Cities, Memory, and Desire (Short Story, finished 6.7.18)

this is a short story I spent a couple of months developing.

*Observer begins at a Starbucks on the University of Minnesota campus*

I remember it being a foggy November afternoon when I last saw my uncle. I was a student at the University by my uncle’s family’s house. The two of us met up at the Starbucks, the one on the U campus. I was early, as always, and he was late, as always. He came into the cafe and sat down at the metal table in the seat across from me. He ran through the usual adult relative questions and I did my best to answer them.

“So, Ben, how is college going?” he said.

“College is fine,” I said, offering a limited response. He shifted around in his chair a little, almost hurt by hearing anything that wasn’t stellar about his alma mater. He wiggled around a little and smiled at me as if he was resetting himself.

“What classes are you taking?” he said.

“I’m taking a linguistics course, which is boring, but I’m in an intro to journalism class and I’m enjoying it so far. I like exposing the truth.”

“Journalism. Exposing the truth. Right.” He was uncomfortable again, I didn’t learn why until months later. Still, he kept the questions going. “Any girlfriends? Oh wait, that’s right- you’re gay!” he exclaimed, proud of himself for remembering his sole nephew’s sexuality. “So… any boyfriends?” I opened my mouth to try to form something of an appropriate response to the question, but he started talking again before I got the chance. “Oops! TMI right? Too Much Information? Forget I asked.” His eyes avoided my glance as he corrected himself. “Besides, you’re hardly into your second quarter of freshman year. I should give you a break. You’re hardly into the college journey and experience!” He’d said, his voice raised in excitement. There was a long pause in the conversation before I finally said something,

“How have you been?” I asked my uncle.

“How are the parties? Are the parties still legendary here on campus?” He’d carefully dodged my question.

“Um…”

I let my sentence trail off and let my eyes drift around the Starbucks. I finally fixated on a framed drawing hanging near our table, done by a local artist depicting a street on campus. It was the same street I had walked on earlier that year.

***

It was Friday, the end of the first week of the school year. The August evening breeze had a feel of lingering summer in its warmth and humidity. I hadn’t become friends with anyone at the U yet, I was only vaguely familiar with some students in my smaller classes. I had a test in linguistics the following Monday and had utilized the library’s extended hours to study for it. It was midnight now, the library had closed and I was walking back to my dorm room. The breeze blew gently through my cotton button down shirt. It was dark out. I kept my head down as I walked, to avoid the drunk gazes that were standard on campus on a Friday night.  I wasn’t looking where I was going and I bumped into someone walking the other way. It was Alexis, a girl in my linguistics course, wearing heels and a pastel purple dress that clung to the curves of her body.

“Sorry, I’m sorry, so sorry,” I apologized profusely.

“Oh Ben! It’s you! No, sweetie, it’s fine, you’re ok-” Alexis’ words trailed off mid-sentence as she glanced down at what I was holding: a couple of notebooks and a textbook. She looked at me through her dark brown eyes. “Oh honey. It’s a Friday night and, let me guess, you just left the library.”

“Guilty.” She shook her head, and her shoulder-length dirty blonde hair followed the movement. She opened her mouth, about to say something, then closed it again- stopping to think for a moment. She looked me up and down as I started to shuffle uneasily in my standing position. Alexis fixated on my shoes- colorful high tops- and met my eyeline once more.

“Starting now, you’re my gay best friend, ok?”

I took a step back, uncomfortable with the proposal announced by a girl I hadn’t said ten words to yet. This was never how I had made friends in high school. I blinked at her a couple times, my mind going blank, before I finally formed a response.

“What? I’m not-”

“Gay? Yeah you are, but it’s ok, because now I’m here!”

“Wh-why did you jump right to that? We’ve only known each other for a week, Alexis,” I stuttered, “I r-refuse to be some kind of trophy to you, caught like a g-good fish or something. Coming to liberal Minneapolis, I thought I’d seen the end of the fetishization of gay people b-but you just proved you’re no different than the folks in Partridge. I’m not here to be your prize, or to be talked into “switching back” or wh-whatever. Also just um gay best friends are just a stupid stereotype of a thing, like people don’t genuinely make friends like that. I’ll- I’ll think on the friend thing but not because I’m gay-” Alexis looked like she wanted to say something but waited until I was done.

“Oh you thought- Oh no, no, no. I didn’t mean it like that. I meant like. Me. I like girls. Like, not token gay best friend, gross. I meant two gays, that are good friends, best friends even. Gay best friendsssss,” explained Alexis, emphasizing the s sound on friends. I let out something resembling a sigh of relief, releasing the heat I had built up from my initial statement.

“Oh. I’m sorry, I just didn’t know that was a thing,” I said, my face cooling down from red to its normal colour. She extended a hand, a peace symbol. I resisted at first.

“Don’t be shy, come on.” She tugged my hand a little, to signal she was going to lead me somewhere. I was unsure of what was happening, or where she was taking me. Regardless, it was the most exciting thing that had happened all night, all week even, so I shrugged to myself and decided to go with it. This is what college is about, I thought to myself, just go with it- why not? Alexis isn’t half as bad as you thought she was. You can breathe now.

We wove through the streets illuminated by the neon lights from campus bars and people on their cell phones. She led me up the hill to where the academic buildings were, and after a few more minutes of walking, she stopped. She had led me to the front door of the linguistics lecture hall. I heard distant music.

“Here? If you wanted help with studying for Monday’s test, you could’ve just said so, Alexis.” I said. She shook her head and grinned. She also winked at me as she opened the wooden door to the lecture hall and waved me inside. I entered, but stood at the entrance to take in the new environment. The bright overhead lights had been substituted with colorful bulbs and strobe lights. The distant music turned into blaring music. The desk tables of the first two rows had been pushed to the walls to add space and make a dance floor. On the windowsills, several of the athletic department’s water coolers had been filled with alcoholic drinks. One table hd been kept the center so a guy could lay on his stomach as a girl did a row of shots off his back. I was immediately overwhelmed by everything happening in the room. Alexis came in behind me and then walked in front of me. I followed her over to the water coolers, walking stiffly as I tried to voice my discomfort. She picked up a red plastic cup and began filling it to the brim with a mystery drink from one of the water coolers.

“Alexis-” I started.

“Not your scene?” she asked, though I could barely hear her. She saw my look of incomprehension and came closer, “Make it yours,” she said, handing me the cup. Once I’d reluctantly accepted it, she turned back around to pour herself a drink. I posted myself on the white cement wall a few feet away from her and far away from the chaos happening in the center of the room. Alexis came my way a few minutes later, with her hands swaying in the air in time to the heavy bass of the punk rock song that was playing through the speakers. I blinked at her, tilting my head. Her arms fell to her middle, where she now held her plastic cup with both of her hands. Her smile had broken into an uncomfortable frown. I sighed and placed my untouched beverage on a nearby table and raised my arms, wiggling them in the air. She looked at my flailing arms, then at my apologetic face. Her smile slowly returned as she used her hands to push my arms down to their normal position.

“Great, but let’s put these arms down before someone sees your pathetic dancing skills,” chuckled Alexis, “Let’s find a different move that’s more fitting. Follow my lead.” She began to nod her head and move her torso back and forth, then stopped and gestured to me. “Now you try.” I duplicated her motions. “That’s it, that’s it,” she said, “Now put on a face that makes it look like you’re enjoying it and you’re ready to chill with the normal people.”

“You sure?” I asked.

“Yes, now move, let’s go!” Alexis set her plastic cup on the table nearby, next to mine. We danced our way to the middle of the room. I remember looking at her and wondering why she’d chosen me as her gay best friend, her project. But there was no time to delve into it- we made our way to the center of the room and began to dance around what seemed like a group of the most attractive people on campus. I could feel my heart beating faster than usual. People continued to pour into the lecture hall and soon a mosh pit formed on the stage.  Alexis and I were standing towards the outside of the pit, still moving our heads in time to the music. I wanted to push my way to the middle. I was still greatly overwhelmed by the sheer number of people in the room, but that overwhelm no longer felt like a bad thing. I felt like I belonged, like maybe I was finally where I was supposed to be. I made eye contact with Alexis and used my lips to point into the center of the pit while I raised my eyebrows to form the question. She nodded and used her palms to push me further into the pit.

The smile on my face grew larger as I put my hands up and let out a careless WOOOO!! In that moment, I didn’t care about Monday’s test. I didn’t think about my uncle and what he could be doing at this time. None of it mattered in this moment. I closed my eyes and inhaled the scent of alcohol combined with the smell of the whiteboard markers. I felt the heat from the bodies around me, the slight breeze of the large ceiling fan that slowly churned the hot air in the lecture hall. I opened my eyes and looked to where Alexis had been standing, expecting a sarcastic remark about my need to make everything “a moment” or something, but she wasn’t there. I swiveled around my spot in the mosh pit, looking for her lilac-coloured dress to no success. I chose to ignore it, thinking it was probably some sort of a test of hers to see how I could do on my own.

I brought my attention back to the electronic music blaring through the speakers as its sound waves surged through my body. I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around in the direction of the tap and saw an attractive guy with an undercut in a white t-shirt. His right hand was extended in my direction.

“Grind with me?” He asked.

“Is that just another way to say dance? I mean yes, I mean hey I’ll dance-” I said, stumbling through my words as I felt my face growing red. He brought his pointer finger up to my lips to hush me.

“Follow my lead,” he said in a low, sultry voice as he took my hand and led me further into the mosh pit. The music became louder as we got closer to the front of the lecture hall. Finally, the man stopped and began dancing. I followed his lead, bopping along to the beat. I felt myself let go more and more with each twist, and each time he wove his fingers through my hair. I had seen movies about what college is like and I groaned whenever the heterosexual couple stars of the movie got together on a dance floor and all of a sudden it was like they were the only two in the room. I thought there was no way it would feel like that. Dancing with the stranger made me discover the opposite was true. The movies had it spot on.

As we continued dancing, I thought I heard police sirens, and they sounded close. I wondered if it was just the song, so I asked mystery boy.

“I didn’t know this song had sirens in it.” I said, pretending I knew what song it was to begin with.

“It doesn’t,” he said, pausing from dancing, “fuck.”

At that moment, three police officers kicked in the main door of the lecture hall. Thinking quickly, mystery boy took a glass figure off of the professor’s desk, threw it on the ground and shouted,

“SCATTER!”

And proceeded to run away from the scene as fast as he could. All three hundred-something of the students that were in the room began flooding out of the lecture hall using the windows and emergency exit doors.

I began to make my way out of the pit, alternating between “‘scuse me,” and “pardon me”s when I tripped on something. It was a limp body in a purple dress laying on the floor in front of me. Fuck, I thought to myself. Fuck fuck fuck please don’t be dead. I crouched down next to her, took a deep breath, and rolled her onto her back so I could see her face. My eyes widened and my heart stopped. Alexis was lying in front of me on the linoleum floor of the lecture hall, eyes rolled back and skin pale. I tried checking for a pulse, but I couldn’t find one.

“Oh my god, Alexis!” I said, somewhat surprised to feel my breath getting shorter and my body starting to quiver over someone I had known for less than a week. Another student approached as I sat near the body, contemplating what to do. “Fuck. I gotta call over the police!” I yelled.

“The fuck you won’t,” said the student.

“Um, she’s- she’s-”

“Dead? Yeah and I’m freaked as all hell, man. This is about to haunt my dreams for the next twenty years, but you can’t call the cops over. Dude, you’re from the middle of nowhere. The dean won’t hesitate to kick your ass all the way back there. If you snitch, we’re all fucked and it’s bye bye, Minneapolis.”

“We can’t just leave her, an-and I have to find out what happened to her.”

“Well, what do you want to do about it then? It’s not like we can put her anywhere else. Besides, cops are right there, they’ll take care of her, it’s fine. You want to play Nancy Drew and figure out why the bitch is dead? Here,” She said as she crouched down and fished through the black leather purse that was laying next to Alexis. Her hand emerged from the bag holding a smart phone, and she tossed it over to me. I caught it by the tips of my fingers and held it in both of my hands as I looked at the girl.

“What?” She asked.

“Why’d you hand me her phone?” I said.

“So you can figure out what happened to her, idiot,” She said matter-of-factly. “Now hold onto the damn phone and run for it.”

I stared at Alexis’ motionless body, trying hard to think of any other possible solution than abandoning her, but couldn’t. So I ran, convincing myself not to look back. On Monday, there was no Linguistics class because a body had been found in the lecture hall.

***

“Ben? Ben?” My uncle repeated my name as he snapped his fingers in front of my face and brought me back to the present. “Everything alright?”

“Fine, yeah,” I said, blinking continuously to try and erase the image of Alexis out of my head and bring myself back to reality.

“Have you been getting enough sleep? You look a little rough.”

“Eh, probably not, but it’s fine.”

We had run through all of the typical uncle-nephew small talk we could. We both focused on drinking our coffee beverages. His, eight shots of espresso and mine, a latte, still piping hot. We sipped slowly and loudly. People glanced over at us, but we continued our slurping. I figured it was something that was genetic- the slurping and the inability to hold a conversation.

While I watched my uncle hurriedly sipping his drink the color of tar (and which he drank unsweetened), I remembered never knowing just what exactly my thirty-eight year-old uncle did for a job. No one in the family had ever really bothered to ask, they were too absorbed in their own lives. My relatives seemed to ignore that my uncle was sometimes gone for months at a time. Perhaps they didn’t notice. Most likely, though, they didn’t want to say anything about it, for fear that doing so would make it real. Whenever I’d ask about it, my family would deny that he was distant at all. My mom, my uncle’s sister, would always make an excuse. We saw him only a little bit ago, Ben.  No Mom, we saw him at that barbeque in July. It’s May now.

Uncle Ken was also known for frequently getting a phone call or text and leaving a conversation. I'd seen it happen before, just not while it was only him and I, and certainly not this early into a conversation. It was something he’d pull most frequently during a pointless family gathering, of which there were many. All the previous times he’d looked down on his screen and apologize for having to “make like a banana and split,” no one had protested, for fear of making a scene. Certainly no one had followed him. So, when he stood up in Starbucks that day,  headed to the restroom and returned a couple minutes later, saying he needed to “make like a kangaroo and bounce,” I waited thirty seconds and followed him out. My eyes followed him out first, and as I watched him walk quickly out of the Starbucks, I continued to wonder about where he went, why he went there, and what the hell he did for a living. So I grabbed my coat and backpack and followed.

***

(the observer stands at a window on the University of Minnesota campus. This window overlooks downtown Minneapolis.)

I followed my uncle through downtown Minneapolis, a block behind him. He had an advantage over me- he’d lived in the city for his whole life. I, on the other hand, was new to the fast-paced feel of city life. I’d lived in Brainerd, Minnesota until I started my freshman year at the U. I enjoyed the city, but I hadn’t been in Minneapolis by myself until Orientation that August. I’d always been directionally challenged too and moving to the city didn’t change that- it just made it harder to get to where I needed to go. Like New York City, Minneapolis claimed to have a grid system. Unlike NYC, Minneapolis was a total fucking liar. I continued to follow my uncle as he curved around the streets and cut down alleyways. He was nervous- constantly looking behind him to see if anyone was following him. I thought this was excessive, but then I remembered I was, indeed, following him and thus understood his rationale behind it. My uncle walked down one last street, but only part way before he turned into a building on his right. I hid under the red awning of a pharmacy as he entered the building. I peeked out. He was inside, it was safe for me to stop hiding. I sighed and let my shoulders rest from their hunched position by my ears. I could finally breathe.

***

(Observer goes to the quad by Northrup Auditorium, stands in front of a door to a building)

I stood outside the linguistics lecture hall the morning after the party. There was caution tape barricading the wooden doors and a piece of paper taped to the door:

LINGUISTICS 104 CANCELLED TODAY, MARCH 24, 2014.

CLASS WILL RESUME ON THURSDAY AS PLANNED.

The feeling from Friday night crept back as I stared at the notice on the door. My heart started beating faster and I was gasping for air after having forgotten to breathe in and out for a couple minutes. I felt awful. I hadn’t slept well the past couple nights; I kept thinking about what would have happened if I had done more to try and save her. But it didn’t matter anymore- she was gone. Alexis died in a pastel purple dress. When I turned my back to the door to face the quad at Northrup, a man in uniform approached me.

“Excuse me. Excuse me sir?” It was a police officer. Shit. I thought to myself. Be cool, Ben.

“Yes?”.

“Are you in this class, the one that was cancelled today?”

“Um… yeah,” I said, looking down at my feet. I’d always been nervous around cops, I was taught to be wary of them since I was little. Now that I had graduated high school and became a real member of society, I was fully aware of each and every movement we would make in the next couple of minutes. I was careful not to misstep, for fear of being another product and statistic in the prison industrial complex that was our fucked up nation.

“Meet my eyeline please,” said the cop. I reluctantly looked up, meeting his hazel eyes. Above them were stern white and bushy eyebrows. He wore one of those navy-coloured hats with the black rim. His mustached mouth formed a stern, straight line. His eyes did not look particularly pleased, so I gave him a little awkward smile in hopes he’d return it. He didn’t.

“Thanks. Now, were you at the party that occured here on Friday night, between the hours of 11pm and 2am?”

I was intimidated by his seemingly booming voice. He seemed like the kind of man to be able to call B.S. from a mile away, so I thought carefully on how to form my response.

“I was, um, at the library at 11pm.” I explained.

This wasn’t entirely inaccurate, I just decided to leave out the fact that I was at the party in question. I wondered why I tried to hide it, after all, I didn’t kill her. Still, I stuck to my story. The cops hard eyebrows loosened up with a raise, and his gaze towards me was now softer.

“Sorry to bother you, sir, carry on.”

The police officer walked away, turning to the other students walking from the building’s entrance. I dug my hands in my sweatshirt pocket and felt the smooth backing of Alexis’ phone. I had been too scared to turn it on and see what was on it until now. I became determined to know, so I looked around me and sat down at a bench on the quad, shaded by a big tree. I turned on her phone, spacing out as it powered up. I started thinking about the cop, why did he look so familiar? Where do I know him from?

The phone emitted a loud beep, and it was ready to be opened. I swiped upwards on the screen, ready to type in a passcode of some sort, but it ended up not needing one. Score. I looked to the corner of the screen to see how much battery it had left. It had four percent, I had to work fast. I opened her text messages. Her most recent conversation was with someone named Ken. I chuckled out loud, that’s my uncle’s name, how weird is that? I didn’t have much time to scroll through the conversation before the phone turned itself off- it had run out of battery.

***

Alexis’ death was talked about on campus for a couple of days. Slowly, people started to forget and move on. Besides the initial investigation, the U decided it didn’t want to pursue the case any further, and made all of the information surrounding it completely confidential. I tried to keep people talking about it, I brought it up whenever I could until I felt myself running out of energy. Classes were picking up pace. Professors were dishing out more work. The end of the semester was fast approaching. I felt like I didn’t have time to do anything but school- I brushed off important things, like remembering to take a shower every now and then and eating healthy. I brushed off Alexis. I still lost sleep, replaying that night over in my head, but I would try to dismiss it. There was too much else to worry about. I watched as I slowly bottled myself up. I stopped talking about Alexis, about that night, about the things I felt and saw. I let the days slowly creep along as my body grew numb.

It was November. It was my fourth mental health day I had taken this week, because I just didn’t feel like getting out of bed in the morning, for four days straight. I lay on my back, with my head tilted to the right, towards the window that looked out to the quad. My eyes blinked slowly. Sleepily. I had little sense of time that day, with the fog I could see out the window, I deduced it must have been midday. Contemplating my next move, I closed my eyes before I could make a decision. I felt myself drifting off, until I was interrupted by my phone make its text message beep sound. I opened my eyes, collected all of the energy I had, and made myself roll onto my stomach, closer to the edge of the bed. I let my left hand dangle to the floor and swept it around in search of my phone that I placed on the ground the night before. I retrieved it and turned it on. It was a text message from Uncle Ken. I hadn’t heard from him since I’d graduated high school that May, but he came back into my life with a single-worded text: “coffee?”

I chuckled a bit, before letting my thumbs make the typing decision for me,

“Starbucks at 3.”

He sent back a colon and a closed parenthesis: a smiley face :). I glanced at the clock on my cell phone. It was 2:15. I grunted and lifted my tired body out of bed. I looked down at the body my head was attached to. It was still in Star Wars fleece pajama pants and a plain white t-shirt. I sighed. I picked out a blue cotton button-up shirt from a pile of dirty laundry and put it on over my shirt. I grabbed a pair of inside-out black skinny jeans from the same pile, swapping out my pajama pants. I left the apartment and walked the ten blocks to Starbucks.

***

I could never know what to predict when I spent time with Uncle Ken, especially when the day went from coffee to me stalking him to a building in Dinkytown. The building was made of red brick, a popular choice of building material in the early 1900s when a majority of the buildings surrounding the U campus were built. When I looked up at it, I saw balconies. Must be some kind of apartment or something, probably recently renovated. I thought to myself. I glanced to the entrance. The four address numbers were gold-coloured and perfectly legible, 4869. Each one sat neatly below the one before it, forming an effortlessly clean-cut line. I stared at the entrance from my hiding spot under the red awning of the pharmacy next to it. I typed its address into my phone. A picture of the building in front of me popped up, with the name Redondo Apartments. That must be it. Redondo Apartments. I restarted my search. I typed in “Redondo Apartments residents list,” to see if I could recognise anyone on the list that my uncle may be visiting. I came across a list of tenants on the Minneapolis city website. I scrolled through it. It was a relatively large building, so the list was long. As I got closer to the bottom, I became anxious- I hadn’t seen any familiar names yet. Then I got to the last tenant on the list- Alexis Walker. I felt my body go numb and heard my phone fall out of my hand and onto the sidewalk. I stood for a second before realising what happened, then blinked a few times and picked my phone up off the ground. I hadn’t seen the name Alexis for months. It couldn’t have been Alexis Alexis, could it?

I tried to think of my former classmate’s last name, and realised I didn’t know it. I had to find out somehow. My fingers scrambled to navigate the apps on my phone, and finally selected Facebook. I looked up Alexis Walker, to see if it would match. The profile popped up, and the profile picture was her, from the night of the party. Her straight white-toothed smile sparkled into the camera with her purple dress. She must’ve lived in Redondo Apartments until she died, I decided. My knees began to feel weak, did she and my uncle know each other? I tried to shake the thought from my mind, but couldn’t contain my curiosity. I tapped on her list of Facebook friends. If he’s in here, then I’ll know something’s up for sure. If he’s not, I can breathe for a second. I tapped on the search bar and typed in “Ken Donovan,” my uncle’s name. His profile was in the search results. They had known each other, and now Uncle Ken was inside Alexis’ old apartment. I paced underneath the red awning of the pharmacy, weighing my options. I ducked inside the store. The bright fluorescent lights contrasted greatly with the greyness of the sky outside. Two or three customers were scattered about the store, debating between brands of the same products. I walked to the cashier’s counter, heart beating quickly. I approached the cashier, a middle-aged woman in a white button-up shirt with a large blue name tag pinned to the pocket. She was deep into reorganising the shelf of cigarettes and lighters next to her. I cleared my throat to get her attention.

“Um, hello,” I said. She came out of her organising daze and turned her body to face me.

“Hello! How can I help you today?” She said. I shifted back and forth on my feet, trying to reground myself while I thought through what I was going to say.

“I’m going into the apartment building next door, if I don’t come back in fifteen minutes, I want you to call the police.”

“Are you alright?”

“I really hope so,” I responded, nodding my head. I began walking back through the door that I came from. “Fifteen minutes!” I shouted over my shoulder.

I exited the pharmacy, trading bright light for dull sky. I felt the adrenaline rushing through my body, driven by anger, sadness, and desire of course. Desire to finish this, desire to let Alexis finally rest in peace. I marched into the apartment building that my uncle had gone into only minutes before.

I looked to the directory to find which apartment was hers. At the bottom, Walker, 308. I swiveled around the lobby in search of stairs, then realised they were just beyond where the directory was. I approached the bottom of the faded wooden staircase and glanced upwards. The third floor seemed like it was a mile’s worth of steps away. I let out an overwhelmed sigh and began running up the stairs.

With each step, I found myself losing energy. I was never a fan of gym in grade school, it was the only class I ever skipped in. Something about being told to catch a ball or run as fast as I can never seemed to appeal to me. Because of this, I was often caught off guard and ended up taking many a ball to the head. Considering my “traumatic” gym class experience, I continued to avoid physical activity after I had graduated. These stairs were kicking my ass. I was breathing harder than I ever had. My legs felt like they were going numb. Then I reached the third floor.

I wandered around the floor until I came to Alexis’ door. Room 308. Oh my gosh, Uncle Ken must be right behind this door. Ok Ben, I thought to myself, this is it. Behind these doors lies the truth. You’re scared, that’s fine. This is going to tell you who Uncle Ken really is, and what happened to Alexis. You need to know. If you don’t find out now then you’ll only beat yourself up. I sighed, putting my hand on the brass doorknob in front of me. Ok, this is it; this is the big one. Alright, I’m ready.

I whipped open the door to Alexis’ apartment.

“I’VE GOT YOU NOW, UNCLE KEN!” I shouted into the room. No response. “Uhhhh… Uncle Ken?” I said, looking around the apartment. I couldn’t find him, until I heard muffling voices coming from Alexis’ office. I stormed into the room, where I found Uncle Ken sitting at a desk on Alexis’ computer.

“AHEM.” I said. He jolted, turning around to see where the noise was coming from.

“Oh! Benny boy! Whatcha doing here?” He said.

“Finding out just what the fuck you do for a living. You killed Alexis, didn’t you.”

“Benster. Bennington. Benjamin. Benstopher. Where would you get such a silly idea? Who’s this Alexis?”

“The girl that you’re friends on Facebook with, the girl that died months ago, yet you’re here in her apartment, shuffling through her computer.” Uncle Ken’s look turned from friendly to sinister.

“Yeah? What’re you going to do about it? No one’ll believe a kid.” I took out Alexis’ phone from my back pocket and revealed it to my uncle.

“With evidence they will. I’m not letting you go until Alexis is able to rest in peace. Try me.”

“She had it coming to her, she didn’t do what I told her to and she didn’t put out. I knew I had to shut her up before she said anything to anyone, by any means possible,” said Uncle Ken, “What else was I supposed to do? I was her connection- I brought her weed for parties and stuff on campus. She knew it came with a price but she didn’t want to pay it. She started telling people about my business. I almost got caught because of her, for fuck’s sake.”

“So you killed her?!”

“You wouldn’t understand, Ben. This is none of your business.”

“When it’s at my college and with my classmates, it is. I’m not going to let you get away with this, Ken,” I said, blocking the doorway to stop him from bolting. Uncle Ken stood up from his seat at Alexis’ desk, removing a flash drive from the back of the computer.

“Sorry buddy, you’ll understand when you’re older,” he said, hurling a fist towards me. The room went black. I heard the hurried footsteps of his shoes as they slowly faded away, but couldn’t open my eyes or lift my body up to chase after him. I’m not sure how much time passed, but after a while, I heard more voices.

“Hello. Hello in there? You there, son? Can you hear my voice? Whatcha think, Mary? Is he ok?” said a low voice.

“I’m not sure Dave, I don’t think this kid is gonna make it,” responded a higher voice. I was shaken harder. Slowly, I opened my eyes. Two police officers stood over me- a man and a woman.

“What’s your name, kid?” asked Dave.

“Uh, Ben Donovan,” I responded.

“We got a call from the pharmacy downstairs,” said Mary, “They said there was trouble in this building. What happened, Ben?”

“My… Uncle…”

“What about him?” said Dave.

“Flash drive… drugs… fist…”

“You’re not making a whole lot of sense right now,” said Mary. “There’s no one here but us.”

“Geez, this kid’s got it rough,” said Dave, shaking his head. “Let’s get him to the hospital for an eval, chief.”

“Good plan.” Mary stood up and brushed off her black pants. She gestured to the emergency stretcher they had brought up with them. “On my count. One, two, three.” The officers lifted me onto the stretcher and lifted me off the ground. Dave led the way out of the apartment, walking backwards with Ben as Mary walked forwards. Before leaving, Mary took one last look at the apartment. On the sofa behind her, she saw a pastel purple dress draped over one of its arms. Mary shrugged and resumed helping Dave bring Ben down the stairs.