Pete and I both went on a short walk right before curfew arrived. I was freezing my ass off, but he seemed to be perfectly fine. I swear he's like a goddamn polar bear. 

We wandered around the outskirts of the flooded lawn, wherever we felt like stepping. Occasionally it was sopping wet, but that was alright I guess, because it didn't last for long.

I wasn't watching where I was going, only the grass and the cement edges of the sidewalk. Pete was guiding me, and I didn't realize he'd stopped on the bridge until I looked up.

And all the memories of Brendon telling me a little more about Sarah rushed back, the sound of his insane laughter echoing through the air, the way he leaned over the railing a bit too far for my liking. Suddenly, I was terrified that bridge was going to collapse, like somehow Brendon had become the bridge, if that even made an ounce of sense, which it did in my mind at the least. But then again, I think my mind had been shorting out frequently now.

"God, it was all my fault."

Pete turned and squinted at me. "What are you-" he stopped and glared, lips curving down into a frown. "Shut up. It was everybody's fault."

"No, no it wasn't." I sputtered. It was all my fault. Nobody else should've had to watch over him. They'd all already done their parts before me, and all the weight had been placed on my shoulders, like runners passing a baton in a race. A race to the end, and I'd dropped the fucking baton. "I could've saved him, Pete, I could've-"

"We all could've saved him! Stop being so... so selfish!" He spat and pressed a finger to my chest, angry unsaid words stirring in his eyes.

Pete growled like an animal and shoved both hands at me before stalking off. Stupidly, I ran after him because I didn't want to be left behind out in the dark so close to Brendon's ghost that still told me what I'd done wrong.

"I'm sorry-"

"You should be sorry!" He yelled at the top of his lungs with his fists balled at his sides "you should be sorry because you did this! You were so fucking selfish because you thought he loved you! Why couldn't you have just listened to me when I said he wouldn't fall in love with you? I fucking told you and you didn't even listen-"

"Oh, how would you know!"

"Because I was number 6!" He hollered and we both stopped for a second in stunned silence.

"It lasted for 2 months, almost 3. He was absolutely terrified of losing me as a friend and as a partner too, and I could tell. I could see it in his eyes. So I broke it off and we agreed to just stay friends, and we put the past behind us." Pete muttered and started walking away before I could process what he'd told me.

Maybe he just knew. He knew after Sarah, Brendon kinda broke, like he'd said. It was like he tried to warn me and damn it I should've listened but I didn't and now here I was, one first love dead and down with no more to go.

"But he loved me, he kissed me-" I called after him across the yard, and he spun around on his heels just to glare at me.

He cupped his hands around his mouth, and yelled, "He kissed everyone. You were just the last."

And he stormed in after that and stomped to our room without another word.

So I'd finally gotten the opportunity to have a moment to myself to walk back to the dorms, wander up the stairs at my own pace, and sit down on the lawn chair I'd previously claimed for myself (so Pete wouldn't stand on it again or spill his stupid goddamn chili all over it) to finish up the essay I had to do for English that I never finished due to some unfortunate events. However, all the teachers have been more understanding than usual and are completely fine with me turning in my best work a couple days late.

So yeah, here I am, finishing the essay that was due 3 days ago after getting in an argument with my roommate about who killed Brendon Urie.

And then Pete cleared his throat loudly from the doorway, and declared "I have to steal some alcohol". He'd been dead silent for the past hour or so while I did my work for once, and the statement he'd made surprised me. Well it would've surprised anyone, honestly. He didn't strike me as the type that would want to do that. Honestly, he'd probably already had some because when he got mad, he stayed mad for a while.

"Before you commit the Seacoast crime of the century, I need some motives that I can tell the police when you get busted."

"First of all," he glared "I have it in the fridge. You just never go in there to see it hidden behind the chicken nugget lunchables nobody eats but buys anyways. I'm not even sure why I said steal. I'm really tired. Second of all, from what the cop named Josh said back at the station, I want to know if he was so drunk he couldn't swerve. It's the ultimate test between too drunk and purposely dead."

I stared at him for a second. Either he was a genius or completely stupid; I couldn't tell. Most of the time, Pete walked a very fine line between the two.

"How're you going to find that out?"

"We had a drinking contest. He outdrank me by like 6 bottles. Somehow. I didn't think it'd be possible but he fucking did it." He sighed and ran his hands through his hair like he was preparing to skate down a half pipe at a competition that would decide his future. "I'm gonna match it, and then go and see if I can drive."

There was no way I was going to let him literally drive, even if it was just a tiny motorized car that the spoiled little rich kids drove when they whine about wanting an actual car but their parents are strictly against the idea so they go to the toy store and buy one where they can actually reach the gas pedal. I always wanted one of those. But anyways, I wasn't letting him drive anything.

"If you insist." I said and checked the time. It was nearly past lights out, the perfect time to do it since nobody else would be wandering about after then.

But is this really a smart idea?

"Are you sure you want to do this Pete?"

"If Brendon could do it, then so can I."

"Brendon is also dead." I reminded him and he shrugged.

"Minor details."

Pete hiccuped and shuddered once before wandering over to the fridge and pulling out an eternities worth of drinks that I'm pretty sure it would be illegal to own that much. If we got caught, I'm 99% sure one of us would be sent to jail, if not both of us.

Within half an hour and a hell of a lot of bad drunken jokes later, he'd finished half of what Brendon had stomached that night. And of course, being the great friend I am, I egged him on.

"You're halfway there, you can do it." I told him and started stacking the bottles in a little pyramid on his right side, under the table.

"I may be halfway there, but I'm all the way there to losing my lunch on the carpet."

"I'm not cleaning it up." I sighed, and passed him the trash bin instead. He refused to use it, no matter how much he complained his head was spinning.

And about another hour later, he'd successfully chugged the rest of the drinks set around him on the carpet with a painful sounding burp and continuously doubling over like he'd really be sick.

"Do you think you'd be able to drive?"

"Do you think I'd be able to walk?" He mumbled dazedly and stood up using the closest lawn chair as support, putting one foot in front of the other like it was the hardest task in the universe to do. Almost immediately, he tipped over to the left and crashed into the table, folding the plastic legs in on itself and sending it with an obnoxious crash to the floor. "Oh shit," he mumbled but made no effort to move whatsoever.

Pete hiccuped a couple times before actually getting the guts to stand up properly after falling so roughly. "What do I do now?"

I wish I knew, since he was the one that thought up this horrible idea. I'm not even sure what he could do to simulate driving. And then it hit me.

"Sit down," I told him and lightly pushed him down on to one of the lawn chairs that wasn't as broken as the other "we're playing Mario kart."

"I'm still going to beat your skinny ass like I always do. Fuckin' loser." He muttered quietly and limply held his hand out for the controller I had to pass him since his depth perception was pretty much useless at this point.

As soon as the game started, I could tell it would be a disaster just from the way the remote control arrow wandered down to the right corner every few seconds. So I had to start the game for him.

"Rainbow road, rainbow road!" He cheered and I agreed to his decision only because I knew it'd be hilarious to watch him swerve off the track. On the first strip of rainbow colored road, he did exactly as I'd anticipated and drove sharply to the left side and off the track. Meanwhile, I sped ahead because he'd always beaten me at this game before, specifically on this racetrack, and here was my chance to add a third tally mark to my lacking side of the "video games won" poster board we'd set up a while ago.

And I watched him constantly fall off the track, and I thought, how in the world did Brendon even walk? There was no way in hell Pete was even going to attempt to get up to go to class tomorrow, let alone drive a complicated mile or so to a forest only to crash off a linear strip of road.

Pete made laser noises with his puffed out cheeks each time he was returned to the race by the turtle guy sitting on the cloud, only to swerve off again in disappointment he didn't process yet.

"Dude," he said airily like he was watching his breath twist in the air as if it were cold out "I see so many colors. It's like the entire color spectrum brought some friends."

And then a few minutes of him marveling at the wall in dead silence passed, and he whispered as quietly as his voice would allow, "I can see sounds."

At that moment, I decided for him it would be a good stopping point for rainbow road and that he could finish it tomorrow while he stayed home and recovered from the excessive amount of alcohol he'd had tonight.

So he pushed himself up, wandered lazily back to his room while thumping into the exact same wall twice on his way, and finally shut the door. A couple seconds later I heard him miss the bed and collapse on the floor instead. I would've gone to help him up if an incredibly loud snore didn't signal that he was already asleep. It was probably best not to touch him.

I was left to clean up the empty bottles, which I didn't mind, but it was a pain in the ass having to carry that many over to the trash bin stored underneath the sink. It was the only place we'd had room, and coincidentally the only place where there wasn't enough space.

Brendon must've been shitface drunk if he'd had this much to drink that night. Pete could barely finish half without nearly getting sick.

And I wondered how many he'd had at once to build up such a tolerance to so many.

I didn't even want to think about that right now. My heart still hurt like it was being set on fire, my head pounding like it was hit with a mallet from that a carnival game, my ears ringing like bells. I hadn't even had one bottle to drink yet I felt sick.

The only thing left to do was contemplate what Pete's experiment had resulted in. He was most definitely drunk, so there was no possible way he could've driven a car, let alone set foot outside the door without breaking another table no matter how far across the room it could be. I could've put one on the ceiling and he still probably would've broken it. But then I had to take into account Brendon's drink tolerance, and my head started throbbing more than it had at the sure thought he'd driven off that cliff on purpose.

Maybe I just couldn't process he'd died with the full intention of crashing into that tree and breaking the barrier. Can't even let him wander off by himself for 10 minutes without dying.

I still felt guilty, however. Like it was my responsibility to save him and make sure he didn't step off the trail and die. But I'd messed that up unintentionally. I'd tried telling that to Pete like an apology, but he'd yelled at me previous to this incident for being such a dick and I just listened, because on the rare occasions he was mad, you just had to wait it out until his anger passed and he crashed wherever he was for the next few hours. Anger made him sleepy.

"It's official," I mumbled to myself like Brendon was still awake and listening, sitting at our kitchen table with no purpose other than to keep lighting cigarettes under the air vent "I'm out of my mind."

I could almost hear him say "you're perfectly sane." with a smile on his lips and the gleam in his eyes I missed so much.

And he remained unsolved.

[2420 words, 2/3/17, the next chapter is finally the last chapter im so excited it's like rlly sad tho but like it's good]