Page 41 of Your Side of the Offense

"Arch, come on, man." Harvey comes next to me, and Jaden is next. They pull me up.

Fuck, I didn't realize how high I was. I don't feel my body.

"Take me to her," I say.

They don't understand I need her. I need her.

"Arch, man. Don't." I hear someone say and I'm not even sure who it is.

My eyes see movement, but I'm not entirely sure what's happening or where I am exactly. Then I feel something soft. I try to focus and look around.

My room.

Harvey appears in front of my face and grabs it. "Arch, man, you can't continue like this."

A hot tear slides down, releasing some of the pent-up emotion in my chest. My bleeding heart.

"But I need her, Harv. Don't you understand? I miss her. I know she misses…" I drift off. Words failing me.

Why don't they understand?

"She's gone. You need to accept it, okay? She's gone." Jaden comes next to Harvey.

"No. She is just hurt. I…I am not coping. I'm not coping without her. Don't you understand?"

I can't accept what they are saying. Don't they understand I can't accept it?

My friends look at me like I'm insane. I don't like it.

"Are you taking your medication, Arch?"

I try to think but it's hard. My pills. My pills.

Thinking is so hard. My brain is foggy. I'm tired.

Blackness shrouds me and I don't resist it.

***

Caleb

I go upstairs when they don't come down. I find Harvey and Jaden standing over Archer's lightly snoring body. He must have passed out before he could undress. But he looked pretty out of it.

"What's wrong with him?"

Harvey walks to the window without turning, a sniffle alerts me he’s crying. I close the door to the loud music downstairs.

"He's getting worse," Jaden says, a worried look on his face.

"Has he been skipping his pills again?" I ask.

"It seems so." Jaden nods.

"Fuck." I near my passed-out friend. The little high I was in subsides and I sober. My heart hurts for my friend. This thing with Summer is really getting to everybody in the house.

It was one thing when she just broke up with us and she was carrying on with her life but seeing her actually date someone else is fucking up everyone. We even stopped reporting when we see her. None of us want to hear it anymore, and if you happen to be the one that sees, then you die inside with it alone.

Project Move-on and make-her-miss-us-by-moving-on hasn’t been panning out great. We all hate it, but Harvey and Jaden are determined to see it through.

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