The Last Place

“Fallon O’Connor is dead!” an announcer cries. “Dead, Aislin!” It cackles maniacally over the sound of a cheering crowd and I look around for the source of the voice.

I’m in the dark, though. I can’t see anything. I sink to the ground weeping. Fallon, Fallon. I say his name over and over, as though that can bring him back.

Suddenly, there’s a spotlight. In it is Fallon, looking… wrong, somehow. He’s deathly pale and his head starts spinning, eyes whirring in their sockets. “Did you miss me?” he asks, but his voice gives me chills. I cower on the ground and he takes one step toward me, two.

Suddenly he looks normal, caring. He looks like my best friend again. I give a cry of relief and reach to take the hand he’s offering me, but my hand goes right through his, and he’s gone.

I woke up screaming.

When would this nightmare end? I wondered for the thousandth time.

Never.

“Fallon’s dead,” I told myself. “He’s dead and he’s not coming back.” These were the first words I spoke every day. It was still hard to believe, though it had been over three months since his snowboarding accident now. He’d had such promise. He’d already been famous, and getting more popular. Why did this have to happen to him? How could he really be gone?

Denial, that’s what it was. But putting a name to it didn’t help.

I had to move on. I knew that. I had to stop dwelling on the death of my best friend. I had to find a way to pick up the pieces of my life and put them back together in some way that makes sense.

I should have been at his house right now, though. We always spent our summers together. The first half at my house, the second at his.

That tradition, along with so many others, had died with Fallon.

Later that day, I went around shopping to buy supplies for the new school year.

I went alone. I was always alone now. I liked it that way. If I didn’t let anyone close again, I wouldn’t get hurt. I wouldn’t be shattered.

I was barely able to cope with Fallon’s death. If I lost another friend, I didn’t know how I would be able to survive another blow like this.

So, I would be alone.

But oh, how I needed a distraction. There was nothing to divert my thoughts from him.

I passed the snowboarding shop and just about burst into tears right there.

I saw the board that had just come out, the Pogo Maverick. I’d been planning on buying that for Fallon. I’d been saving up for months and months, earning money by tutoring. He didn’t know. I always was so, so careful to schedule sessions while he was in class or on the slopes.

But now that had gone to waste. At least I had considerable funds in my bank account. That would come in handy once I was on my own after the end of this school year.

I was going to be seventeen in three weeks. Fallon and I would have celebrated early.

At least this year at school, I would have been missing him, anyway. He had been a year ahead of me, though I was the oldest in my class.

That was a very small comfort. I’d been mourning my inability to see him all the time during my final year at school all last year.

I did most of my shopping within an hour. I couldn’t help but marvel at how quickly shopping could go when you weren’t with anyone. When no one was there to fool around with, to exchange jokes with…

I missed my best friend.