The next day on the school bus wasn't as painful as the first day.

Will's seat beside me remained empty. A quiet elevenish-year-old boy sat on the single seat at the opposite side of mine. His spirits visibly sank when William didn't hop beside me onto the bus this morning.

Brian, I think his name was, used to be William's bus-buddy. My brother chatted with the tween as if he were no stranger on the first day he came on bus 12. Brian seemed utterly plain when we first went on, but now he looked forward to Will's daily presence on the bus.

I sat solemnly on the way to school, hesitant to speak with the boy. I was never the talkative type. I wasn't as smooth and daring as Will. I wanted to comfort him in some way, but I couldn't.

He obviously knew about Will's disappearance. The whole school did.

I descended onto the right side of the doubled seat, closer to Brian. The bus sped over a bump, and I landed ungracefully. Brian noticed my sharp movement and sniffed to my direction.

He had ruffled brown hair and a snubbed nose. His eyes were a pretty shade of ebony, the same tone as his skin. Brian gazed at me intuitively, waiting for my next move, but not intensely.

"Um, hey," I said, smiling. His jaw was set firmly. I must've smiled like a shark, so I quickly swallowed it back and looked at him more seriously.

I felt awkward when Brian didn't respond.

"Are you in grade five?" I tried to act casual to bring in a conversation.

Brian dropped his eyes to the shaky bus floor and didn't respond. He was never much of a talker, but he spoke up around my brother quite a lot.

"Alright, I'll jump straight to the point. My brother discussed books with you a lot. He was an avid reader, and I think you are too."

"Was." The boy cut me off, speaking for the first time. "You said was."

I bit my lip. "I mean...is. He is an avid reader. This is probably hopeless, but did he talk about a book called 'Stand By Me'?"

Brian fixed his eyes on the window behind me as if he was thinking. He opened his mouth to speak, then shook his head instead.

"Oh. Okay. Well, thanks," I responded, feeling slightly defeated. I sat back in my normal chair and stared out the window. This book seemed to be one of the rare secrets Will and I shared.

* * *

"Everyone's talking about this stupid presentation that's gonna happen in third period," Julia told me and Mark as we made our way through the cafeteria. I swore viciously when someone barged into my shoulder which made me drop my apple.

"Asshole," I muttered, picking up my now dirty apple and tossing it into the nearest bin.

"What presentation?" Mark asked Juliet, just before getting distracted by this girl he had a massive crush on that was standing by Subway.

Juliet began to answer his question. "Well, basically they're gonna get everyone to the Theater and talk about safety and shit. They even got the police involved. I'm sure this is the aftermath of Will's absence. They-" Suddenly Julia synced in with Mark's endless stare at his crush, noticing his silence.

"Oh come on, Mark, she's not even that hot," Julia groaned, referring to Rachel Mathers, whom I shared a History class with.

"No one asked you, Julia," Mark replied snootily, dragging his stare away from the pretty Russian with a toned body.

Julia rolled her eyes and went on on a rant about Mark's crush and her absent curves while I tuned in with my thoughts. I was positive Will's absence brings up this presentation - but it looks like I was wrong.

Sean Farrows, a guy in the eighth was holding a newspaper with what seemed to be an outrageous headline. He had a small circle of people trying to snatch at it to get a better look while Sean stabbed the newspaper excitedly.

"Holy shit!"

"Another one?"

"Everyone's gonna hit that shitty Fay city now. No one's staying after this, obviously."

"But what if this sick freak comes to Fay?"

Terrified wails riled up everyone in the cafeteria. The popular girls all sat in the corner, biting on their newly manicured nails. The math group seemed to be calculating weaponry distances. The cheerleading squad started pacing around the wads of anxious people. Even the jocks stopped their childish, rowdy remarks and widened their eyes at the news.

The newspaper Sean was holding a few minutes ago came flying at the table beside my group. Mark flinched away just before it came in contact with his face. It slid halfway above empty cafeteria table.

Julia grabbed it despite Sean's protests. Her face grew dark. Mark read over her shoulder and gasped. I was more than desperate to find out what was happening.

"Give me!" I snapped, clawing at the newspaper. Julia gave in, allowing my eyes to scan the oh-so-popular headline:

YOUNG ADULT LINKED TO WILLIAM BLACK'S DISAPPEARANCE IS FOUND DEAD

My eyes fell to the picture regarding the headline. It was an image of a tattooed, bulky man with a bullet wound in the middle of his torso. My heart began to thud. I knew this man. He was the one that disappeared behind the Ferris Wheel with Will, which was the last time I had seen my brother. I was mostly drunk when I caught sight of the two walking behind the big wheel, but seeing him on the newspaper confirmed by memory.

"Sarah..." Julia put a hand on my shoulder. "Your brother...he's not capable..."

I understood what she was trying to say. Julia and probably everyone in this country thinks that Will shot this man. I thought otherwise.

I read the paragraph which said that they have not identified the murderer. The man was shot at 12:01 AM behind the local park's Ferris Wheel behind a few trees. Investigators think that the murderer planned out the attack and used the New Years loud firework booms to hide the gunshot noise. The gun has not yet been found, but traces of Will's DNA in the form of blood was located near the body, leading to nowhere.

That was strange. Utterly, unsuspectedly strange. I longed for a reason to believe that my brother had nothing to do with it. My brain came up with a few reasons.

A) He was perfect.
B) He was perfect.
C) He was always perfect.

I sighed and allowed Mark to embark on a reading-the-newspaper adventure. It's been only sixteen hours and the newsmen have collected enough information to leave the media raging.

Julia offered endless comfort that did no good. Mark gave me reassuring glances during Lit, which eventually led to dragging it over to that Russian girl. Even the teachers seemed unusually down, faltering in their steps when they saw Will's empty seat.

I didn't know how to feel. I should be happy, knowing that everyone didn't entirely believe that Will was responsible and that his perfection throughout his life paid off. But I wasn't.

I was able to retrieve some more information about the murder. The tattooed man was named Eli. He had a particular tattoo on his collarbone of a gun being choked by the stems of a rose's roots that attracted the police. He was 21 years old and had an infamous reputation.

None of this information appeared important to me. All I wanted to know was: why was Will hanging out with a dangerous man like Eli? Where was Will? Was there even a 'Will' at this point?

I didn't see any more of his ghosts since the plate incident. But I always felt his lingering presence in every room, like his cold breath in the air, or the sound of glasses shattering against the floor.

I was disturbed. Frightened of the truth.

The house smelled like liquor as soon as I set foot into the living area. Liquor meant grief. Grief meant my father.

"What do you mean, you can't find where the blood leads to?" I heard my mother shriek into the cordless phone, way over in the kitchen. "My son has been missing for three days. Don't you dare tell me to calm down." She went quiet for a minute. I could hear her nostrils flaring from where I was standing.

"Bastard." She slammed the phone into the receiver and turned towards me. She jumped and quickly recovered, relief visible in her eyes.

"Sorry, Sarah." Mom leaned against the counter and rubbed her forehead. "They can't...they can't do this to me. To us."

I entered the kitchen and offered her a weak smile. I struggled to say something. Mom spoke first.

"How was school?" She asked, but I could see this far away, uninterested look in her eyes.

"Fine," I replied lamely, "we, uh, saw the newspaper."

My heart fell as her face collapsed. I talked again quickly, careful not to spill her emotions over the edge.

"It doesn't prove anything. In fact, this gives us the advantage of knowing that Will's here."

"Or his corpse," Mom whispered slowly, digging her nails into her palm. She set her hands right above her swollen stomach, her eyes bulging with worry.

I wanted to comfort her, tell her to not lose hope. But I did nothing to comfort her - because my unworthy brain couldn't come up with anything to say. How could I tell her to stay positive when I contemplated between killing myself and getting out of the cubicle today?

"Your father-", she said the word like poison, "-is a shame to this family. He comes home roaring drunk an hour after I think that he's gone to work, keeping our fridge stocked. Instead, he buys the whole damn bar and goes over to the police station to have a little chat." Mom clutches a cutting board and brings out a knife from the drawers, reminding me of Will.

She doesn't talk to a while, a grim expression on her face as she placed an orange on the green board and started cutting. The juice squirted onto the material underneath, quickly dissolving in her rough hands. "I get phone calls from them straight after, telling me that he's been restrained after demanding answers. Only he attacked the consultant, making life harder," she said. She frowned as the juice from the orange dribbled onto her maternity dress.

I swallowed repulsively. "He's just upset, Mom."

The knife was dragged harshly against the cutting board. The force knocked the board off the counter and onto the white tiles. She muttered furiously under her breath and kneeled down to clean it up. I swept past her and told her to sit back as I picked the mess from the floor and swept the floor clean for the third time this week.

Mom sat on the kitchen chair, her hands on her overly sized belly. She was quiet for a long time. I shook my head at the empty area where a dishwasher should've been pushed into. I washed the board under the sink.

"The police don't think he did it," Mom broke the silence. I turned around and glanced at her, trying to read her hollow expression. I immediately understood what she meant. "I don't think he did either," I said.

She nodded and leaned back, almost in relief. Did she really think I blamed him?

We both jerked in surprise when we heard the sound of a bottle rolling on the floor from the level above us. We recollected ourselves and were reminded that Dad was here, as drunk as a skunk.

Mom tutted in disgust.

I silently agreed to her bitterness. Dads state was helping no one. We were all helplessly reduced to waiting for the cops to find new information.

I remembered what the waiting did to me. Hallucinating William was even worse than the knowledge of his disappearance. In my abnormal view, he looked the same from head to toe. I had even seen the small freckles underneath his structured jawline, the double-knotted shoelaces, and the tiny crack at the side of his glasses that I had noticed last year when it fell from his grasp. But his actions were something completely different; it was terrifying.

If I told anyone, they would probably keep it to themselves but secretly distance themselves from me. After all, who would want to be friends with a psycho?

* * *

I forced myself to sleep at three AM.

To be truthful, dreams were not working in my favor. I was scared of the dark, ever since I was four, and this fear stayed with me till now. Honestly speaking, it wasn't the blackness of the room that particularly scared me but the thought of not knowing what was out there.

I switched the lights off and entrapped myself under my covers. I pulled my flower-patterned duvet over my head, even though that wouldn't save me from anything lurking around. I closed my eyes and created patterns in my head to force sleep upon me - nothing worked.

I resurfaced from the covers to get some air. I opened my eyes and stared at the dark room. My clothes-piled chair looked monstrous in the dark. My lamp seemed to leer at me, it's long wires like strewn arms trying to grope at me. The moonlight created an unusual illusion of a figure standing behind the curtains, waiting to pounce. Suddenly I was nine again, drowning with the thought of monsters in the room.

I scolded myself inwardly. The insomnia was one thing, but the dark was another. I switched my position so that my body weight was on my right arm with my head on the pillow. I screwed my eyes shut again.

I felt something light on my bare shoulder. Something like a... breath. It was so delicate, so discreet that anyone would've missed it. But with my over-alert senses, it was like a knife to the throat.

An intense atmosphere fell upon my body. I opened my eyes and tried to stay calm. I had to prove myself that it was just my imagination that stirred this discomfort and nothing else.

I slowly rolled around to my left arm and screamed.

There was a pair of dead eyes staring at me, blood seeping out of both sockets. His hand was drunkenly weighed over back, his torso facing me. The strangest part was the eyes. They were a pair that I could've recognized in a sea of blue eyes. It took less than a few seconds to realize that it was Will's dead body draped over mine.

I screamed till my throat went raw. My first instinct was to shove the body off my bed and escape the room. I blinked rapidly. As soon as my eyes flew open again, he was gone, and it was just me, gasping on the bed.

My heart was thudding violently in my chest. I tried to level my breathing but Will's dead eyes were stuck in my head. I heard footsteps from the other side of my door approaching me.

Mom burst in, coming in as quickly as her feet could take her. Her stomach bulged in front of her, so she was panting and grasping at her tummy. Her expression was almost as wide as wide, surprised to see me untouched in the room.

"What happened, Sarah?" she demanded, sitting on my bed and taking both hands in hers.

I struggled to breathe. I looked again at the side of the bed to make sure my brother wasn't awaiting me.

"I-I..." I dragged my sweaty palm away from hers and ran it through my bushy hair. This was the third time I imagined William darkly appear this reality. 

"Did you get one of those attacks, Sarah? Hey, talk to me!" Mom imploded, nearly shaking my shoulders.

"No," I said uneasily. "I mean, yes. It's okay," I breathed out slowly, trying to gather my senses and lie sensibly. "It's okay. I'm fine."

I was anything but fine. Hallucinating a very alive William was one thing - but a dead Will was something else.