Saving Rain

by Kelsey Kingsley

Two minutes was a long time. It had been too long. I was surrounded by flashing lights on the side of the road, watching through wide, bewildered eyes as a handful of cops searched my car—Stone Temple Pilots’ “Big Empty” playing on the radio—and the paramedics zipped up a body bag. Billy was inside. “It’s not him anymore,” I could hear Gramma saying as the paramedics took Grampa away. “It’s just his body.” But it had looked like Grampa then, and it had looked like Billy now. Just … different. Empty. Cold. “Soldier Mason?” I looked up at the man in a police uniform through eyes that couldn’t stop tearing up. “Y-yeah?” Maybe it would’ve been more respectful to stand. But I didn’t have the strength in me. Not after I’d watched my closest, longest, oldest friend die beneath my pressing hands. So, the cop sat beside me instead. “I’m sorry about your friend,” he said quietly, folding his arms over his knees. I just nodded, unsure of how I would ever look at Billy’s mom again. God, who’s going to tell his mom? I imagined her receiving the news, imagined her pain and screams and tears, and I started to cry again, unable to find it in me to care that this cop and all of those people against the fence behind me were staring. “My name is Officer Sam Lewis. But you can call me Sam if you’d like.” I didn’t call him anything as I pulled my knees to my chest and pressed my forehead against them. Fucking hell, Billy. You fucking idiot.