However Long the Night

Chapter Fourteen

Will woke up to low rolling thunder and a drumbeat of raindrops tapping against his bedroom window. Eyes closed, his mind took the well-worn road back to Alex's funeral. That morning had been sunny, warm and clear. It felt wrong somehow, like nature had something to celebrate as he mourned. This morning was different. Dark and dismal, it was like the weather had received a personal invitation to grieve for Pete.

Will wished he could hide the day away in a cocoon of covers, but the ceremony was scheduled for eleven, so he reluctantly threw his legs over the side of the bed. It had been a rough night. He hit the hay around midnight, but tossed and turned until three a.m., the last time he remembered checking the clock on his phone. Finally, a current of murky dreams dragged him down beneath the surface of sleep. The plot lines weren't clear anymore, but Will's foggy dream memory dredged up visions of Alex, Pete, Skye, and a blood-red, throbbing, beating, almost breathing 1. When he woke up, he was slick with cold sweat.

Like a robot, he clunked off to the bathroom for a shower, shovelled breakfast down his throat, and stepped stiffly into the same dark suit he'd worn at the athletic banquet three months earlier. In a roundabout way, that event had kind of been about Pete, too, celebrating Reese High's defeat of Waterside in the basketball championships. Will felt ridiculous thinking back to how naïve he'd been that night, laughing with his friends, blind to what fate had planned. Then again, there was nothing he could have done about it anyway. Checking the mirror to make sure his tie was tied properly, he stepped back and gave his reflection the finger.

At ten o'clock on the nose, Josh rapped on the door, wearing his own dark suit and shades, despite the gloomy weather. "Hey, Brody. You clean up nice, brother. Ready to go?" His voice was missing its usual teasing twang, and his lips were set in a hard line. Will wasn't used to seeing Josh without a smile, and his serious expression made the reality of where they were about to go sink in. A legion of moth's wings batted around inside Will's stomach. He was unhappy, uneasy, unsettled, unsure.

I don't know if I can do this.

"Ready as I'll ever be, I guess." He tried his best to push the fear away. Shouting good-bye to his parents, Will swiped a black umbrella from the closet and closed the front door. Raising the collars of their suits in unison, he and Josh walked through the drizzle to the SUV.

The funeral was held at St. Anthony's Chapel, about ten minutes from Will's parents' cottage. Pete's family had moved to the lake a few years before, leaving their son displaced from his school district and setting his transfer in motion. Will wondered if their choice to celebrate life on the water, given the way Pete had passed, kept them up at night. It seemed to him that if hindsight was twenty-twenty, so was grief.

They sailed down the highway in relative silence until Josh suddenly cleared his throat. "Hey, Will? This might sound strange, but do you ever wonder what would happen if you could see the future?" His question punctured the quiet space between them and stabbed Will in the heart.

"Uh... I haven't really thought about it. Why?" After all, his time was spent wondering what would happen if he couldn't see the future, and how a number-free life might feel. Sure, he'd considered telling Josh about his special place in hell, but he could never work out how the conversation would go. Oh, yeah, hey Josh, no big deal but when I look at people I see numbers in their eyes that show how long they have left to live. No worries, you seem to be okay for now, but you might want to spend a bit more time with your grandma. No, their friendship had nothing to do with Will's shitty second sight, and he wanted to keep it that way.

"Just hear me out," Josh continued. "I had a hard time sleeping last night. I was thinking about Pete, but then I started thinking about Alex, too, you know? I hadn't seen Pete in about two months and with Alex, I saw him every day, but either way, I had no clue what would happen to either of them. I just wish ... if I could have known somehow, maybe I could have done something to stop all this... death. You know?" His hands gripped the steering wheel so hard, his knuckle bones stood out.