Page 117 of Sing For Us

“How could you do this to me?” I cry out, and the tears are streaming down my face. The flood gates are open, and I tune out all the noise.

“This isn’t how it’s supposed to go!” The sheer feeling of losing him makes me shiver, and my whole body is shaking. My pupils dilate, blurring everything out of focus.

“I’ll always be here for you.”

“You are my best friend.”

He’s talking to me, yet I can’t hear his voice.

Why isn’t he just waking up?

“Lana!” I ignore the person calling out to me.

“No! Please, God, no! He can’t just fucking leave me!”

Two hands land on my shoulders, and I let them.

They are comforting me because my best friend is dead.

He is really…gone.

“No. No. No.”

And I break down and land with my knees on the floor—while I’m still holding his hand, refusing to let him go.

He’s so cold.

He’s gone.

I’m alone.

I feel my throat bobbing up and down, wanting to shatter.

My heart isn’t just racing; it feels like a trapped bird against my ribcage. It’s going to explode, and I might let it happen.

“Lana, I’m here.”

Sara. She’s here and holding me in her arms.

Everything narrows into a tight, dark tunnel, the edges of my vision blurring into static. A terrifying, heavy coldness floods my veins. I want to turn cold like my best friend. What’s left? Fucking nothing. My hands are shaking so violently I can’t press them against the floor to steady myself.

Sara takes both of my hands and holds them as I cry in her arms.

“I’ll always be here for you.”

Then, the pressure in my chest explodes.

The sound doesn’t come from my mouth; it rips upward from my gut. It’s a raw, monstrous roar stripped of any humanity. I’m shaking more than before as I hear his voice in my mind telling me that he will never leave me.

He did. He fucking left me.

“It hurts so much! He’s gone. He is really gone!”

A jagged and vibrating howl tears through my throat, and it leaves the taste of blood on my tongue. The noise that vibrates in my own skull is like tearing fabric and breaking glass all at once.

I scream until the room spins, emptying every drop of oxygen from my lungs until the sound breaks into a choked, breathless wheeze. My stomach heaves with sudden, violent nausea, and as the final air leaves me, my vision goes completely black.

Chapter forty-five