It was an accident, he told himself. And he kept on telling himself that, as if saying it over and over would make it true. But no matter what he tried to say, it wouldn’t change the fact that Calvin and Alina were dead, and there was no way to change the fact that it was his fault.

You tend to get lost in fictional what-ifs when you're holding the dead body of a loved one. You imagine the lights of finality bright like a stage play. You know it's a mystery, the end, and its beholdings. In its place is a grim uniqueness. There's a sense of loss that overwhelms your heart and senses. It replaces the marrow of bones and seeps into a person's system to flow like it was always in the bloodstream. It beats with your heart and breathes with your lungs. It destroys you from the inside out. From the heart to skin to the air around you.

Mitchel Fowler was lost in these infinite possibilities. In the revised endings. In the what-ifs and wants, he was gone.

He stared at the wall in front of him. His eyes unfocused. His face was stiff and tear-stained. His hands were covered in soot and blood. He was blanketed in thick shame that weighed down his lungs and suffocated him. Calvin and Alina are dead.

---

The sun was beaming down on them and the grass was scratching at bare ankles. The air was filled with the lilt of laughter and the songs of soul. Pictures may be worth a thousand words but a memory is worth a million. The three kids walking around were millionaires. Yet the only thing worth buying was another two hours or five minutes or even just thirty more seconds.

Mitchel had his legs looped over a tree limb and was dangling like a cheap halloween decoration before the other two. Unbeknownst to Mitchel, Alina caught a glint in her eye and quietly began to climb the tree, signaling for Calvin to keep quiet. She got to the limb Mitch was on and abruptly swung down beside him exclaiming a loud “Boo!”.

Mitch shrieked and his legs shot up and over the branch. He fell headfirst to the ground and landed with his face in the dirt. He didn’t move. Anxious looks replaced the ones of joy on Alina and Calvin’s face. Alina safely flipped off the branch, “Mitch?”

Nothing.

“Mitchel this isn’t funny.”

Calvin gently nudged him with his shoe. A soft huff sounded.

“Mitchel.” Calvin said monotone. The boy didn’t do anything.

“Mitchy.” He kicked him harshly.

“Ow!” Mitchel shot up and held his left arm, “That hurt.” He said, rolling his shoulder.

“That’s the point.”

Mitch turned to Alina laughing slightly and smiled at her. She didn’t return it.

“Not very funny, huh?” He scratched the back of his neck.

“Not at all.”

“You weren’t the dead one, to be fair.” Mitchel defended as he walked deeper into the forest. His friends shared a look, sighed, and followed behind him.

---

The sky was gray and gloomy. Alina, Calvin, and Mitchel were curled on a couch, shrouded in blankets. The air was thick with excited expectation and anxious anticipation. Breaths were caught as eyes trained themselves on a film.

A man in a mask with a knife flashed on the screen. The three tensed lightly. The main characters kept a focus on their walls and checked before making any turns. Their hands were held in death grips mirroring what Alina, Calvin, and Mitchel were doing themselves. They needed to be ready. The masked man suddenly appeared again, but this time he didn’t disappear as quickly. He quickly drove a knife through the boy in the middle. His friends screamed, as did the three cocooned on the sofa. Calvin and Mitchel will never admit that they screamed louder and higher than Alina had.

“Mitch,” Calvin started after Alina’s nonsensical laughter ceased, “you know, that guy that got stabbed kinda looks like you.”

“Oh God, don’t say that.” Mitch responded, rolling his shoulders in a shiver.

Alina smiled wide, “He does! He’s got your hair and your eyes-”

“And is literally you.” Cal added.

“How is that guy me? He’s a complete jerk and uses his friends. The only reason he’s even close to them right now is because he doesn’t want to get stabbed alone.”

“Is stabbing a group activity?” Alina asked.

“Clearly, according to our buddy Mitch, stabbings are a horrible private affair.” Calvin nodded thoughtfully.

Mitch rolled his eyes in exasperation, “You’re both ridiculous.” He grabbed the popcorn from the coffee table just as a loud beat came from the movie, sending popcorn flying and his friends into hysterics.

---

Alina had her legs against the wall and her back on the ground, Calvin was the inverse of this and Mitch sat cross legged against the opposite wall. Tile painted the backsplash of the scene and the digital clock on the wall read ‘5:15’. School let out about an hour before, but the three had nowhere specific to go.

Calvin and Alina were talking nonsense. Mitchel zoned in and out of the conversation. His vision had been swimming for a few hours, but it’d gotten worse once the day ended. It wasn’t the usual blur that happened but instead a vague hallucination dancing in a pity party in front of him.

The room would quickly fade darker. There was a faint smell of burning or chemicals. Calvin would blankly fall to his right. He had paler skin and his eyes looked red. Alina’s feet would fall over Cal’s now horizontal body. Her head seemed to appear and disappear depending on when the unknown hallucinogen kicked in. The two of them stared with hollow eyes at Mitch as if he was in the wrong. As if he did something. He hasn't done a thing.

“You look so serious!” Calvin complained lightheartedly, clapping in front of Mitch’s face. When did they get over here?, “What’s goin’ on in there, Mitchy? You plotting something?”

“No,” Mitch laughed at his friends' confusion before stuttering out an explanation “we have this stupid project for history, and I’m trying to figure out how to do it.”

“So you are plotting something.” Alina said as she flipped her legs over her head and leaned against the hallway floor once again.

“I guess, yeah.”

Calvin stared blankly at him, "that wall’s really helping with that, huh?”

“It is. It’s great with conversations, don’t you know that?”

Cal snorted, “I guess I should, considering you’re my best friend.”

Mitch bumped his shoulder laughing, “Jerk.”

“He’s not wrong, Mitchy.” Lina quipped from the time.

“He’s always wrong, Lina.”

Mitchel felt a hard smack on his arm, “Jerk,” Cal mimicked.

---

It was Friday.

The school was evacuating for a fire drill. Some kid pulled the alarm during last period so they could head home early for the weekend. Mitchel was walking up and down the lines of cars on the lookout for either Alina or Calvin. He was supposed to find them by the red Ford. They're supposed to be okay- He couldn’t find either of them.

---

It was actually Wednesday.

The school was evacuating for a fire. Mitchel had gotten bored and left his chemistry class with a box of matches in his left hand. He was walking to the gym where both Calvin and Alina had their last class. He snuck in through the coaches office. For unknown reasons, there was a bottle of vodka on a desk.

Suddenly, Mitchel let his impulse control win any fight that was seen on the horizon.

The room was quickly up in flames. Burning. Hot.

The sprinklers were going haywire.

And they weren't working.

In his impulse, Mitchel must have forgotten the roof of the building was also heavily flammable. The tall flames from the office tore right through it. They landed in a storage closet in the science hallway and all the contents fell inside very quickly.

Mitchel didn’t know. He ran out the door at the end of the hall as soon as the sprinklers started.

He was pacing up and down lines of cars in the parking lot. He was scanning for Alina or Calvin, but couldn't find either. He saw they're teacher, a coach for the wrestling team if he wasn't mistaken, and ran over.

“Where are Lina and Cal?” Mitchel asked, taking a deep breath.

“Hell if I know. They said they were headed up to your class, kid.” The coach responded looking both confused and concerned.

Mitchel paused, “What?”

He got a shrug in return.

---

It was three hours later. Mitchel was sitting on a curb outside the police station. His parents were still inside discussing what the repercussions were. He felt his vision start to swim. The headlights on the road started blurring into one giant blob. Instead of going from side to side on the road, it was coming straight at him, very slowly. He took a deep breath as it got closer.

“Mitchel,” His mother appeared in the doorway and the light split into its variations again, “get in the car.”

“What happened to-”

“Listen to your mother.”

He shakily got up from the curb and drunkenly walked to the car.

“Where are-”

“Seatbelt.”

Sighing, he begrudgingly buckled in.

“What-”

“We’ll talk at ho-”

“Where are Alina and Calvin! What happened to them?” Mitchel erupted glaring at his father in the rearview mirror. His parents shared a look in the front seat. Mitchel watched in anticipation. They didn’t say a word. He bit back another scream and instead spoke as calmly as he could muster, “What. Happened. To Alina and Calvin. Mom?”

His mother bristled and stared straight ahead, “We don’t know.”

“Liar.”

“Mitchel Daniel Fowler.”

“What happened?”

“We’ll talk at home.” His dad said leaving no room for debate or further words and ending the discussion where it sat stagnant in the tense air.

Good thing actions don’t typically require words.

Mitchel unbuckled his seat belt and opened the car door.

“Mitch-” He was on the road with the door closed before he could even hear his mother finish his first name. He was running. He didn’t know where. Probably one of their houses, or just the park down the road from his own. He didn’t care. He just kept going. Letting his legs go where they needed to, his mind on complete autopilot,

That’s how he ended up back at the back door of his school.

The school had been surrounded by caution tape and cars. No one was around the door. He moved the tape and slunk in.

The school looked like a haunted mansion. The walls were charred and aged fifty years with the soot and burns from the fire. The floor was covered in ash and the ceiling was concave. Whispers felt like they traveled through the air, though Mitchel assumed that was just him.

He crept silently through the decrepit halls looking for anything interesting. Quickly, he found himself outside the office where he’d started the fire. The room was a dusty gray and the only things still standing were three of the four walls and the metal filing cabinet in the corner, though they all looked beaten and burned. Fitting, Mitchel assumed, as that's what they were. He took special note of the lack of ceiling. Where everywhere else had caved in ceilings that seemed to be conforming to the flames ignited, the launch room lost itself in the path of the flames' destruction.

Another glance at the ceiling caused Mitchel to notice an open door upstairs. Once again, impulse took the wheel. This time he at least had enough common sense to acknowledge this was a terrible idea. The ceiling was caving into the ground level, meaning the floor of the second level was also caving in. Still, Mitchel found himself going up the stairs a few doors down from the blazing office, not quite finding the threat and inevitable consequences worth more than a passing thought.

That’s how we end up back at the beginning. You see, on the second floor of his charred high school, Mitchel Fowler found what he’d pestered for in the car. He found the hallucinated sights from his nightmares. He found his closest friends, Alina Hawthorn and Calvin Carden, burned and bruised, and welded together.

Mitchel Fowler flung open the door to his old chemistry class and heard a harsh crack from the room. He carefully walked in and saw two sets of legs kicked out from behind the door. He saw two pairs of eerily familiar shoes and a fresh puddle of blood pooling away from the hinges. He shrunk down and closed the door slowly.

His eyes locked with a blank-faced pale boy and red eyes. He refused to look at the other body. Shakily, he sat in front of Calvin and Alina. He reached for one of their unoccupied hands. He opened his mouth, “...”

And nothing came out.

---

He doesn’t know how long he sat there. He doesn’t know when he stopped crying. He doesn’t know when he gently caressed Calvin’s ashen face or Alina’s bloody neck. He doesn’t know how he moved to sit them up, and he doesn’t know when he wriggled to sit between their barely separated frames, one arm around each.

He doesn’t remember screaming. He doesn't remember profusely apologizing. He doesn’t remember begging for forgiveness, or bargaining with the powers above for a chance to have them back.

He remembers letting out a bitter laugh and saying, “See, Lina, it’s funnier when you're the one who dies.”

He remembers letting his head fall to Calvin’s shoulder and muttering “Maybe I did look like the guy that got stabbed.”

He remembers sitting in the hallway with them not very different from how they are now, but if either Alina or Calvin were alive, they wouldn’t remember any of this.

Mitchel Fowler doesn’t know what he’s going to do once he leaves the comforts of a burnt and bloodied chemistry classroom. He doesn't know how he'll meet his parents' eyes when he slinks through the front door. He doesn't know how he'll explain the motive for what he's done. Luckily for him, he doesn’t have to figure it out.

I don’t know who the grieving boy actually was, or what caused him to punt rationality to the vultures. I don’t know who his friends were, or what kept them in that chemistry classroom alone with no way out. I don't know how officials reacted to the three kids enveloped in a goodbye hug, two of them conjoined from the hip down. I don’t know what was going on in any of their final moments.

I do know that it was an accident. A stupid, deadly accident. I know that Alina Hawthorn and Calvin Carden are dead, and I know that it was all Mitchel Fowler’s fault.