The truck's radio fills the air with white noise. White noise is blank where songs could be, it's empty where the reassuring voice of the presenter should be. Mello waits for a while, sees if the noise will go away. But like everything else on the planet, the buzzing doesn't leave when you ignore it. Mello reaches down, pushes the button more forcefully than is strictly needed as he realises, once again, that the childish dream that everything revolves around you is a lie. Lies escalate. A mother's lie – 'Santa exists'… 'The tooth fairy will come'… His mother's lie – 'Of course I'll come back!'
He shakes his head quickly to rid himself of the memories, switches his TV on, and looks over the headlines quickly. There's a beat-up old red Chevy Camaro, just like Matt's car, as the centrepiece. The only difference is that Matt's hadn't been riddled with gunshot holes like woodworm in an ancient house, eating away slowly until one day everything happened at once and the house collapsed. Mello realises what this is, what this means. And then Mello's house collapses.
Mello realises some things in those couple of seconds.
It was snowing lightly, but forcefully; so that in a matter of moments the front of his truck is covered in a fine white dust.
The radio in the truck had come back on, as when Mello hit a pothole it had jolted the switch. It's playing 'Tears in Heaven' by Eric Clapton.
He didn't say goodbye to Matt when they parted for the last time.
You can stay up all night and never find all the ways you could lose a loved one. Mello knows, because he's tried. The Death Note was first on his list, but he didn't think of guns. Stupid, really, seeing as guns were one of his passions. If you were taking the piss out of him at his school, because who hasn't taken the piss out of Mello at school, you'd say they were his first and only love. But Mello knew they were wrong, because his first and only love had just been gunned down; his first and only love was dead before he reached twenty.
And Mello knows there is one thing to say, one last thing that is so, so inadequate.
"Sorry, Matt."
He fingers his rosary.
And then suddenly he is gasping, gasping for air, his heart is surely being torn apart…
And then he remembers, and he smiles. His last word... it was Matt.