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“Ayd, I’m going to go shower,” Josiah called when the blonde took her headphones off and rested them on top of her laptop’s keyboard.

“Okay,” she said, saving her paper one final time.

Ayden scrolled through the ten pages, and couldn’t help but feel proud of herself. It had literally taken her a whole day to write it, but she finished it. And she thought it was perfect. The blonde was sure that when she handed it in on Monday she would get at least a high B--and this was her professor who was the toughest grader.

She let her green eyes slide over to the time on the microwave. It was just after nine. She sighed. Some Saturday night this was. Ayden felt kind of bad because she hadn’t even noticed when Carson left. She knew that she had been quite a bore that day, but to her, school came first. Especially annoying, ten page papers.

Ayden pushed back from the kitchen table and stretched her muscles, realizing just how sore she was from sitting in the wooden chair almost the whole day. She brushed her hair up and tied it into a haphazard ponytail before she dug through the cupboard. The water running from the shower in Josiah’s bathroom could easily be heard from where Ayden was.

Ayden yawned, feeling mentally exhausted after doing all that academic writing, and pulled out an applesauce container. Just as she reached into the drawer for a spoon, her phone started vibrating violently on the kitchen table where it sat next to her light-blue laptop.

The leggy blonde jumped from the sudden noise and scraped her knuckle on the lip of the counter. She hissed as the slight pain ebbed through the wound before it melted away into a steady throb. Ayden dropped the applesauce on the counter and abandoned the spoon that was now laying in the wrong section of the drawer.

Crossing the room quickly, she saw Carson’s name flash across the screen. Curious and unsure about what he had to say, the blonde snatched up her phone and answered with a cheery, “Hey, Car!”

Ayden didn’t get a response right away. She heard a mixture between heavy and shallow breathing, before a quiet sob. Ayden’s eyes narrowed unseeingly at the space in front of her as worry shot through her. “Carson? What’s going on?”

This time, the boy on the other end did answer, but it was so strained, mumbled, and hoarse, that she wasn’t sure if she was hearing everything correctly. What it sounded like, though, was, “Ayd?”

“Yeah,” she said firmly. “Carson, what--”

“I ca-can’t,” the deep voice choked. “Ayd--hurts--”

Ayden’s heart clenched as fear gripped her. Her voice rose as she asked, “What hurts? Carson, where are you?”

The blonde heard another sob and knew her best friend was crying. Just the thought that something bad had happened to him, tore her up, making her want to cry as well. But she held herself together, because she needed to figure out where he was.

“Outs-side. Everything, Ayd. All hurts,” Carson gasped quietly. He whimpered loudly into the phone and Ayden had to pull it back a few inches before he went quiet again--much quieter than before. She barely even heard him say, “Can’t move. Please, Ayd, help.”

Ayden was nearly in panic mode already. She had never heard Carson sound like that in all the years they had been friends. The blonde was throwing on her jacket and grabbing Josiah’s car keys off of the counter as she hurried over to put her shoes on.

“Carson,” she said clearly and slowly so he could keep up with her. “I need you to tell--” There was a loud thud on the other end that was instantly followed by a deafening silence. “Carson?” Nothing. She couldn’t even hear his breathing or faint crying anymore. “Carson! Where are you?”

Ayden felt tears prick at her eyes as she pulled the phone away from her face. The call was still connected. She furrowed her brows and ran for Josiah’s bathroom. She flung the door open and yelled, “Josiah, Carson’s hurt, I have to go find him. I’m taking your car!”

Josiah jumped the second he heard the door to the bathroom slam open. He was in shock as Ayden screamed something rushed at him. He pulled back the curtain really fast and saw her standing in the doorway, her phone clutched to her ear, and tears threatening to spill down her face.

“What?” he asked, lost.

“It’s Carson!” she yelled, frantic. Josiah heard the shakiness in her voice. “I need to find him, I think he’s on campus. I’m taking your car.”

Josiah could only blink in awe as Ayden ran away from him. He shook his head and quickly turned the water off. He still had some shampoo in his hair and his eyes stung as some of it spilled down into his face. He didn’t fully understand what Ayden had been talking about, but he got the jist of it.

Josiah leaped out of the shower and grabbed his towel, to get some of the water off of his body. He rushed to find clothes, not caring in the slightest what he put on, and stumbled his way out into the living room. As far as he could tell, Ayden was already gone. He tossed on his tennis shoes that were sitting by the door, shoved his phone in his pocket, and ran out of his apartment, not bothering to lock the door behind him.

When he got outside, he saw that Ayden had already taken his car, so he did the only thing he could. He took off at a sprint, running towards campus. He didn’t know where he was supposed to go, but he knew he had to find Carson. If Ayden was that freaked out, Josiah knew it was bad. He could only imagine, though.

Josiah ran until he couldn’t any longer, up and down the streets on campus. This was where his history with the track team came in handy. What bothered him the most was that he never ran into Ayden, and he couldn’t find Carson anywhere. The twenty-one year old tugged at his wet, black hair in worry. He had no idea what was going on, and that just made everything ten times worse for him.

Josiah pulled out his phone and tried to call Carson first, but it only rang and rang before finally going to voicemail. He rubbed a hand over his face and attempted to call Ayden this time. Her phone went straight to voicemail, not even ringing once. The older boy’s stomach lurched as he realized he was floundering with no clue what to do. He couldn’t get a hold of Ayden, and as far as he knew, Carson was probably passed out in some alley somewhere.

Josiah groaned loudly, nearly screaming into the air as he stared up at the sky. He was so angry and he felt lost. The thought of Carson being hurt hit him really hard, and he wanted to be sick. Literally anything could have happened, and Josiah didn’t have the slightest inkling as to what it was.

Fuelled by desperation, Josiah started to run again. In that instant he promised himself he wasn’t going to give up. He wouldn’t stop looking until he found his friend. And when he finally did, ten minutes later, in the far corner of campus next to the football practice fields--the last place Josiah had thought to look--the older boy’s chest tore in two.

Carson was laying in a heap of his own limbs, half-curled in on himself. Josiah saw that his pants were only pulled up part of the way, and he knew. He knew instantly what had happened to his best friend. But he didn’t know why it happened, or who had done it. Fury filled him worse than it ever had for any other reason in his life.

Just the thought that someone could be disgusting and cruel enough to do this to anybody, let alone Josiah’s best friend, made him physically sick. The darker boy raced over to Carson’s lifeless body and dropped to his knees next to him. His sage eyes filled to the brim with tears and he wanted to scream at whoever had done this.

Carson’s phone was cracked and laying about a foot away from his hand. It looked like he blacked out while he had been talking on it, and it had just fallen away from him. He grabbed the brunette’s wrist and checked for a pulse. Josiah almost had a heart attack in relief when he found one.

Then he took one look at the blood that seemed to be all over Carson’s face, and in the next instance, he was dialing 911. A man answered immediately asking Josiah what his emergency was, and he choked out everything he could. He gave their location, explained what Carson’s condition was, and then he was crying into the phone to the operator who was kind enough to stay on the line with him until he had gained his composure back.

Completely alone again, and with nothing on his mind but to help Carson in any way he could, Josiah pulled the younger boy’s pants up as carefully as possible without hurting him. Then he took his own jacket off and covered his friend with it. It was only March, and even though the snow was melted away, ten o’clock at night was still quite chilly temperature-wise.

Josiah heard sirens in the background and his chest flared with relief and hope. He glanced around but couldn’t see any lights. The sirens seemed to get louder until the stayed at a level volume before they cut off. Josiah was confused and angry. He swore and kicked at the ground as he paced. He turned back and studied Carson, who looked so dead-like as he laid there on the cold ground.

Josiah checked his phone and he swore it was taking too long. The ambulance and the cops or whoever the hell else showed up to things like this should have been there by now. He bit at his lips, wondering why he had heard sirens a few minutes before if they weren’t for Carson.

Time dragged on slowly and another couple minutes passed before Josiah heard sirens again. But this time they didn’t stop until the emergency vehicles were right in front of the two boys. Red and blue lights were flashing everywhere, off of every semi-reflective surface, and Josiah didn’t think he would ever get the image of them out of his head. They were burned into his retinas as well as his memory.

Everything from then on was a blur as police and medics rushed over to Carson and him. A female police officer who was at least six inches shorter than him had to forcefully take Josiah away from Carson’s body so they could get the boy up onto a stretcher.

People were yelling and everything seemed to be moving at a frantic pace. Josiah ripped his arm from the policewoman’s grip and ran to the back of the ambulance as they lifted Carson up into the vehicle.

He turned to the medic who was about to jump in the back and said with conviction, “I’m riding with him.”

The man who looked to be about thirty nodded after taking in Josiah’s disheveled and panicked appearance. “Hurry and get in, then, kid. We don’t have time to waste.”

Josiah didn’t hesitate to scramble up into the back of the ambulance, and as soon as the doors slammed shut, the world seemed to go quiet for the briefest of moments. And then the sirens were blaring, the vehicle was lurching to life before it started racing to the hospital, and the two medics with Josiah were fussing over Carson.

“Why did I hear sirens earlier?” Josiah asked bluntly as the question popped back into his head.

He didn’t expect an answer in the middle of the chaos, but the man who had let him into the ambulance, turned to look at the black-haired kid just long enough to give him a distracted, flat answer.

“A girl got into a car accident on the other end of campus.”

When the man finished talking, he went right back to ignoring Josiah so he could focus on Carson. Josiah paled as the words sunk into his mind. There was no preventing it as his stomach lurched and then he was throwing up right between his legs and onto the metal floor of the ambulance.

There was so much going on around him, that Josiah felt like everything was moving in slow motion. All the sounds muted in his ears and he started to sway in his seat, sweat forming in thick beads across his face. The last thing he saw before he was out cold was the paleness of Carson’s skin, and the different shades of blood that were a stark contrast against the ghost-white colour of the brunette’s face.

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