-Chapter One-
Two days, it is two days before Eric Van Der Woodsen is informed of the disappearance of his older sister.
He's sitting in his debate class involved in a heated discussion about the pros and cons of capital punishment, a subject he feels very strongly about and is very much against, when his principal interrupts and quietly ushers him out of the room.
The walls close in, he can't breathe and nothing the dourly woman in front of him says is making any sense because Tree Hill is a quiet, safe community and disappearances don't happen there, not ever, least of all not to his family, and definitely not to Haley.
In his dorm he rushes to pack a bag, throws clothes in haphazardly as well as his worn copy of The Catcher in the Rye that Haley had given him for his 13th Birthday because it was 'just one of those books that every teenage boy has to read'. All the while a mantra of 'she's going to be okay' echoes through his head on continuous loop because maybe if he thinks it enough times he'll will it to be truth.
He's on the train heading back home when his cell phone rings and on the other end his mother utters the words that send a chill through his heart and tears to his eyes.
Her body's been found.
Her body's been found, his heart is now shattered and his views on the world entirely changed.
He really hopes they catch the bastard who did this, because he wants front row seats when they burn his ass to a crisp.
ORSXORS
She's forgotten how to walk, how to talk, how to breathe, actually at the moment she can't remember how to do much of anything at all.
She's on auto pilot as her mother and her make their way slowly into the old grey building where her sister, her baby sister is sleeping.
The City Morgue.
She hadn't even known the town had been big enough to have a city morgue, she'd figured maybe a room in the hospital, possibly two but never a whole building.
The room they have her in is just as white and stark as every other room in the place, and the coroner, an elderly gentleman, with kind green eyes and a sad somber expression on his face leads them over to a hard looking metal slab with a lump covered by a sheet and Serena tells herself that lump can't possibly be her little sister.
Only; when he pulls back to reveal a face she can see that it is her.
Her mother, usually so composed, all perfectly styled blonde hair and regal demeanor breaks into uncontrollable sobs beside her as her eyes rake in her youngest daughter's features, bruises, big and angry, blotches of red and blue and black mar the otherwise flawless skin of Haley's cheeks, her eyelids, her neck.
Serena can't bring herself to offer comfort not yet, her hand reaches out and strokes down the side of her sisters face as she silently wills the girl back to life.
Maybe, maybe this is all just some big sick joke, maybe Haley's going to open her eyes any second and giggle because she 's played the ultimate prank.
Maybe those bruises aren't real at all, they're just make up that Brooke helped her apply because she couldn't get the application of them right herself.
Maybe this was all just some horrible nightmare and any minute Serena was going to wake up covered in sweat in the room just across the hall from where her little sister slept soundly and safe.
Maybe….
No there were no maybes.
Her sister is gone and she's not coming back.
ORSXORS
Serena calls her with the news and suddenly Brooke Davis feels like the world has imploded and she wants more than anything for time to rewind to before the phone call when Haley was only missing, not…not gone.
She throws her phone, she cries, she rages until she's so worked up her body is trembling and her legs no longer hold her upright.
Her best friend murdered, it doesn't make sense.
Bad things shouldn't happen to good people and Haley was the very best person she knew.
She was smart, she was beautiful, she loved her family and her friends, she tried to do the right thing and she fought for the people she cared about. She wasn't perfect but to Brooke, who'd known her fair of imperfect people, Haley was as close as it got.
She can't think straight, can barely see her eyes are so dewy with tears and she can't seem to get control of her body as she shakes and dry heaves with the utter hopelessness of it all.
The finality.
A lifetime of friendship, of love in one of its purest forms, over, because someone chose to end the life of her best friend forever.
This has to be some kind of mistake, it just has to be.
Because if it's not Brookes not sure anything will ever make sense to her again.
ORSXORS
Numb. He feels numb and that can't be right.
His girlfriend is dead, shouldn't he feel something? Shouldn't he being crying, or shaking or feeling anything at all?
He shouldn't feel empty; Chuck Bass shouldn't be feeling the nothingness he's feeling right at this moment. Something is definitely wrong with him.
Sitting in the Van Der Woodsen family room, in the exact spot he had sat many times before with his girlfriend by his side, or on his lap, watching as her loved ones broke around him, he feels…nothing.
He can't cry, not like all the others, Haley's mother and her sister, her brother and her best friend all huddled together, evidence of their grief running down their cheeks like a constant stream, he can't do that, the tears won't come.
Haley wasn't supposed to die, it hadn't been the plan, they'd made plans together, hours spent going over details and planning out their years together so there wouldn't be any surprises.
Dying, that hadn't been on the list.
And then there were the plans he'd made for them himself, plans he hadn't told her of, plans he'd kept to himself.
Like marrying her, eventually, a few years down the track when he had full control of his father's company and she was finishing up college, he hadn't told her that plan, only because he knows her reaction would have been to dissolve into laughter, the mere thought of Chuck Bass marrying so foreign to her even though he'd stayed faithful to her for over a year already.
Everything was ruined now.
No Haley, no marriage, not ever.
No Haley, no heart apparently because a heart felt, a heart grieved and he was doing none of that.
Serena approaches him slowly and he can't even remember seeing her disentangle herself from her family and vacate the couch, she places a hand on his shoulder and tells him she has to speak to him in private.
He follows blindly as she leads him through the Van Der Woodsen stately home, which suddenly feels ten times larger than it actually is and he doesn't think they'll ever reach where Serena is leading, they walk up steps until they reach Haley's room and he doesn't want to enter it, doesn't want to step one foot inside but he does anyway.
The room smells like her, like here soap and her perfume and his legs almost buckle as his heart starts to hammer in his chest, like it had been kick started by some magical form of scent CPR.
One beat, two beats, they echo loudly in his head.
Serena turns to him after rummaging through the little silver box Haley keeps on her dresser.
Another beat, the blood rushing to his head makes him slightly dizzy.
She's holding something in her hand, he can't see what it is, but she reaches out to place it in his hand.
The room feels too small and his chest clenches painfully.
He looks down at a little plastic stick resting in his palm, two pink lines in its viewing window.
The thumping gets heavier and faster, he feels like the organ in his chest is shredding in two before it shatters and splinters into a million pieces.
Suddenly he feels everything.
ORSXORS
It is a mother's greatest fear that she will live to bury her child.
It is a nightmare known to only a few.
Most mothers are safe in the knowledge that when their children die, they'll be long gone; they never have to know the pain of watching a life they've created be cruelly snuffed out.
They are the lucky ones.
Lily Van Der Woodsen has been afforded no such luxury.
She has three children…had three children, Eric her moon, Haley her star and Serena her sun but now, now her star would shine no more.
She doesn't understand any of this, can't comprehend why anyone would want to take her baby away from her. How anyone could have stared into her daughters beautiful brown eyes and watched the life drain right out of her.
It doesn't seem possible that there could be someone that monstrous in the world, someone so cold and unfeeling that they could watch her daughter's light flicker out, that they could cause it.
Her home is filled with people, but she feels lonely somehow. Her remaining children retreating to the sanctity of their sister's bedroom, away from the prying eyes of the people who have invaded their home. Charles and Brooke; two people who Haley had loved just as fiercely as she'd loved her family joining them, Brooke normally so full of spark and energy, now dull and withdrawn and Charles looking like his world had ended.
Four people whose grief is almost as great as her own, but not one who can fathom just how intensely the pain of losing a child is felt.
She hopes to god they never will.