I didn’t hear the click of the camera and I didn’t see the flash of the bulb, but it was there. As though it were fucking midnight in the middle of nowhere. The camera like a quick flash and thud of lightning and thunder. I grabbed the strap of my bag on my shoulder and told myself to just ignore. Just fucking ignore it. It’ll all go away. That’s what they all kept telling me. That it’ll all go away soon. That there’s nothing I could have done then, now, and nothing I could do except live.

Living was the option.

Living?

Was that the magic answer?

I didn’t hear the crunch of the gravel as someone followed me, but I knew it was there. The fucking trail that the town fought hard to pay for. To knock down a chunk of the woods and create this path. For people to walk their dogs. Walk with their kids. Lovers to hold hands on a cool summer evening. Fitness people to be able to run one end to the other, spanning ten miles with the intention of making it much longer in years to come. In the winter, the town would set up Christmas lights, a full array, from elves that were smiling to the big guy himself, waving from a giant sleigh, capturing the innocence and excitement of the holiday.

But we were far from Christmas as I walked the trail with a bag full of clothes, notebooks, basically everything I owned at that exact point in my life. I managed to hold down a one bedroom apartment on the third floor of a building that felt like it swayed when it was windy. I had no clue how the building wasn’t condemned, and I figured one day I’d wake up ground-level and buried under the damn thing. But the rent was cheap. I had a box fan in the window for the warm days and cool nights. If it got cold enough, I had my own thermostat. The pipes groaned in protest for a little while, but the heat worked. It was a shit hole, but it was my shit hole. My landing pad until the next step in my life.

I stopped walking.

I told myself to not stop walking.

They told me to not stop walking.

That no matter what, I had rights in this mess. I could lower my head. I could act casual. In fact, it was better to just be normal. Don’t give a story that isn’t there. Except there was a story there. A really fucking big story. I was the only one who knew that story, though. The truth. To everyone else, it was whatever they made up in their mind.

How sad. Drunk. Falling to her death like that. See, that’s why alcohol and teenagers don’t mix. Even if she was an adult, there’s a reason the drinking age is twenty-one.

How sad. Fooling around up on that ridge like that. See, the town should have closed that off a long time ago. Done something about it. But no, they left it there. It was only a matter of time before someone fell to their death.

How sad. What exactly was she doing up there? Huh? I bet there’s more to the story. They should have questioned more into it. Did she fall? Did she trip? Did she…jump? Was she…pushed? Oh my, think about that for a second…

I swallowed hard.

In a hidden pouch in my bag was the letter she left. The truth. In her words. But I knew even more of the truth because of what I had seen.

I felt someone approaching me.

My hand shook as I held the strap on my bag tighter.

Someone then moved right by me.

A woman in really short shorts. A tight, neon-pink top. Blonde hair pulled back tight. A water bottle in her left hand. Earbuds in her ears. Her arms pumping hard back and forth.

Power walking.

I sighed.

Fuck.

I turned, expecting to find myself alone on the trail.

I wasn’t alone.

A camera was a foot away from me. Another stolen picture of me.

I dropped my bag and charged the man holding the camera.

He was short with a thick waist, scruffy clothes, messy hair, wearing a belt that was filled with bags and lenses.

He stepped back, snapping a couple more pictures.

I stopped.

He stopped.

He lowered the camera.

“Maddox,” he said. He showed me his hands. “I’m not looking to print anything you don’t want printed.”

“Then get the fuck out of here,” I said.

“Look, I just want what everyone else wants: the truth.”

“Who’s everyone?”

“This is a big story, Maddox. It’s spreading. I mean, ‘beautiful woman suddenly plunges to her death.’ The whole world in front of her. You know? And there’s pieces that don’t add up.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“Why she was up there. What she was doing. Who she was with. You were the only one up there with her, right? So what happened?”

I felt the anger rising in my throat like razor blades slicing away.

I shook my head.

The man reached for a little notebook. “See, here’s where I’m confused. There’s a report that there were injuries that occurred prior to her fall.”

“What?”

“I’m just going by what I was told. Injuries that seem a little suspicious, Maddox. What exactly happened up there?”

I stepped toward the man. I swung my hand once and knocked his notebook away.

“Fuck off.”

He nodded. “Is that the kind of anger you showed up on the ridge that night?”

That was the line for me. Before I knew it, I punched the guy. Right across the jaw. He went down to the ground in a heap. But I wasn’t done yet. He grabbed for his camera and I kicked at it, knocking it away.

“You murdered her, didn’t you?” he snapped.

I blasted a knee to his gut as I dropped down.

He let out a yell, and I punched him again.

We were just a few hundred feet from the main street in town, which meant there were plenty of witnesses.

I punched again and again.

That was the point where someone should have been there to pull me off him before it went too far. That was the point where Night should have pulled me off him. Screamed in my ear to calm the hell down. Then he’d give me that shit-eating grin, knowing he was proud of me for doing that. Then we’d have to run and hide until the smoke cleared.

But Night was gone. Just like she was gone.

So I laid into the guy over and over.

The person who stopped the attacked was the woman who had been power walking. She was brave enough to get involved, slamming her water bottle off the side of my head. Later, she said she had been screaming for me to stop but I wasn’t listening. I couldn’t remember hearing her.

The guy survived, but not without wounds and what would heal into scars.

I then got myself a new place to live. Somewhere that didn’t sway in the wind. Somewhere that was tiny, smelly, but it came with some food.

Tossed into jail, my only concern was my bag. And the letter inside. I could never lose that letter. I could never stop seeing her as she stepped back and opened her arms. I could never put the pieces together the way I wanted them to make sense.

I sat alone in a jail cell, looking at my hands. My knuckles were swollen, crusted with blood. I started to shake. I was no better than Night in that pathetic moment.

I put my head into my hands.

I was so numb inside, I couldn’t even fucking cry.