Aya has soccer after school. Jake spends an hour with yearbook to gossip, Deija helps run travel club despite also being the president of the GSA, and Tomàs swims. Jaslene doesn’t have a club that meets daily like the rest of her friends; she’s in the GSA as the vice president, and the club only meets on Fridays. So as soon as school ends, she’s free to go home. Usually, she hangs around one of her friends, an unofficial member of their clubs by senior year, but today Jaslene slips out of school and out to the street.

She leans against the wall that surrounds campus with her arms crossed and her phone in hand. The screen is dark; Jaslene focuses on her hand instead, pressed against her ribs to feel the wad of paper towels she’s taped to her body. Even through her shirt, it feels heavy and wet, a clear sign that she’s bled through.

‘Guess this shirt’s done for,’ she thinks numbly, then shoves her phone into her pocket and pushes off the wall.

There’s static in her mind, buzzing and overwhelming. It keeps her from thinking, from feeling, from being aware of anything. When Jaslene moves, walking down the familiar route to home, her body feels heavy and cemented down, almost like it wasn’t her body. It’s not sudden; no, this was building from the moment she walked into the school.

Surrounded by everyone else, by her closest friends, so energetic and alive, Jaslene wants to hate them. She really wishes she could. But more than hate and envy, Jaslene loves them. And it hurts to know that she doesn’t have the rest of her life with them. Getting to spend any time with them after her death is good enough.

She really wishes she could believe that it’ll ever be enough.

‘Why did I die?’ Jaslene wonders as she makes her way down the street. ‘Why am I here?’

Below her shirt, Jaslene feels a tickle, almost like a bug is crawling on her skin; another wound has opened, the blood dark and heavy as it rolls down her ribs.

She recognizes the corner store, suddenly, and stumbles to a stop. The night before, as she made her way home, that corner store lit up the street from the white signs that adorned the building. She remembers the banner outside promising a free coffee with any food order. She remembers the small sign proclaiming that they sell cigarettes.

And when Jaslene walks closer, she remembers the poster carrying Matthew’s picture.

It’s still there, taped to the inside of the window. She didn’t pay any attention to the store or the poster, focused more on getting home and waking up from this nightmare. Now, the poster holds all her attention.

It reads:

                                                                   MISSING

                                                        MATTHEW WILSON

                                   LAST SEEN LEAVING SCHOOL 9PM ON ¼

                                                  IF FOUND PLEASE CALL

                                                        (520) 674 - XXXX

Jake’s words come back to her like a stroke of lightning. “They found Matthew’s phone,” he had said, “Apparently it was thrown away, and forcefully too, so their reconsidering his ‘run away’ status and are probably going to change it to kidnapped.”

‘Kidnapped,’ she thinks, repeating the word around her head, 'And probably dead.'

The sudden realization that it could have been her face on the poster leaves a bitter taste in Jaslene’s mouth. She turns away and forces herself to keep moving.

Missing.

Kidnapped.

Dead.

What a fucking nightmare.

The feeling grows and grows until it twists around Jaslene’s lungs, sour and suffocating. It aches like a bruise and Jaslene has to glare at the ground to force back the familiar burn of tears behind her eyes.

She’s never been much of a crier. She isn’t going to start now.

By the time she feels like she can breathe again, she’s only two streets away from home. Everything she sees is overlaid with memories of the previous night, replacing sun with cold darkness only lit up by lonely streetlights and the moon. Somewhere, behind her on a lonely street, is the place where she died.

Jaslene can’t remember what it looked like. Can’t remember much of anything at all. Her memories of the night are blurred with panic and disbelief.

She doesn’t want to go back.

She knows she has to, if she ever wants to figure out how she died.

The nausea in her stomach has nothing to do with how little she ate. Jaslene keeps pressing onwards to home.

Another drop of blood makes its way down her skin.

By the time she reaches home, there’s an obvious stain on her shirt from the thick sludge of blood that’s clung to her skin. The house is quiet; her mother and father are both at work and her little sister is playing at a friend’s house until dinner.

The silence and stillness help. The tension leaks out of her shoulders and Jaslene can’t help but sigh with relief when she closes the door behind her. After toeing off her shoes and making her way to her room, Jaslene doesn’t waste a second to toss her backpack to the floor and pull off her shirt.

A look in her mirror reveals just how bad it is: the dark blood has soaked through the paper towels completely and streaks of blood decorate her skin. She peels off the tape and paper towels, grimacing at the feeling of wetness being pulled off her body. Only two of the stab wounds are dark red and wet with blood. All the others are dried pink as though her body had run out of blood for them.

The sight made something in her stomach roll. Jaslene looks away quickly, but the image in branded into her mind.

Since she’s home alone, Jaslene doesn’t worry about anyone seeing her. She walks out of her room with only her bra and jeans on, and grabs a roll of sports tape and a box of the biggest bandages she can find in the medicine cabinet.

Covering up the two open stab wounds is easy, so long as she focuses on the movement of her hands rather than the actual wounds themselves.

‘One day done,’ she thinks, ‘How many more are left?’

Jaslene already knows the answer: Not enough.