I wobbled half consciously through the small park until I was on the sidewalk again. I coughed a few times as I walked along the road. Each time, my chest burned from whatever it was I coughed up.
Take me home. Take me home. Please, someone. Pick me up and take me home. I sneezed and moaned at the pain in my throat.
I wanna go home.
That's all I thought as cars whizzed by, the drivers too wrapped up in their own lives to stop and help me. I watched them through my goggles and mentally begged them all to help me. It was so cold out.
No one helped me.
Why is no one there when I need them? No one's ever there, damn it! Roger's at Wammy's; Watari's dead; L's dead; Mello's nowhere to be found... No one'll stop to give me a ride home! Didn't anyone see me? Please, I just want to go home.
My heartbeat increased as a familiar tingle of sadness hurt my nose. To top it off, I realized my bladder was full. I had managed to go all yesterday on just urine, but I suppose that we all have to go number two at some point. Where?
I immediately thought of a gas station and began walking. A gas station had to pop up eventually, right? I continued dragging my feet, but at a faster pace. Eventually, I came to a run-down, rusty station. There was a man in oil-stained clothing sitting in a fold-up chair, listening to music so loud that my head ached with twice the intensity.
I walked past him and into the small convenient store, where another man was sitting quietly.
"Do you have bathrooms?" I asked. My throat hurt profusely, and my words came out very low. I was losing my voice.
"Not for the public, I'm sorry," the man answered me, never once looking up from his magazine.
I walked out without saying anything, and sat down on the sidewalk. My chest scratched as I coughed up phlegm harshly. I wasn't getting any better, and I was still all alone.
Suddenly, the sleek black car from yesterday screeched to a stop inches from my toes.
The darkly tinted passenger window slid down, and a man in his early twenties stuck his head out.
"Look, it's a stray cat!" he hollered as he looked back into the car; probably to his buddies. I pulled my goggles onto my forehead to see him clearly. He had curly honey blonde hair and blue eyes that weren't nearly as pretty as Mello's."Let's take 'em home," a second person said from the back seat, faceless to me in the shadow. His voice was husky and recognizable, but foreign to me. "Wanna come with us, little kitty?"
I actually contemplated going with them. I wanted to get out of the cold air that nipped at my ears. I sniffed and coughed.
The guys in the car looked at me.
"You're sick," the first man stated. "You'd better come with us, unless you wanna die on the streets, boy."
He was right. I couldn't just get better. I needed medicine, or something. I'd die on the streets if I kept this up.
I nodded, saving my throat the trouble. The evil glint in their eyes didn't bother me in my sick state as I got into the warm car.
There were five seats, and already five people in them. I had to squeeze in between a bulky man and the door.
"Good thing he's so skinny," the husky-voiced guy laughed, "or we'd never fit." He was no longer faceless; I could see him now that I was in the car. He had the other seat by the door and leaned against it comfortably. He was darkly skinned with dreadlocks, and probably around nineteen. He had a large, toothy smile and large teeth to match. His nose was his most obvious feature, taking up a lot of his face, but his eyes were a pretty light brown and sparkled in the darkness.
I sat next to a boy of probably seventeen. Not too much older than I, which was interesting. He had dark brown hair back in a short ponytail and dark brown eyes. He smiled awkwardly at me and then looked straight ahead.
The man in the middle of the other two was tall and muscular, with short brown hair. He didn't speak at all or even look at me. It was like they hadn't just let a strange boy in.
The driver was engulfed in the shadow of the dark car.
--
We drove until the driver put the car in park and led us out into the cold.
I stood up and the world spun in my head. I swayed and almost lost my footing, but I grabbed onto the car in time. I shivered at the transition from the warm to the cold, and coughed as all of the car doors closed. We were in front of some building that I had never seen before.
"C'mon," the boy my age encouraged, pushing lightly on my shoulder to get me to walk. I followed obediently, coughing until we were in the building. We were in a dark hallway stained orange by my goggles that I pulled down onto my eyes.
"Wait here," the same boy told me as they went inside another room. A moment later he returned and let me inside.
I was in a room with stained, old furniture and a group of men with a few sluttily-dressed girls. They looked at me curiously as I sniffed loudly from whatever I had caught.
"The poor boy's sick!" one of the girls exclaimed, rushing over to me and feeling my forehead. She led me to the couch and offered me a seat.
"Bathroom," I whispered before sitting. I didn't want to sit and get up and then get dizzy again.
"Oh, ok. Mello, will you take him to the bathroom? Help him, he looks like he's going to faint!" she shouted over her shoulder.
Did she say Mello? No, she must be mistaken. He's not here. She's got the wrong person, I thought, my sick mind on the brink of delusions.
A boy walked into the room at that moment. From around the girl, I saw that he had chin-length blonde hair and eyes with a look of sheer insanity gleaming behind their baby blue color. It sounded like he bit off a chunk of chocolate as the girl moved out of his area of vision and he saw me.
The bar slipped to the dirty floor between his frozen fingers. His jaw slackened as he stared at me with a look of complete disbelief.
"Matt?" His voice came out as a whisper. After nearly three years, the first word I heard him say was my name.
Somehow, that didn't make me as happy as I thought it would. It made me feel betrayed and lonely and isolated. But, the more important thing was what I didn't feel.
There was no love.
"Hi, Mello," I whispered back, my voice void of all emotion. I took a few feeble steps toward him and the world spun again and that's all I remember.