Stephanie looked pleasantly surprised, but she recovered quickly. “Tell me about your dream, Peyton.”

Peyton inadvertently froze, but Stephanie didn’t press. How was Peyton going to tell Stephanie that she dreamed of one of the most horrific times of her life, and that she had been waking up in a cold sweat for the past two weeks? “I don’t want to talk about it,” she admitted quietly, shuffling her feet awkwardly against the carpet.

“That’s fine.” Stephanie’s soothing voice met her ears, “we don’t have to talk about that right now. How’s Luke?”

Although she welcomed the change in topic, Luke wasn’t exactly something she wanted to talk about either. “He’s good,” she responded politely.

“Good how Peyton?”

“I haven’t talked to him in about two weeks,” she admitted with a reluctant sigh. Her voice did not betray her true feelings: she was confused and slightly upset.

“Did something happen to make you feel upset, Peyton?”

Peyton shook her head. “No, I’m not –” Upon seeing Stephanie’s face, she decided not to lie. “I made a fool out of myself and now he won’t talk to me.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“I just assumed we were dating, and I’m pretty sure we weren’t.”

“Did he say you weren’t?”

Peyton shook her head. “No.”

“So he didn’t say you weren’t dating,” Stephanie repeated firmly, her gaze trying to penetrate Peyton’s thoughts but failing miserably. But still, her logic wasn’t lost on the younger woman.

“I need to talk to him,” Peyton quietly mumbled.

Stephanie only nodded in reply.
---
Luke looked at her carefully, not knowing what to say to her. Where he had sworn he had heard her admit she liked him, there was something about the way she sat that made him think otherwise. She opened her mouth again, preparing herself for another landslide of jumbled thoughts and sentences that he’d have to try and decipher.

He watched her mouth move, but didn’t hear any of the words come out. Finally, it was as if he had regained his hearing, because the sounds of everything around him, including her, came back. “Luke?” she asked.

He blinked. “Yes?”

She nodded, inhaling as she went. Her gaze was on the arm of the couch, again, as she drew soft patters on the material. “I need you to be honest with me.”

In a way, it was stupid of her to demand that. Luke would never lie to her if it meant hurting her.

“Who is AJ?”

Peyton noticed the way his body stiffened. His eyes darted to the floor, to the wall, and then to her fingers as they danced over the arm of the couch. But never at her. It made her immediately suspicious.

When his eyes finally landed on hers, his gaze was soft and somber. “Come on Pay-day, I have to take you somewhere.”

The sudden change in topic threw her off balance a bit, but her nickname calmed her. Luke was standing in front of her, his hand out, as he waited for her to stand. When she did, his fingers ghosted over her left shoulder blade as he carefully sauntered after her.
---
Trees whizzed by in an intricate assortment of yellows, oranges, and reds. Autumn was a wonderful time of year, despite the way the wind started to get nippy. Peyton had been so absorbed by the serene and oddly natural scenery of Toronto that she didn’t notice when Luke pulled up to a cemetery.

Wordlessly Peyton followed behind Luke, her mind racing with thoughts about why they were at a cemetery instead of talking about AJ. But whatever it was, Peyton gathered by Luke’s somber attitude, it was just as important.

Finally the two came to a stop in front of a waist-high stone-grey tombstone. “Read it, Peyton,” Luke instructed quietly, after receiving a questioning look from her.

His eyes were cast away from her, and it made her feel uneasy. What was going on? But nonetheless, she turned away and let her eyes roam over the new looking stone.



A gurgling gasp caught in Peyton’s throat as tears welled up in her eyes. Ariel Jade. AJ.
---
When she first came to, everything was hazy. Her head was pounding and felt oddly cold, but she couldn’t move. Something was restraining her, she found when she was able to flex her fingers, but not her arms. There were noises everywhere, words spoken in plain English but never leaving an impact on her brain. She groaned loudly and let her head roll to the side against the stretcher.

“She’s regained consciousness!” A loud voice over her yelled.

“Peyton?” A shrill female voice shrieked. A woman was worried. “Peyton! No you don’t understand that’s mydaughter!”

Peyton opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Her vocal chords simply would not function. A pain sliced down her throat when she coughed, and when a cold liquid dribbled down her throat, the paramedic overhead moved to her face with some sort of material. “She’s got internal bleeding, she’s coughing up blood!”

She tried to take a deep breath to inform them she was alright, but it was as if something was holding down her chest and preventing her from oxygen intake. Alarm bells went off in her head, despite the unbridled pounding she felt in her brain. More blood cascaded down the sides of her mouth as she coughed again, wheezing for any amount of air. She couldn’t breathe.

“Peyton!” The same female voice shrieked, “what the hell are you doing? Is she awake?”

“Ma’am, I need you to calm down so we can get her in the ambulance.”

“Help hernow, damn it, she needs it now!”

“I understand you’re worried, Ma’am, but I have to get her into the ambulance so we can relieve the pressure in her chest or she’s going to asphyxiate.”

The woman didn’t speak after that.

Peyton was able to crack an eye open, but all she saw was a migraine-inducing bright light. She groaned again, her head rolling to the other side. Clamping her eyes shut, she blacked out again.

“Peyton Riley! Peyton Riley, stay with me sweetheart,” the paramedic’s voice rang like an echo through her head before she was slightly lucid once more. “On three!” the paramedic said, before she was lifted up into the back of the Ambulance.

As she was being lifted up into the back, she saw a black body bag on top of a stretcher on the pavement, AJ’s battered and lifeless face staring up at the bright blue sky.

Peyton wasn’t aware she had been hooked up to any machines until she felt her hysteria take over. “She’s flat lining, she’s flat lining! Someone get me the defibrillator!”

That time, when the paramedic called Peyton’s name, she didn’t respond.
---
A horrified sob slipped past Peyton’s lips as she clung to Luke’s waist. AJ was dead. That’s all Peyton could think about. AJ was dead.