5:34 PM
You're sitting around the counter at Topanga's to eat dinner. There's nothing spectacular about the day; it's an ordinary August evening, but the low light of the sun is shining through the windows and casting a golden sheen on everything that it touches and it sets a small flame of warmth in your chest. The glowing smiles of the people you love are being reflected onto you: your mother, Mr. and Mrs. Matthews, Auggie, Riley. Riley's smile burns the brightest, as it always does, and you feel at peace.
6:01 PM
Cory and Topanga excuse themselves to take Auggie home, but Riley insists on staying with you while your mom finishes her shift. You sit together on the window seat and talk and talk. You talk about the stars and the sky and the sun, you talk about the flexible volume of silence, you talk about sweet, meaningless characteristics of the world that you live in and you enjoy every second of it. She forces you to without effort, and you don't mind because you cherish her presence in your life. You're struck daily by how much you love her and how lucky you are to know her.
7:28 PM
Riley grabs your hand as she stands to leave; she still has a curfew and she's not about to break it, but she wants to prolong your time together as much as possible. It's a habit that you've both adopted over the years despite the fact that it's never long before you see each other again-not that you mind, of course. She asks you once more if you're sure you don't want to spend the night at her place, and you smile and laugh as you shake your head and tell her that you'd sworn you would spend the rest of the evening with your mom. "Tomorrow night", you promise. Your heart soars with the unrestrained grin that spreads across her face before she hugs you and then turns to leave.
7:29 PM
She turns around again at the edge of the street to wave goodbye and blow you a kiss. You can't suppress the genuine smile that you get every time she does something so goofy and sweet. You bite your lip through your grin and wave back before she turns around to cross, but your smile shifts into an expression of pure horror as Riley steps into the street without noticing the oncoming car. You scream for her to move, but she doesn't have time to react and your stomach drops as the car hits her. The way that it hits her…it doesn't seem real, like it's in a movie. She rolls onto the hood, cracks the windshield, and lands hard on the asphalt.
You're yelling her name as you race toward her and fall to your knees by her side. "Somebody call an ambulance!" you scream at the small crowd of people that has already begun to gather. You look back to Riley and your breath catches. She's alive. Her face is bleeding, her clothes are torn, and it seems as if she's struggling to breathe, but she's alive. It's more than you could have hoped for after the way she'd landed, but your heart is racing and your head is buzzing with fear.
"Riley?" Your voice shakes as you reach out to sweep her hair out of her face and you pull her onto your lap. "R-Riley, wake up. You need to wake up."
7:30 PM
Riley groans as she opens her eyes, and you greet her with a big wavering smile. "Hey, sunshine," you breathe. "God, you had me worried there for a second…are you alright?" You try to keep your voice steady, but you know that while your hands are gentle as they sweep over her cheeks and waist, holding her in as comforting a way as you can, your concern is ripping through you like a chainsaw.
"Maya," she says eventually, her voice so weak that it's barely audible as she speaks between short, shallow breaths.
"Yeah, honey, I'm here," you reply, "I have you." She shifts in your lap, trying to sit up, but she only falls back down with a sharp intake of breath. "Don't move, Riles; the ambulance will be here soon," you say. "You're gonna be alright, okay?" You wish you weren't trembling so much that it gives away your uncertainty.
"I-It…it h-hurts to b-breathe," Riley gasps, and your heart clenches. You don't know what's wrong; you don't know how to help, you don't know how to lessen her pain, and you're scared. A tear slips down your cheek and you blink, wiping it away before you reply.
"The doctors are coming, sweetie; they're…they're gonna fix you right up," you tell her. You have to take deep breaths yourself to keep from dissolving into tears, and it makes it hard to speak, but you do it anyway because you can't let Riley feel alone right now. "Just…stay with me. You can focus on me, right? You can do that for me?" She nods, and you take her hand and squeeze it reassuringly. "Good. Um…just…just talk to me, okay?" you say. "About anything. I want you to keep talking to me."
She's silent for a moment, save for the sound of her quick, shallow breathing, before she says anything. "I saw a puppy today. I f-forgot to tell you."
"Tell me about the puppy, Riles," you say. "What color was it?"
"It was…it was y-yellow. A, um…a g-golden retriever. A baby." She stops to breathe. "It was…w-wearing a…a purple collar." She manages a weak smile, but the pain behind it makes your stomach twist. "It was so cute." She breathes the words so softly that you can barely make them out. You don't know what else to do and the ambulance still hasn't arrived, so you just keep talking to her.
"Do you remember that time in seventh grade when you promised you were going to save me?" you ask, fishing for something else to talk about to keep her mind off of the pain. "I-I didn't think I was good for you, but you wouldn't let me abandon our friendship."
Riley nods again. "'Course," she says. "Because I l-love you."
"Yeah." You muster up another smile for her. "I love you, too," you murmur, meaning it in every sense of the word. "I can't…I can't save you the same way you saved me, but I promise you're going to be okay and I'm gonna be here next to you until you're better, okay?"
But she doesn't respond; she's not even looking at you anymore. The veins in her neck look like they're all but popping out, and the new wave of fear hits you hard enough to make you feel like you're going to puke. "Riley? Riley, are you alright?" Her eyes meet yours again for a brief second-clouded, as if she doesn't know what she's looking at-before they slip closed.
"Riley." You shake her a little; you're afraid you're going to hurt her, but you can't let her slip away and your mind is whirling so quickly that you barely even know what you're doing. "Riles?" Tears prick at your eyes as your hands move from her shoulders to her face. "Riley! Riley, you gotta wake up! Please, Riley, open your eyes!" The rest of the world melts away as it dawns on you that she's not moving. She's not breathing. "Riley!?" Your heart stops. Everything is quiet as you watch her, waiting, as if she'll start breathing again.
She doesn't.
"No," you murmur, shaking your head. "No, no…." You grip Riley's shoulders in your hands, squeezing until your knuckles are white. She has to wake up, she has to. You're shaking and you can't see well through your tears, but you can't stop. You can't let her go. "Please, Riley!" you scream. "You can't leave me! Come back, Riley, please!" You're choking on your sobs as you jostle her still body again. "Riley! Riley, come back! Wake up! Wake up!"
Your throat hurts, your chest burns, and you collapse. You collapse inward, falling over Riley's body and lifting her into your arms, holding her tight as sobs rip through you like the tide of the ocean over and over again without mercy. You don't know what's going on around you; all you know is that part of you is gone.
You can't move. You can't think. You just clutch Riley to your chest and try to ignore the scent of blood as you bury your face in her neck, trying desperately to pretend she's okay. Trying to pretend she's just asleep. Trying to pretend that you're just sitting in bed before her parents call you in for dinner.
7:40 PM
You don't believe it for a second. You know more clearly than anything in the world that Riley is gone. She's gone. She's gone. She's-
You flinch when a hand touches your shoulder. "Maya?" You slowly look up, cradling Riley even closer to you. The world comes flooding back and you hear the shrill siren of an ambulance; it must have finally arrived.
Too late.
Your mom is beside you. She's crying, too, and it brings on another rush of tears. You can't let go of Riley, but your mom wraps her arms around you and gives you the comfort of her presence. "Her parents are on their way," she says gently. "I'm so sorry, baby…."
7:41 PM
You're finally able to release your grip on Riley when the EMTs come. They take her from you, lay her out, and start trying to resuscitate her. You're almost numb now. You feel empty, as if nothing is real, as if you're in a dream. It's not Riley lying on the ground with the strange woman pumping at her chest; it's a dummy. It's fake-all of it. It's just a cruel joke.
But your mom's arm wrapped around you? Her fingers pushing your hair out of your face so that it's no longer caught in your tears? That feels real. The commotion around you, the murmuring of the onlookers, the siren, and the shouting of the EMTs? It seems so real. It is real. You know deep down that it is.
So, you just…watch. You watch the woman continue to bear down on Riley's chest as a man slips what looks like a massive needle between her ribs, and you watch as nothing happens.
7:42 PM
They can't save her. There was never a chance. You're sure of it, but you still feel the despair bubbling up inside you again when she doesn't wake up, when she doesn't start breathing again. It's like a blow to the chest when the EMTs give up and the paramedic calls Riley's death.
She's gone. She's….
Gone.
You stand up without a word and walk toward Riley's body, trying to breathe evenly, trying not to break down. The EMTs don't stop you as you kneel beside her and lean over to press your lips to her forehead. Your tears drip onto her face and settle there like morning dew, and you can barely keep yourself from throwing your body onto hers and begging her to come back again. She's not coming back. She's left you forever.
"I'm s-I'm s-so sorry I couldn't save you," you whisper. "I love you."
7:58 PM
You've been standing on the sidewalk hugging your mom since they'd covered Riley's body with a white sheet to wait for the coroner to arrive. You refuse to leave. You can't. You can't leave while Riley is still lying in the road; you have to watch over her. There's not much good you can do for her now, but…you still need to be there for her. Your tears have dried and you're calm now, but you feel like an empty shell of a person. You can hear Riley's parents talking to the EMTs, and you have to physically try not to listen to Cory's sobbing as Topanga holds him and the paramedic explains exactly what it was that killed Riley. "Tension pneumothorax," they say. "Broken rib punctured the lung…." "….air escaping into the pleural space…."
7:59 PM
"….collapsed the lung and compressed and shifted the heart, reducing blood flow to and from the heart…." "….cardiac failure."
You don't know half of what it means, but you understand the general idea.
There was nothing you could have done.
Although, maybe if you'd have been quicker to warn her….
No. There was nothing you could have done.
You run to the nearest garbage can to empty your stomach.
8:04 PM
You approach the coroner when he arrives. "Please don't take her ring off," you say, your voice catching as tears well up in your eyes once again. "It's important. She-she needs to keep wearing it no matter what. Even when she…when she's…buried."
He's kind to you. He tells you that he'll make sure nobody takes Riley's ring off, and he says he's very sorry for your loss. You stammer out a "thank you" before retreating back to your mother and standing with her as Riley's body is placed in a bag and lifted into the car.
8:05 PM
The doors close and the coroner drives away. The last reaching rays of light from the sun fade to nothing and you're left standing in the face of dusk, the colors of the world now muted and dull.
August 7, 2016. The day your light left your life.
This is part one of two! I'll say it again on the second chapter when it's ready, but you can find the author who will be writing it at rilayabookwyrm on tumblr :)