"Are you going to keep monitoring him like that?"

I don't advert my eyes from the blond figure behind the fence. He crouches down as herds of schoolgirls and boys with backpacks bigger than theirselves hurry past. His eyes light up when the purple fleece jacket of Summer appears in the gate and he opens his arms to let her storm into them with the widest grin. He's always here to pick her up even though his own school is three miles in the other direction.

"Nico?"

Piper fidgets with the strap of her backpack, her eyes boring into the side of my face. Our school is next to Summer's... Not that Will would know that anymore.

He used to wait for me every evening at the old tree and I'd run out of class with the biggest smile on my face or stumble my way off the stairs after a bad day, only to burry my face into his shoulder as he chuckled and gave me a small pat on the back.

I'll never get used to standing here. Blended into the crowd of high-schoolers as just another students, another face to look past, another figure belonging to the mass. He could look at the stone stairs and see absolutely nothing. It doesn't even occur to him to glance past the fence.

and why would he?

No one is waiting there right?

"I'm just worried," I sigh.

He grabs her little hand and walks away with her. His long, brown coat waving up in the wind. The noise of shouting and laughing children drowns out every word that falls off their lips. I bury my hands deeper into my pockets, feeling the absence of warmth now more than ever.

"Nico, if he remembers we would have known by now, believe me."

I turn back to her, tearing my eyes away from the familiar but gut-wrenching scene.

"What if it returns slowly?"

she shakes her head with a certainty I wish I had.

"Not a chance, he got a very ugly head injury, that's not something you miraculously heal from."

"On Facebook you do."

Piper huffs out a puff of air in amusement.

"This is not Facebook Nico, this is reality."

it sure is

"Reality sucks."

The wind howls through the branches of the trees and makes them wildly dance up and down. For a moment we just stand there side by side, our arms barely brushing against each other while watching fathers and mothers pick up their tired, little kids.

Piper stays abnormally quiet for a second before adverting her eyes away from me.

"You shouldn't have lied."

Her voice is colder than the air biting in my face. A strange numbness takes over my body at the acceptance of her words.

"I know."

-----------------------------------

Will

"So you got back here, huh? Should I call paranormal activities?"

He glances up to the girl with two white pigtails and glinting brown eyes. A vague feeling of familiarity settles in his chest at the sight of her soft features and he absolutely despises it for happening so often the latest time. Like awakening from a deep intoxication, her face drifts past in a shredded memory of red and green party lights, her voice dances around him.

"Nice to meet you Will, I'm Suzie."

He blinks a few times at her.

"Suzie," he hates how it comes out more as a question than a recognition. She picks up a hat that a running kid had dropped and places it back on his spiky hair before he continues to race after his friends. Cheeks glowing red from embarrassment and the exhaustion of playing tag on the playground.

"Wow, they really hit you hard didn't they?" a set of pearly white teeth reveal under the grin of her black lipstick as she knocks a few times against her own head.

Will glowers at her. There are a lot of things he has lost but that one they surely don't let him forget. Annoyance nibbles at his stomach, how many more times are they going to rub that in?

"Your funeral sucked by the way."

At that he can't help but blow out a breath of air in amusement.

"No worries, maybe the second one will be better."

She crosses her arms over her chest and returns his grin.

"What did your boyfriend say when you turned up at his doorstep again?"

Will frowns at the odd question, "Steve?" he picks at his nails, "not much honestly, I only met him after the accident."

She squeezes her eyes at him, "No you didn't."

The shouts of playing children has gone quiet by now, the playground slowly returning to the empty, concrete mess it was this morning. Only a few lost kids, who still wait for their always arriving too late parents, walk up the metal slide with loud, hysterical voices.

He drops his hands to his sides.

"What?" irritation distorts his features, "okay listen, I might have memory loss but that doesn't mean I'm making up the ones that I do have!"

she raises her hands in mock surrender, making a face that could come straight out of a meme.

"I wouldn't be so sure about that anymore."

Will just rolls his eyes at her.

"Okay lover boy, you," she stabs a bony finger in his chest, the nail messily painted with baby blue nail polish but unable to hide the bitten off edges on it, "said that you already had a boyfriend when I asked you out. So either, you have a boyfriend walking around this town that you don't know of OR you are a big fat liar that was too pussy to reject me."

She gives him a sideway smirk, his mouth opens to retort but nothing comes out. An overwhelming wave of confusion washes over him.

"Wh..What?"

He shakes his head with tightly closed eyes, trying to shake all those messed up memories back to a whole.

"I met Steve earlier? Why don't I remember that?" he looks back at her, "why didn't he tell me that?!"

Suzie just shrugs.

"Maybe he didn't want to mess up that head of you any further."

He nods silently, completely at loss for words. Right on that moment, Summer storms towards him with two chestnuts in her hands. She wraps herself around his legs, almost knocking him over in the process.

"Look! Look! Look, what I found! They're like the biggest chestnuts ever!" she jumps up and down in enthusiasm. Will smiles shakily back but the joy doesn't reach his eyes. His mind is a complete wreck of a tornado.

Summer takes his hand and tries to drag him down with her weight.

"Will" she wines while yanking at his sore arm, "Will look!"

Suzie smiles slightly.

"Find that boyfriend of yours would you?" she turns back around, "Or I'm not coming to your second funeral!"

She trows an 'I'm watching you' gesture over her shoulder before walking back in the other direction and just like that she's gone again.

------------------------

Thoughts about my gal, Suzie?