About (Harry Styles)

64.

Run - Snowpatrol
Broken - Lifehouse

Elaine's POV

"Hello?"

"Elaine, sweetie," my mother's voice sounds from the other end. Something important must've happened for her to be worrying about me. "Where have you been? I've tried calling you so many times, but you never picked up my calls."

"Sorry, umm, I, umm, lost my phone," I say, though the back of my mind tells me it was lost for a reason. And I'm a little afraid to admit to myself that Harry had something to do with it.

"How's Harry?"

I know she's asking out of courtesy, but I don't think she really cares how he's doing. More like how our relationship is going. She would be thrilled to learn that Harry and I are together, but I'm in no mood to tell her. Not yet.

"He's .. Good." I turn around to look inside the bathroom, but Harry is no longer in there. He always has that tendency to disappear whenever I'm looking for him.

"Good," she replies halfheartedly. "Good."

"Did you need something?"

"Yes, I - .. I think you might want to sit for this one."

"Sit? Mother, you're kind of freaking me out here. What's going on," I say, finally noticing the reluctance in her voice and the unsteadiness in her breathing.

Something's wrong...

"Marco .. Uh, how do I say - he's passed honey. He's no longer here."

"What? No longer here? Mother, what are you saying?"

I think in this moment, I know exactly what she means. I just don't want to admit the truth...

"Marco is dead."

What?

Marco...

Dead?...

Impossible.

"He can't be. He's not. He's not. No. Marco he -- no..."

"I'm sorry ... Reports ... Police found him ... ditch and ... passed weeks ago." My mother's words are lost through translation. I can't process them. I can't even make any coherence of them.

If this is some sort of sick joke ... If Marco made my mother do this to punish me for involving myself with a celebrity ...

I wished for my mother to laugh. For her to say that it's all nothing but a big lie and she's only punishing me for not calling her once these past couple weeks.

But she doesn't.

She doesn't say anything like that. In fact, she doesn't say anything, allowing the reality of Marco's death to sink in agonizingly slow.

"You need to come home," my mother speaks. "Come home and say goodbye for the last time."

Say goodbye?

Hearing the word is like a knife piercing through my heart. I never even said it when he left. When he was only supposed to be gone for a while. Now he's gone forever, and I will never get the chance to say goodbye again.

Even if I say it now, he can't hear it. It won't reach him.

No.

No.

I refuse to believe he is gone until I see it with my own two eyes.

Without hesitation, I hang up my phone and rush around Harry's room, gathering my things into my suitcase, not caring that I just hung up on my own mother. I stumble over my own feet as I get back to my case, dropping my phone and everything else in my arms onto the floor. I look at my phone for a long time.