Her blond hair was jagged, barely cleared her shoulders, and looked like someone had taken squiggly craft scissors to it. She had cut it the night before, and was in process of prepping her sister's hair for the same doomed fate when her mom came in, quickly de escalating the situation. I always admired the Porter family's ability to solve disputes without violence or anger. Her mom sat on the patio at my old house with my mom, day drinking, while Lyla and I sprinted around the yard chasing each other in a two-player game of tag. She was always one step ahead of me. The patch of grass had barely recovered from her smashing it down with her heavy foot by the time I repeated it. No matter how fast I ran or how hard I pushed myself, I could never catch up to her.

I could see my house down the road and pushed myself to reach it in record time. The mailbox reverberated from the slamming of my palm on it, a way for me to mark my finish. I checked my watch and smiled at the time.

6 minutes 43 seconds

My new personal best. The mile path I had measured around my neighborhood became a daily routine for me. I never listened to music while running because the hard pavement beneath my sneakers made the most uniform and comforting sound. With every sound, it marked an accomplishment. Despite my energetic mood of besting myself, the dark gloom of my house waved over me.

Before I could open the door, my phone rang.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Charlotte. Any chance you're free right now?"

"Yeah, for the rest of the day actually."

"Could you meet me somewhere?"

"Yeah, just text me the address." I hung up the phone and undid the bike lock, looping it through a free bar on the bicycle. I quickly plugged in the address and pedaled down the road to the destination.

Fifteen minutes later I pulled up to the building, the sign facing the other way. As I looked for a something to use as a bike rack, Wesley wandered over to me.

"Hey, I can put your bike on my car's rack if you want." I nodded and watched as he lifted my bicycle with ease and placed it securely on the back of his car.

"Thanks." He shrugged and walked back towards me with his hands in his front pockets. "What is this place anyway?" I asked straining to look at the sign on the side of the building. Wesley motioned for me to follow him.

SEDONA MORTUARY

"Wesley, what the fuck?" I shook my head and walked over to his car and attempted to pull my bicycle off the rack. "Will you please help me?" I asked, frustrated I didn't look at the name of the address earlier.

"Charlotte, let me explain, okay?" Nodding, I sat on the ledge of the trunk. "I spent the entire morning calling this place asking them to tell me one simple thing: her cause of death. They wouldn't release it because I'm not family. I need to know. Closure, right?"

"How is that closure? It will only lead to more questions."

His eyes were becoming glassy and I couldn't look at him like that.

"Okay, if we aren't done in five minutes, we're leaving. Okay?"

"Okay." He climbed the concrete steps of the building and held the door open for me. "After you."

The lobby was decorated like what people would expect the lobby of a mortuary to look like. A lady in her mid-fifties slowly typed on the computer. Burgundy and tan filing units sat behind her, dying plants slumped over in their pots. The irony and morbidity were thick in the air. With Wesley falling closely behind, I approached the desk, my bitten back nails tapping rhythmically on the vinyl countertop.

"Hi, I have a few questions about cremation?" The woman raised her eyebrows and corners of her mouth like I had said something intriguing to her.

"I'm sorry for your loss," she said, but her face said otherwise. "Who passed?"

"My dog," I said, hoping it would lead to questions to buy us more time. "She was hit by a car and I live in a small apartment and don't have anywhere to bury her.

"Understandable. If you'll come back this way with me, I'll walk you through the process and let you pick an urn." I nodded and followed her down the hallway, looking over my shoulder at Wesley who gave me a thumbs up and jumped over the counter.

Fifteen minutes later, the lady, whose name was Irene, handed me a few pamphlets and wished me luck on choosing an urn. I scurried out of the building and saw Wesley sitting on the steps. He pulled a folder out from under him and handed it to me, trading for the pamphlets on the 'Benefits of Cremating an Animal' and 'How to Keep a Piece of Them with You Forever'. He chuckled at the titles and flipped through them. "Have you looked at this yet?" He shook his head and sat the pamphlets to the side.

"I wanted to wait for you. I just made sure her name was on the folder and I bolted."

On the tab of the folder, Lyla's full name was neatly printed. Wesley and I looked at each other before opening the folder.

I shut my eyes tightly after seeing the first page. Her senior yearbook photo was printed next to the pale face of her body, the metal table she was on showing through strands of her blond hair. Wesley picked up the folder and silently read over the page.

"Only she could look beautiful on a coroner's table," he attempted the joke to lighten the situation at hand, but when I opened his eyes, I could tell he really believed that. His finger ran over her yearbook photo. I leaned over his shoulder and looked at her.

Her black dress barely covered the matching tattoo we got one drunken night at the beach last year. Two birds sat on a branch with a single line. My hand drifted to my shoulder and patted my tattoo. My mom was so mad when I came back and she saw it and called Mrs. Porter immediately. The two of us were grounded for two weeks, but it was worth it. The tattoo was a signifier that we would always be connected with each other.

"How much is this going to hurt?" I asked, leaning back on the chair. The tattoo artist chuckled and prepared a sanitizing cloth to clean the area. He had sleeves of tattoos, and most of his legs were covered.

"Ever been stung by a bee?" he asked and I nodded. "It's like that but a bunch of times.

Lyla laughed from the chair beside me, reading a magazine they had in the waiting room.

"Hey, you're going to have to do this next," I reminded and she frowned. "But worth it, right?" I asked and reached out my pinky. She returned the gesture and entangled the fingers together.

"Worth it."

"Are you okay?" Wesley asked. I nodded and told him to flip to the next page. But I wish I didn't.

The second page was somehow worse than the first page. It was an outline of a body pen marks over it. My eyes scanned over her upper half and my heart dropped when they reached her arms.

Red.

I yanked the paper out of Wesley's hand and scoured the bottom of the page for the coroner's note.

Apparent suicide caused by deep gashes on antebrachiums. Below the fatal wounds are visible similar scars. Remnants of stitches are visible on three larger wounds below.

I shoved it back at Wesley and stood up marching to his car. He followed me and grabbed my shoulder trying to calm me down. "Charlotte, relax."

"They fucking knew!" I yelled, I leaned against his car, the cool metal felt nice against my burning skin. "Her parents knew and they didn't do anything about it." How didn't I know? Why didn't I do anything about it? Wesley pulled me to him, holding onto me, both of us crying.

He shushed me and rested his head on top mine. "Charlotte, it's okay."

"Why wasn't I there for her?"

"The same could be said about me, but blaming ourselves isn't going to change the fact that she's gone. We'll learn from this the hard way. But that's okay." I could feel my heartbeat slowing down, and pulled away. "You okay?" he asked, his hand on my cheek.

"Yeah," I responded. "Can we get out of here?"

"I know just the place."

Ten minutes later, we were looking down on our small town of Sedona. We were on Grabbing Grove, the local hookup spot in town. Wesley and I ignored this and quickly got out of the car.

He held the folder in front of him and pulled a lighter from his back pocket, handing it to me.

"Light it," he instructed. I rolled the metal wheel and a flame flickered from the green plastic lighter. Once, the flame settled, I placed it on the corner of the folder. The cheap paper quickly caught fire and Wesley set it on the pavement.

We watched the flame consume the paper in silence until it turned to ash. Wesley was the first to speak.

"Thank you for coming with me today."

"I'm glad I did." He awkwardly side hugged me and walked with me to the car. Before getting in, I glanced at a tree with a bunch of initials carved into it. "Did you guys ever do that?" I asked, pointing to the tree.

He nodded and approached it. He hand roamed the tree until he found the familiar letters. A jagged 'WB+LP' with an equally as jagged heart covered a small portion of the trunk. The rest of the tree trunk was filled with letters and the occasional '4ever'.

"We did this on our last date before she died. We didn't have a knife so she found an old nail file in her bag." He smiled at the memory and sat on the hood of his car. "We swore we would never do it because it was always alarming that this many people brought knives on dates." I joined him on the hood, and stared at the tree. "But that night, Lyla was so committed to carving the tree. And now I know why." He hung head, his rubber soled sneakers light bouncing off the front bumper. "She wanted us to be forever remembered. I was always the first one to say 'I love you' between us, but that night she said it to me over and over again unprompted. She said 'I love you no matter what.'"

I stayed silent, unsure of what to say or how to act.

"I just thought she was being affectionate. Maybe she was, or maybe she was just trying to justify her actions."

"I hope you know that we're going to grow old together," Lyla said, tossing a stress ball against the ceiling as she laid on her bed. I laughed and resumed working on my homework. "No, for real." Lyla rolled onto her stomach and looked at me. "You and I reeking havoc on an old folks home? Eating mashed potatoes, accidentally switching dentures, having electric wheelchair races down the halls." She threw the stress ball at me to pull my focus from the textbook in front of me. "But we have so much living to do before that," she sighed, resting her eyes.

That was a year and a half ago. She promised me we would be together forever and broke it.