Let July Be July

Chapter One: No Mercy

They say you can't find peace by avoiding life.

We took that to heart - Grace, Jun, Hettie and me - we skipped school like it offended us. None of us knew what the graves were. I swear to God if we had, we would have been more careful. Maybe we would have cared more; about each other, about our lives. Or maybe not. Bright smiles lit up our faces like cigarette butts, burning just as much. Our nails were claws, bitten down to the quick, deadly and capable of drawing blood. 

None of us knew what the graves would become.

They were a game, something kids amused themselves with when getting smashed didn't hit the spot anymore. They became our everything.

They were fun. Until they weren't.

July | 2018

The blade glints in the early morning sun, silver-sharp, so sharp it could cut me with one look. I slip it into the pocket of my blazer. It rests heavy, like a gun, but my head is full of white light. The colour of peace.

"You can't come any further." I turn to my friends and take a deep breath, trying to calm the erratic thump of my heart. "I need to do this on my own."

Hettie holds out her pinkie first. Then Jun, then Grace. I stare at my best friends in the whole world - it's always been us; the girls and me. The sun is a watery mess in the sky, illuminating Jun's hair until it's a halo of blue around her face. Hettie, with the heart-shaped mole on her chin and pink headphones hanging permanently around her neck. Grace with her wide, grey eyes and her tiny mouth, raw from worry.

My girls.

I hook my pinkie around theirs. My grin is as sharp as the slice of a knife.

"You'll come when I text," I say, even though it's pointless. We've spent hours into the night whispering about the details. We know it all off by heart.

"Stop stalling, woman," Hettie says, tossing her curls over one broad shoulder. She's clutching her headphones like they're a lifeline. "Now go, he's probably wondering where you are."

"Shut up," Jun says, rolling her eyes. "You only want her to hurry up because the next episode of the Voice is on." 

She smiles at me, tense and tight like my golf swings just after I get out of bed. "You can do it, Ken. Make it hurt for the bastard, yeah?"

It's the sweetest thing she's said to me in five years.

Grace frowns. "Are you sure about this?" 

She's always anxious over something, biting on the rough skin around her calloused fingers, her hands twitching like she's playing an invisible instrument. She used to take pills for it, but they kept her from playing her violin for weeks. She was miserable, so we made her flush the lot of them down the toilet.

Hettie shushes her. Glances at me like I'll erupt into a volcano of hatred and insults.

"I'm going to make it hurt," I say, my voice hard. "No mercy."

"No mercy," they repeat. It's easy to say, slick like oil.

"Fingers crossed he offs himself on a branch or something," Jun pipes in, and that sets us off.

We laugh and laugh, so hard it hurts my stomach.

It's a kind of manic sound.

The laughter keeps me company all the way down to the tree line, the sound drowning out the rhythmic thud, thud, thud of my heart. The woods look inviting, sunlight slipping through the trees and dappling the ground underneath.