Prologue

Day Eight

 

The sun peeks into Gable Peterson’s dorm room, trying to wake him despite the blinds closed tight like bodyguards in front of his windows. One asshole blind is a complete slacker and doesn’t stay fully closed. It’s open just enough for light to slip into the room and caress Gable’s closed eyelids. He makes a mental note to fire that blind from its bodyguard status before he turns on his side and presses his face against his pillow.

 

He has been wearing the same shirt for two days, long sleeved and gray with a small stain of ketchup on the chest area from the convenience store hamburger he ate last night. He also wears a pair of loose sweatpants, the drawstring missing and buried somewhere in his dresser. His hair is unwashed, scattered, and knotted in waves of dirty brown that rest against the pillow. He doesn’t care.

 

It has been four days since he has cared about anything.

 

The knock on his door coaxes him to opens his eyes. He fumbles around the stacks of plastic tubs that serve as a nightstand. He searches for his glasses but ends up knocking them over, the black frames thumping against the dull carpet. He sighs, leaves them on the floor, and stretches. Creak. Pop. Freaking cheap university issued mattress always makes his back ache.

 

A man stands on the other side of the door that he vaguely recognizes, but it’s too early for his brain to function well enough to remember clearly. The man looks just as tired as he does, a navy blue suit jacket thrown on in an attempt to look professional. It does a piss poor job of hiding the wrinkles in the button-down shirt he’s wearing. The tie is another pathetic attempt to look like he gives a crap in the morning, but it only makes him look more disorganized as it hangs limply around his neck.

 

“Gable Peterson?” he asks.

 

“Yes, that’s me.”

 

“Detective Maurice Ashford.” He reaches into his suit jacket and pulls out a badge, showing it to him. Gable now remembers where he has seen him before. The detective had been at the police station four days ago.

 

Four days.

 

Now Gable’s stomach grows nauseous, last night’s burger suddenly feeling like it’s molding inside of his body. “Is there something I can help you with?”

 

Truthfully, he doesn’t want to hear what the detective has to say. He can already feel the back of his throat tingling, a disgusting bile crawling up and trying to coax him into throwing up all over the man’s snow covered shoes.

 

“I understand that you know a young man named Avery Blair.”

 

“Y—yes.”

 

Here it comes.

 

His heart jumps and thrashes around, making his stomach feel worse. He still remembers going down to the police station after a full two days had passed. One day could be forgiven. Sometimes, Avery forgets to check his phone. Two days of no phone calls, and Avery’s roommate not having seen him, had urged Gable to go to the police. The woman at the front desk had said that they’d look into it, giving him false words of reassurance. “He’ll probably turn up. Kids today always forget to call.”

 

Then twenty-four hours had turned into forty-eight.

 

Then forty-eight hours had quickly turned into seventy-two.

 

“Ah yes. You filed the missing persons report.” The detective runs a hand through his scraggly black hair, a thick goatee growing around his face in desperate need of a trim. “I have just spoken with Avery’s parents. You two were lovers?” When he had spoken to Avery’s parents, they seemed uneasy with the term.

 

Gable’s eyes start to water, a wet shade the color of hazelnuts that threaten to send tears down his cheeks. The back of his mind tells him were, he said were but he’s trying not to jump to conclusions. He nods, and the man speaks again. “You were the last person with Avery, am I right?”

 

“Yes.” He stops and takes a shaky breath. He doesn’t want to ask, but he has to. “Detective? Where is Avery? Have you found him?”

 

“I…” The man stops and tries again, “Son, I hate to be the one to say this…”

 

No. No no no no no. Gable shakes his head, the tears starting to slip down his face. “D—did you find him?” Why is he asking this again? He doesn’t even know why he’s bothering with sounding hopeful. He knows what’s coming next.

 

 “I’m sorry, son, but he’s dead.”

 

Anything else the detective says is reduced to a numb buzzing after that moment. It circulates in his mind: Avery’s dead. Avery’s dead Avery’s dead Avery’s dead.

 

The detective watches the young man in front of him, taking in every tear that falls down his face. It always gets to him to see the young ones deal with a loss. Seeing Avery’s mother and father was one thing; he has seen enough mothers bawling their eyes out, enough fathers embracing the women and trying to comfort them. There’s something completely different about young kids like Gable. He has his whole life ahead of him, but now it’ll be put on hold until further notice. “I promise to keep this short, okay? I have to ask you some questions.”

 

Gable lets the detective into his room and sits on the bed while the man looks around. A basket full of dirty laundry that hasn’t been tended to. A mini-fridge that has a twelve-pack of a limited edition Dew sitting next to it—vote on your favorite today. Next to that are a couple of boxes of instant foods: pasta, rice, and the ever-popular ramen noodles. A small T.V. sits on top of the fridge, a game system plugged in and set on top of a storage bin. “The games were his,” Gable says, nodding toward a few boxes with price stickers ripped off. He’s doesn’t know why he feels the need to tell the detective that, but it’s out there, and the older man can do whatever he wants with the information.

 

“Ah. I take it he was over here a lot?”

 

Gable nods. “We’ve been together since freshman year.”

 

“And what year are you now?”

 

“Senior.” He lowers his head. “Next semester is graduation. Same for Avery.” Not anymore, his mind whispers back bitterly—not anymore.

 

Ouch. The detective swears softly and makes a few notes in his note pad. He goes back to looking around the room, spotting a framed picture that sits on the computer desk. He recognizes Gable immediately and remembers seeing a copy of Avery’s picture back with the missing persons report. Avery smiles brightly in the picture. He has one arm wrapped around Gable’s shoulders, the other hand throwing up a peace sign with his fingers. His eyes are the bluest that the detective has ever seen, clear like ocean waves that wash up on gorgeous white sands. His hair is shaved on one side, the rest swooped to the opposite side in loose, black strands.

 

Avery looks thin compared to Gable, who looks like he’d be perfect athletic material. Gable is large in the semblance of a football player where his weight would be a great advantage. The stacks of marketing books next to his laptop, however, speak of an academic route.

 

“When was the last time you saw Avery?”

 

“A week ago.” Gable’s voice sounds numb. “He spent the night over here then went back to his apartment in the morning. I tried calling him, but he didn’t call me back.”

 

“Could he have gone anywhere else?”

 

“That’s where he said he was going.”

 

“Were you two on good terms? Did you have a fight or anything to make him not want to cal—”

 

“No.” His voice is shaky at best, but the raw emotion helps him shout the word no. “We were planning on moving in together after graduation. We’ve been talking about it for a while now.” Suddenly his voice gets softer, another emotion washing over him. Guilt. “My parents were coming to visit and I told him he couldn’t stick around. I—I haven’t told them about him yet. I was scared to tell them because Avery’s parents had taken it so hard and now…”

 

Dead. Avery’s dead. He has nothing to tell his parents because Avery’s dead. Gable wants to tell this Detective Maurice Ashford to leave him alone, to go away, and to let him be miserable in peace.

 

The detective continues to make notes. He wants to ask more questions, but Gable isn’t in any condition to talk anymore. “Just one more question. Can you tell me where Avery’s apartment is?”

 

Gable nods and gives the detective directions to the fancy new apartments at the southern edge of campus. Due to unforeseen circumstances of not getting his dorm request in on time, Avery had been forced into temporary housing. The room had four beds thrown together for four people, but there wasn’t enough closet space, floor space, nor working internet. Avery had jumped at the chance to take a room at the fresh, new apartments that opened in the middle of the Fall semester. “They tore that old gas station down just to make those apartments for me,” Avery had said, using every financial aid resource that he could to get the school living arrangements of his dreams. Gable had warned his lover about loans, interest rates, and other numerical red flags. “Blah blah, blah,” Avery had said with a wave of his hand. “I’ll worry about that stuff later.”

 

Gable stops his mind from making the obvious comment about the irony of Avery’s words.

 

“Thank you for your time, son,” the detective says as he turns and heads for the door. He looks at Gable one more time, frowning. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

 

Gable doesn’t respond. He can’t remember how to put words together to make sentences. The room is silent except for the soft click of the door as the detective leaves. After a long moment of numbness, Gable manages to convince his feet to take the necessary steps to his bed. The bland white paint of his ceiling looks back at him, watching as he squeezes his eyes shut. He whispers, “Avery,” as he cries so hard that he’s finding it hard to breathe.

 

Beside him, his phone rings, but he ignores it. Ring. Ring. The sound echoes around the room and everything feels cold. Gable pulls his blanket over his body, wrapping himself up like a cocoon.

 

He doesn’t want to answer. He doesn’t want to talk. All he wants to do is sleep and dream. Dreams make everything better. They have ever since he was a child, six years old and sad that he’d never hear Grandpa Peterson’s war stories again. He would dream of his grandfather, sitting in front of him as he rocked back and forth in his chair.

 

Gable closes his eyes and lets himself dream, lets himself be taken back to a couple days ago when Avery was lying in his bed, that gorgeous smile spread across his face. Black and white striped shirt, legs encased in denim, he’s reading the pages of a script from a musical, his lips moving as he quietly sings along with the words.

 

Gable embraces the dream, becomes lost in it, and lets himself be taken to a place where Avery Blair is still alive.