Walking home from wandering around campus while trying to forget everything and obviously not succeeding, I realized that my dorm room number was 321, and if you put that into date form, became March 21st.

What a coincidence.

It was almost like the universe had tried to warn me of that specific day 224 days ago, when Brendon wasn't dead and I was still oblivious as to what 56 heartbreaks can do to someone.

But the universe didn't warn me like the insensitive and cruel thing it is, and it let Brendon grab my hand and pull me in head first, out of my comfort zone, away from anything and everything I'd ever known.

I wanted to stay in the drivers seat with him curled up next to me, my eyes stuck on him the entire drive back from wherever he'd insisted on going. I would've driven him to the ends of the earth if he'd asked me to.

But I guess things don't turn out like they should.

I like to set my expectations high.

Pete barged into my bedroom a couple hours after I'd gotten back and sulked in bed for a while. He probably would've stopped by earlier if I hadn't arrived home and not spoken to him like usual.

"We need to save all of his stuff we want to keep," he said breathlessly "the janitor is coming to clear it all out today."

"Why not one of his family members? His mom? His dad? Siblings?" I asked, because that's usually how it happened in other situations like this. It only made sense for family to retrieve his belongings.

"For gods sake, Dallon," he whined and hid his face in his hands "he never told us about Sarah until recently, and that was because she was dead. Now, think about this one because I'm sure as hell not saying it out loud. If we never heard about his family, and he didn't like to talk about them, then..."

It took a second, but the lines connected. "Oh."

"Yeah. C'mon, let's just get this over with."

The fear set in that he would be gone for good. And I rolled out of bed and ran down the hall with him and through the open door. Everything was just as we'd left it almost an entire week ago, the blankets spread across the floor and all the Polaroid pictures still carelessly tossed on the countertop.

The smell of him still lingered in the air, the smoke and the watermelon candies, and the alcohol. And I stood stone still in the doorway for a moment to breathe it all in for the last time before it became a normal scent, and I'd never be able to smell it again.

And poof, he was gone. Gone for good.

I grabbed the pile of photographs first, and flipped through them all to make sure they were still there. It was a stupid idea of course, because it ended up stabbing me through the heart.

There was the one where he'd fallen asleep on my chest for the first time, when he'd claimed he wasn't flirting, that he was just tired.

The one when he climbed on my back and demanded I carry him out to Patrick's car because his "legs had stopped doing things"

When Ryan passed out in the bathtub after eating too much ice cream, using the shower curtain as a blanket for the night.

The photograph of Brendon sleeping on the couch after he had broken his wrist from trying to hang up Halloween decorations, made an appearance.

And the time when he'd been blowing bubbles with gum and it burst all over his face like a mask.

When we all played Jenga and the tower collapsed on Pete (who was not happy, losing for the 17th time in a row)

And when he'd called himself for a hurricane for the first time of many others, trashed his entire dorm room, and slept curled up on me for one of the first times of many. 

Brendon told me life was like a journey once, and damn it he was right about that. He was the adventure of a lifetime.

It was almost like he was still here.

"He's gonna get better," Pete had told me, desperately sure of it too. I wish he'd been right.

"It's like he kept every book he'd ever flipped the pages to," Pete muttered and carried out a huge overflowing stack of paperbacks from around the corner "we had to read this one in freshman year, this one over the summer..."

I drowned him out with my own thoughts and started glancing around Brendon's room for anything else we should keep. And my eyes landed on a small bundle of wilting pink flowers in a glass vase above a tiny table with a lamp carefully balanced on it.

Not only did I recognize the flowers, but there was something underneath it too.

"What's this?" I asked and reached up to pull out the black hardback book. We were both speechless when we saw the cover.

"Brendon and Sarah." Pete whispered miraculously, tracing the pads of his fingers along the engraving of the author names on the cover. He sniffed quietly and started to lift up to see the first page. "Do you think-"

"Can we open this later?" I blurted out and held the book shut "Ryan and Patrick should see it too." And they did, because we all missed him, and they deserved to find out everything when we did too.

Pete nodded and kept searching for anything that we would want to keep.

We ended up piling everything on one of his favorite blankets we'd covered with another sheet, preparing to drag a couple pounds worth of miscellaneous things back to our dorm room.

"We can't forget him," Pete said and collapsed on the floor right before we left while hugging one of the pillows from Brendon's old couch to his chest "he doesn't deserve that."

"He didn't deserve any of this."

Then Pesto hopped out of his tiny little box still in the corner. The food dishes were still full like Brendon had just refilled them.

I watched him wander through the room for a little bit, and he lingered in Brendon's bedroom for a while, like he still expected him to be in there.

"He's gone," I told the cat "he's not coming back."

Pesto purred softly, almost as if he was saying that I was a liar. I still remembered Brendon dropping that cat in my bomber jacket pocket, which I'd left in the closet as the patches started fraying and the memories kept flooding. I couldn't deal with this. Not right now. Yet Pesto persisted with rubbing his nose against the door frame.

However, Pete completely lost it, punching a dent into the wall next to the door on his way out, and he turned to the cat and yelled, "He's not coming back!"

After a few seconds of silence, Pesto purred again, as if everything was perfectly fine. But it wasn't fine. He was dead and was never going to return, no matter how badly I wished it were true.

"He's not fucking coming back," Pete mumbled and picked up the cat in one hand, petting his head like the first time he had when he met him "he's not coming back."

We let Pesto go on campus. His tag still had Brendon's name on it.

But we never saw that cat again.

..:..::..:::..::..:..

"Are you sure you want to open it?" Ryan asked us nervously in a small voice. We'd gathered around the book in a wide circle, late at night when we'd all finished our work and completed all preparations for classes the next day for the first time.

"We have to." Pete insisted and flipped open the cover. Everyone turned to me, and I was unanimously appointed to be the one that read everything out loud.

"This book belongs to Brendon and Sarah, and if you read any of this you'll fail all of your classes, so if you know what's good for you, you'll put this down." I laughed at the neatly messy wording I recognized as Brendon's. And in smoother handwriting style, read "the only reason you should be reading this is if we're dead or if aliens have invaded and the only way to defeat them is to read this to them."

And what a coincidence, they were both dead. So I kept reading.

The entries were mostly stories that made us laugh for just a moment. Short and sweet, with the alternating penmanship of Brendon and Sarah. Very few were sad, one or two talking about the loss of a beloved pet goldfish named Enchilada. Nearly all of them were happy though, almost all the paragraphs including both of their handwriting styles.

After a date written down as March 21st, everything went downhill. Nothing was neat and planned out anymore, writing spread sideways and upside down, even starting to transfer from thought to thought in the middle of a sentence. It was like watching a disaster unfold in slow motion.

After 3 consecutive blank pages, the numbers started.

#1: Sarah, dead.

#2: Anthony, not interested.

#3: Barry, didn't want a relationship.

All the way up to #57.

#57: Dallon.

And it remained unfinished.

I was #57.

"It wasn't suicide," Pete muttered, still in denial "he wrote your name down. He wasn't ready to leave."

And I couldn't tell him he was right because all the signs pointed to what we all didn't want to hear. But we didn't want to say it, we didn't want to believe it, and we sure as hell didn't want to think about it.

Then it hit me like a train.

"Sarah was #1."

Everyone glanced up to me, then back to the book to see, their eyes widening when they saw the number next to her name.

"She taught him the raindrop thing." Ryan whispered in disbelief.

"She was the one he never mentioned." Patrick muttered.

And I spoke again, "the S! He'd painted on the wall was for her."

And Pete stared into empty space and I could almost read his mind and say the one thing running through his mind that nobody else dared to.

"It was always her."

[1750 words, 1/13/17, I said I'd finish this in 2016 but look where I am]