Forgotten

BOBS POV.

A nice week off, back to New Jersey, to our communal house we all stay in, and then back on tour. It should have been perfect, a nice chance to chill out and relax for a week but it wasn't. Something just had to come up.

"Bob pizza is here!" called Mikey from downstairs.

"Alright!" I yelled back from my room. I was unloading all my crap from my suitcase and really wasn't hungry but I dragged myself downstairs anyway.

On the table were three large pizza boxes and around the table sat Gee, Frankie, Ray and Mikey, all of whom looked very hungry and were in the process of helping themselves to food.

"Hey man!" said Frankie as he helped himself to another piece of vegetarian pizza. I nodded and sat down next to Mikey, grabbing the nearest pizza box and helping myself.

"Something up?" asked Ray.

"I just have a bad feeling is all," I said and shuddered slightly as if I was cold but it was nowhere near cold in the house. It was late November and we had the heating turned on so we didn't freeze ourselves to death in here.

"In what kind of way?"

"Like something bad is about to happen or already has and I don't know about it yet." I said, stuffing my face with pizza even though the bad feeling in my stomach still remained.

"Maybe, your phsyco ex is gonna come round here and accuse you of cheating on her with me again," laughed Gee and everyone giggled except for me.

"Gee, I think she was drunk when she said that and I haven't been seeing her for like, 6 months anyway," I said coldly. I did not appreciate it much when they made all these little jokes about my being single. It's not funny, I don't ask to be a loner it just kind of happened. When I broke up with Jessie, the 'phsyco ex', I just gave up trying to find a nice girl, theres nobody out there for me.

Well there was, but that was a long time ago. My first ever love when I was only twelve years old and didn't really know what I was getting myself in to. But then she moved away. I saw her again about seven or eight years later, she was still as beautiful as ever and we had some fun before she had to go again, breaking my heart, again. It just seems like something usual to happen, my heart getting broken, I mean it's happened so many times now I hardly feel a thing anymore.

The first time we broke up, It was me that left her. I can only recall how I felt when she left me the second time we were together and feel how she must have felt. We were so young, too young and I was such a shit of a kid.

I used to get into so much trouble, as soon as I hit my eleventh birthday something changed and I went completely off the rails. I started to drink and smoke and got in with a big crowd of boys that taught me a lot about how to be 'bad'. We would egg houses and vandalize things for the sake of it, we even mugged somebody once but I was only a kid and didn't realize what I was doing. I just followed them, they were like older brothers to me.

"Bob? Hellooo?" Frankie waved his hand in front of my face and I jumped slightly.

"You like spaced out on us man, we were saying after pizza do you want to practice some?" said a confused looking Mikey.

"Uhh yeah sure guys, I'm done anyway," I said, throwing my half eaten piece of pizza back on the plate and getting up from the table.

I ran upstairs to my room and grabbed a pair of sticks before going back downstairs to the basement which had been soundproofed for this very purpose. Us lot, making one hell of a lot of noise and practicing. Just as I shut the door and went down the steps I heard Ray playing sweet child of mine by guns n' roses on his guitar.

"I love that song!" I yelled over the high volume of his amp.

He played for a little while more until all the rest of the guys had materialized wit their various instruments and we started to practice. We played Dead!, I'm not okay, cemetery drive, our lady of sorrows and disenchanted. That was one song chosen by each of us and we only did it to keep Brian happy.

He said he would know if we had been practicing or not so we believed him and practiced so he wouldn't get annoyed and not give us a break for ages which is what he does if we annoy him. Just as we were coming towards the end of disenchanted I felt my cellphone vibrating against my leg and was itching to answer it but couldn't.

We finished the song and I dropped my sticks and quickly vanished up to my room to have some privacy and call back whoever had rung me. I didn't recognize the number but I called it back anyway, a woman answered the phone.

"Hello New Jersey city morgue how can I help you?"

"I know this may sound strange but did you just call me?"

"Name please?"

"Bob Bryar."

"Yes, we needed to contact you, could you come down we need you to identify somebody for us if possible?" A horrible cold feeling spread through my body as I frantically thought about who could have possibly died that I knew.

"D.. do you have any idea who it is?" I asked, trying to keep my voice steady.

"Young woman, aged late twenties early thirties, long dark hair and green eyes. She hung herself but you are the only person mentioned on her suicide note. For the police to continue their inquiry we need a positive identification."

"Yeah alright I'll do it but I don't think I know who you are talking about." That was a lie. I knew exactly who they were talking about. It was her, the only girl I had ever truly loved and it was when I was only twelve years old. Her name was Nicola Phillips and I remember everything about her, now she was gone forever.

"If I give you the address, can you come down as soon as possible? It's just, the police want to continue with their inquiries into why she killed herself and we need identification first."

"Yeah sure whats the address I'll be there as soon as I can," I said and grabbed a pen and a scrap of paper from the untidy desk in the corner of the room.

She gave me the address and I wrote it down quickly and told the woman I would be there as soon as I could. I put the address and my cellphone back into my pocket and ran downstairs and out the front door, grabbing my car keys off the shelf by the door.

I drove over there as fast as I legally could and jumped out of the car the second I had parked. My heart was pounding in my ears and I felt sick to my stomach. If this was really her... I never got to say sorry... never got to make things right... and never got to ask her that one, all important, life changing question that I needed to ask her so badly.

I went in through the door and noticed straight away that it was very cold in there. I walked up to the desk and presumably the woman I spoke to on the phone looked up at me.

"Mr. Bryar?"

I nodded and she stood up.

"Come with me please," I followed her down a hallway into a room lined with numbered draws. I didn't even want to think about what was in those draws but I knew she would open one of them.

She stopped at number 31.

"This may be distressing for you to see, were you close?"

"When we were younger, we haven't spoken in a long time, I wouldn't know why she would put my name in a suicide note."

The woman shrugged and opened the draw. She slowly unzipped the body bag and I felt like a lead weight had dropped into the pit of my stomach. It was her. It was Nicola.

RAYS POV.

*****ONE HOUR LATER*****

"Anybody seen the Bob man?" I asked to the mass of three tangled bodies playing twister in front of me.

"No and Frankie, get your own green square!" protested Mikey as Frank attempted to steal his square.

"Thanks," I said sarcastically and walked upstairs to look for Bob. All I wanted was a civilized conversation in this house of hyperactive sugar and coffee addicts (aka. Frankie, Gee and Mikes) and Bob was the only one I could generally talk to. His door was shut so I knocked but there was no reply. I knocked a few more times before going in to the room but he wasn't there.

He wasn't in any of the bathrooms or the basement or anywhere in the house. That was when I noticed that his keys had gone from the shelf and he must have gone out. I lay on my bed staring at the ceiling for a while until I got out my acoustic guitar and played for a bit until I heard a car pull up outside.

A few moments later I heard the front door slam and somebody come upstairs. The landing floorboards are creaky and you can hear if somebody is walking about, even if they try and sneak around. I put my guitar down and went to my own door to look and see who it was. I opened the door just in time to see the door to Bobs room close.

I walked out of my room and over to his, knocking on his door and waiting for him to reply.

He flung it open and I almost gasped.

"Bob! Whats wrong man?" He was shaking and covered in sweat. His eyes were wide and a look of shock on his face. He stared blankly at me for a few seconds before turning around and walking over to his bed where he sat on the edge and started intently at a spot on the floor.

"Bob?" I said tentatively, not knowing what was wrong or what to do.

"What happened?"

"She's dead Ray."

"Who? Who's dead Bob, tell me."

"Nicola."

"Who's Nicola, keep talking Bob, who's Nicola?" I think he was going into shock, his breathing way heavy and he still had the same panicked expression on his face.

He didn't respond but fell backward onto the bed into a quivering ball, rocking slowly back and forth.

"Damn it! MIKEY!!" I yelled downstairs and hoped he would have heard me.

"Bob! Stop it man! Your scaring me, just calm down and tell me whats going on!" Mikey burst into the room.

"Whoa whats going on here?" he said and I briefly explained.

"Alright Bob, give me your hand it's OK, just tell us when your ready."

He grabbed Bobs hand and gestured for me to take the other one, which I did, hesitantly. It was covered in cold sweat and trembling a lot. Bob was completely hyperventilating now, panting as if he had just been running even though he had been nowhere. Mikey slapped him round the face.

"BOB! YOU HAVE TO CALM DOWN!" He yelled and Bob seemed to come to his senses.

"She's gone," he said, his voice sounding somehow hollow, empty.

"Bob, who is Nicola."

"An ex."

"You never mentioned her before, how long ago did you date?"

"Fifteen years," he said, sitting back up and evening out his breathing while Mikey rubbed his back soothingly.

"You went out with her when you were twelve?!" I said, quite shocked as I didn't think Bob would be the type. He nodded.

"Theres more Ray. I did something stupid, really, really stupid."