Blue/Cherry red sirens break the air and my ice breath stills in front of me. I wait for the cops to show long after everyone bails.
 Claire is my friend, I told myself after the shots rang out and my head had cleared, I’ll stay with her till the end.
 ’Don’t die.’ I press my tear soaked lips to her forehead and squeeze my eyes shut. ‘Don’t die, don’t die. Don’tdiedon’tdiedon’tdie.’
 The anger burned and scorched my insides until I thought I’d burst if I didn’t. So, I did, I Screamed loud and hard until all the ghost evacuated me in that one lungful of breath and sound. Screamed and extinguish all the drunken deceit that flowed out of Claire like blood.
 ’You liars! You savages! You said you’d help her but you only incouraged her!’ I broke and shook with sobs, ‘You only killed her!’
 I pressed my hand against crimson rivers and whispered soft prayers to Gods that were long gone. Why did they always leave me when I needed them most? Maybe because when they were around I barely acknowledged them.
 Please. I prayed. Please, this isn’t for me this is for Claire. Please. Christ, I didn’t know there was so much blood in a human.
 Thoughts flooded me. Claire’d never want to die like this. This is the way that Fancy should have died, not Claire. She was fine until Fancy messed her up, got her into partying and drugs.
 ’She could fly on her own, Fancy, she didn’t need drugs for that.’ I said to myself, my voice wavering, as the cops screeched to a stop, guns drawn, to haul the good guy off to the morgue and the bad guy off to jail. Is that the world for you or what?

Mr.Allen:’Fancy, baby, you gotta talk.’
Psh, Thought Fancy. what a clique!
Fancy:’Wait, I’m confused, is my name Fancy or baby?’
Mr.Allen:’Your name is convict number whatever if you don’t speak up about this… Or maybe your name is murderer.’ [A smirk materializes across Mr.Allen's face.]
Fancy:[The tears come quickly]‘I didn’t kill Claire! That’s the only thing I’m sure about!’
Mr.Allen:[Leans in seriously]‘Who did then, Fancy?’
She sits back in her metallically cold chair, frazzled and wired on coffee and speed. The tears come even quicker this time, ‘I don’t know.’ She croaks, barely audible. ‘His face…it was like o-one of those cop shows when someone doesn’t want to be shown so they blur their face, you know?’
Then, he told Fancy something that she already knew, ‘Only the truth can unblur the face.’
Unblur the face. Unblur the face. Unblur the lies. Unblur yourself. Unblur the truth again, like you could before when things were different. When things were simpler. Think back six months ago when you first met Claire. When you first saw her fly. Back when she was just a girl on a swing and not a mystery that you begged to unwrap and and corrupt and smudge with your fingerprints.

 She was swinging with her eyes closed and it made me remember when I used to close my eyes and pretend I was somewhere else as a little girl, all alone in a room with my stepfather, in a red princess dress. She swung with the face that she took drugs with, quiet and slow and you found yourself anticipating achingly, waiting for her to confirm or deny questions that you didn’t have or didn’t know.
 I sat on the swing next to hers out of curiosity and tried to seem nonchalant. She sat like a ghost, going through the motions but not, like a pendulum that’s gone off track. Her face was turned to the sun like a plant caught in a thunderstorm and there was a soft glowing smile on her always worried looking face. This swing was the only way she could look happy without her eyebrows magnetically repelling together.
 I sat and rocked idly back and forth, lazily staring at the sun illuminated clouds. Pink and blue and buttery yellow and I was one of them. Lazy and slow moving with no brain to worry with. Though I doubt that they had fried theirs with drugs.
 ’Well, don’t just sit there.’ Claire said, like we were old friends and I really wish she hadn’t.
 I wish she’d just ignored little Fancy like everyone else did and I’d gotten up and trudged back through the gravel and gone home and lived a shameful life that is talked about in hushed tones with words thrown in like troubled and, to a less sympathetic person, junkie. 
 But she said those five words that made me wonder and ask questions instead of treading home in a drug induced daze.
 ’What?’ I wish I could stop the memories right there and rewind and cut the things that weren’t right so I could spare Claire’s life.
 ’Don’t just sit there. Swing.’
 ’Why?’ No, stop! Stop there and leave her be, Fancy!
 But no, the story must go on, so she must have said the words that made me fall in love with her; ‘Because you’ll fly,’ No, don’t! ‘I swear to God you’ll fly.’
 And there it was, no matter how hard I tried to revise it, I couldn’t. I could see the memory perfectly in my head like a movie but I couldn’t pause and rewrite. I couldn’t bring Claire back like I wanted to.

Fancy:’I'm sorry I ever met ‘er.’
Mr.Allen:’Why did you two have a falling out before the shooting?’
Fancy:’No, I just wish I had never corrupted her the way I did.’

To Be Continued…