Chapter 18: Chaos then and Cosmos

Estrangement can be a way of dealing with situations that are out of people's control. Lauren had seen it there, in Darren's lost eyes, and hands that were infatuated on clinging to the piece of cloth covering someone that wasn't going to be conscious again. And she sort of impersonated it later, when they took her to the hospital and she felt herself as a mere artifact being dragged all over the place. There was a voice answering, yes, and it did come from her throat, but it peculiarly didn't seem like if she was the one emitting it.

She repeated the lie of what happened so much that she almost memorized it completely. She was careful enough to maintain it relatively the same, and to sound certain; by what she observed in everyone's reaction, nobody was able to tell a thing. It was all so recent that she couldn't even get to feel guilty about it, and least with the absolute ineptness she could ascribe to the police by that point. She was going to meet someone in a bar there, when Rick rode past her; she recognized him and greeted him with a hand. He greeted back, and it was only when she walked half a block away that she heard a sudden racket. When she found him, he was already lying on the floor after that instantaneous, deadly hit. A fortunate coincidence to accidentally find herself there, but she did what it was best and people nodded at her story, assuring her she did the right thing by checking up on him and worrying despite it wasn't her obligation. Then the interrogator proceeded to bend their lips while searching the way to ask the state of the young man. She couldn't know, but he looked normal from what she could tell. I barely knew him, but- she added before shaking her head and looking away, and whoever needed to hear her experience didn't torment her with questions from there on.

But the worst was, by far, when the family arrived. She did her best to comfort quickly a sobbing mother and an upset father that kept crying out how he never wanted him to ride that motherfucking bike and that he always knew it'd end up badly; but it would never be nearly satisficing. The landscape got soon overwhelming to handle, and as the mother thanked her for recognizing her boy, she excuse herself to have a call and "inform her parents of her location".

She wasn't a long time on the line before he picked up, but nobody talked on the other side.

"Hey." Lauren finally called, "How are you?" She wanted to pinch herself immediately after saying it, because it was a terrible question with an obvious answer. Darren groaned something that didn't sound like a human word, so Lauren continued. "It's okay. His family is here and they understand." She knew nothing about that statement made sense, but she wanted to say something that could comfort him. "Everything is in place. I'll get some sleep and then later I'll visit you there, okay?" The reply was another unintelligible sound and she decided to hang up before it was too much.

Caroline's silhouette came from the shadows of the opened door in her dark room, seeming to have been dozing off in her bed, trying to wait until she arrived.

"What happened?"

"I went to the hospital. His family is there and they're taking care of everything now." Lauren explained, "They're hosting the funeral in two days, since it's been… you know, so unexpected."

Her roommate noted the way her voice broke in the last sentence, and walked to her to embrace her in a hug. Lauren sobbed quietly with the wave of relief that came along with that gesture. The stress from being the responsible of Rick had been weighting on her for the last few hours, and now that she was at home, it all felt like coming out.

"I'm still trying to let it sink in. It was so bizarre, it felt it couldn't be the actual reason of all those people being there and asking me questions."

"I know." Caroline said before pulling away, "It's awful. I can't believe it yet. And not him, you know?"

Lauren nodded slowly. She felt so exhausted.

Caroline noticed, so she added sweetly, "You should go to sleep. I'll wake you up in the late morning."

She nodded again and walked to her dorm. She fell asleep before the memories could reach her and play a bad trick to her in dreams.

It was Caroline's voice, too, the one that woke her up the next day.

"I made you some tea," She said sweetly, and Lauren sensed a weight taking a seat at the feet of her bed.

"Oh, thank you." She replied, before yawning and lighting the lamp on her bedside table.

"It's almost noon." The red-haired girl announced as she handed her the cup.

Lauren ran a hand through her face in an attempt to wake herself up. She was usually awake in Sundays since hours ago, but she had no idea what time it was when she got there from the hospital, so she couldn't determine the amount of sleep she had. It did not seem enough.

The hot brew did work to make her more aware.

"Do you know how Darren is? Did you talk to him?" Caroline asked, observing her from the other side of the mattress.

Lauren shook her head, "Not yet. I don't know, Caroline." She pressed her lips together, looking at the green liquid filling half of her cup. "He was really close to Rick. These days are going to be hard. I'll have to be there for him."

"Exactly." She agreed immediately, and then added "I'll do the same thing with Joe. We have to, like, keep our shit together because we'll be the backup they will rely on."

Lauren sighed. She wanted to say that it wasn't the same, that she didn't know Joe or had even a nearly close bond as she had with Darren, and that it was completely different; but she choose to take what was actually useful from that message, because it was partly right.

She finished the cup of tea, changed her clothes, prepared a bag and announced to her friend that she'd be at Darren's for a while. As it was common in her, walking cleared up her mind, and by the time she got there, she felt much more capable of fronting what was in the other side of the door.

Darren wasn't opening the door at first, and she wondered if he was asleep and she should let him rest.

"Darren. It's Lauren." She called, knocking again, hopefully loud enough.

Lauren started to feel heavy again when the figure behind the door being opened left clear he had gone through one of the hardest nights.

She didn't say anything before walking the steps between them and wrapping her arms around his back. She felt his hands holding her waist, and his deep breathing as his head pressed gently –though strongly against hers; and she could only pull him closer, trying to sort out the words to say next.

"I'm so sorry." Lauren said quietly after a moment, and they stayed there, holding each other in that long, intimate embrace.

Darren didn't say anything when he finally pulled away. He walked to the couch and she followed his steps.

"Have you gotten any sleep at all?"

The dark bags under his eyes and the way his body felt a bit cold and trembling were actually enough of an answer.

"Not really." He replied, shaking his head. He had lied on his bed the entire night, but thinking about closing one eye was a completely different business.

"I'm gonna make something to eat." She commented, leaving her bag at the table and walking to the kitchen.

"I really don't…"

"You need to eat something, and I do, too. I've only had a tea today." Lauren interrupted firmly.

Darren looked at her from his spot at the couch, while she turned the compartments of his kitchen upside down to find something useful. That attitude of acting like if that was the most normal day in their lives let him sort of astonished for a bit.

"How bad was last night?" He asked after a while.

Lauren's hands became clumsy trying to open a package of rice.

"It wasn't that bad. Everyone understood that it was just an accident and they left me alone right away." She explained, avoiding to mention how Rick's mother's sobs had been heard since her seat in the hall, forty seconds before she was at her sight. "How was yours?"

Darren ignored that question and she didn't insist. They ate a simple lunch in silence, Darren cleaned half of his plate out of Lauren's pressure and did his best attempt to keep it in his stomach. Lauren kept what was left of the rice in a plastic container in the fridge.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Lauren knew long before the words were expressed out loud that the answer would never be yes, because there are things that engrave so profoundly and harmfully deep at heart that they never come out purposively.

"I don't think it's all ready to come out yet." He just shook his head before it placed on the top of the couch, tilting it to look at her.

"Well, we have one last film in our watch-list, you know. It could… distract us a bit. I feel that we really need it."

"Sure." Darren said, but she kind of felt she could've suggested to jump from the Empire State building and he would've answered the same thing with the same level of enthusiasm.

Darren's cellphone rang on the table, while she walked to it to get the movie from her bag. Lauren glanced quickly at the screen, almost without wanting to, and she distinguished Joe's name on the screen along with a number that indicated that was not the first time he called. Lauren wondered for a moment if Caroline (or someone, anyone) was there with him, and if she was succeeding on her attempt to comfort him, and if he was suffering as badly as Darren –or worse.

In a sort of way, playing the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in a moment like that was a waste, because none of them was actually watching the movie, despite the screen displayed it in front of them for about one hour. Darren sat down on the floor, his back resting onto the lower part of the couch, and Lauren was sitting in the corner of it, her legs crossed and her mind eventually dozing off as the so-familiar scenes were being shown near her but failing in their usual role of comforting her. They spent half of the film in silence, but at least there was a sound as background for all of this.

It was only later that Darren started talking, and it actually surprised her.

It came out like that breath you give when you're finally out of the water, and you've been holding the air in your mouth for way longer than what you were supposed to.

"It was my fault."

The words sank in the heavy silence.

Lauren couldn't really process the meaning of that sentence, so she sat down on the floor, next to him, as she just asked, "What?"

He wasn't looking at her first, and his eyes were lost in some place between the TV's screen and last night's warmness sliding through the cement.

"He was my responsibility, Lauren." He shook his head and only then looked at her, and the self revulsion and detestation were drawn on his expression like if it were a painting. "He had always been, and he trusted me since the start, and now…"

"Everyone knows what they're getting into when they compete in a race. These things happen all the time. Please, don't think it's your fault."

She hated the sentence she threw off in the middle of that discourse, because all things happen everywhere all the time, but that doesn't mean anything when they happen to someone you love. But Darren wasn't genuinely listening neither. At least, not yet. Maybe later, when he had gotten some sleep and the memories had settled in another part of his brain, more profound and distant, he could process them from afar.

"You know what I said to him?" He continued, his voice breaking slightly every five words and she knew what was coming next, and she was aware that it was what he needed. "Man up. As if I could ever be something nearly as better than him. And he fucking listened to me, which was the biggest mistake of his life."

(Lauren had never heard a man crying before. Not even his dad, the day when he announced he was moving out of the house because he and her mother were divorcing. There were tears coming out of his eyes, yes, but they looked the same that came out of hers while watching one of those romantic films she loved; she did not see the grief forcefully tearing its way out of his soul, or the longing to rip off hair, hands, heart or whatever part of the body was the cause of this self-produced sorrow, like Greek tragedians; Oedipus stabbing his own eyes.)

Her hands slid to the back of his head and pulled him to her chest, and he compliantly accepted the site, reclining his head there as he continued, the words ripping off everything in their way out:

"He trusted me, and –I failed him. I feel I can't even trust myself now."

Lauren didn't say anything else because every possible comforting phrase would've been a conventional quote almost taken out of a card, and Darren was never satisfied with clichés. So she just let him vent it all there, caresses in the middle of dreadfully sobs and teardrops creeping down through skin and clothes; nothing more than an occasional kiss on the forehead. Darren cried for a long time, and she didn't know how she could've seen him before as invulnerable when the guttural sounds echoing in his throat were quivering him there, in her arms, reaching out so hopelessly that a weight of pain settled in her chest as well, as if the ache of her compassion could somehow minimize his.

It almost felt like if the day had elapsed there. She didn't need to insist when sleeping was mentioned; a sandwich and half a sandwich in the way. Darren was changing his clothes in his room when she went to the bathroom.

Lauren was washing her teeth when she caught in the mirror's reflection last night's outfit extended behind her, next to the shower. She had to close her eyes for a moment after distinguishing the dried blood in the shoes and jeans. She wondered if he hadn't washed anything because he just didn't feel like doing it right then, or if it was because that dirty smudge was the last tread of Rick's life. If she knew Darren, it was most likely the second one.

Lauren lied down next to Darren on the bed, the lamp still turned on. She liked how sleeping together had a completely different connotation for them, they could share a bed with no other intention besides taking care of each other's sleep.

"Lauren," he called her quietly, the head on the pillow turning to see her –his eyes still mildly pink. "About the other night…"

"We don't have to talk about this now. Let's leave it for another occasion."

"But…" Darren seemed troubled. "Are we okay?"

"Yeah, we are." Lauren's hand ran slowly up through his arm, reaching his shoulder and caressing it softly. "Do you want to sleep?"

Darren still felt sort of dubious about sleeping, but he noticed the exhaustion in her looks, so he decided it was worth the try. His hand caught hers, gently intertwining their fingers together. The skin of their extremities seemed to merge with one another, holding each other like a bridge made of paper.

"I think I want to."

"Okay."

Darren reached the lamp and turned the lights off. He heard Lauren's sleepy breath long before he reached his, but at some point of the night he became unconscious, and luckily, the bad dreams stayed away from that room, too.

The next morning, Lauren awoke him with a delicious breakfast in bed, and he was surprised to find himself finishing it entirely. It was only then that he realized that the pain on his chest had considerably decreased to the level of allowing him to eat and breathe normally, and he felt with much more energy and will to move. That unendurable moment stopped repeating in his retina every minute, and the sounds stopped ringing in his ears. But he still was far from feeling okay.

"I have class now, but I'll see you tomorrow at the funeral. Will you be okay?" The last words tasted bitter and surreal in her tongue.

Darren nodded, "I'll go visit Joe. See how he's doing. I didn't pick up his calls yesterday, and he must be trying to not crumble down so hard. I know him, he needs someone like me to take it out. Won't let anyone else get near."

"You guys should all gather up, be there for each other. None of you should be alone right now." She suggested, tying her hair in a ponytail, almost ready to take off.

"Yeah, you're right." Lauren stood up and grabbed her bag from the floor, "And Lauren." He grabbed her wrist, standing up from the bed. His tone was serious and honest when he let out "I really don't know how to thank you for all of this. Everything. You…"

"You don't need to." She cut him off, and then sweetly kissed him on the cheek, "See you tomorrow."

If you could say it like that, the day of Rick's funeral was calm. It'd have been a nice day for a motorcycle journey, at least it'd have been through some two-days-past eyes. A mildly fresh wind, sunshine at the perfect combination of light and burn, dew vanishing on the top of the grass.

Rick's mother gave a wonderful, beautiful, touching speech that should've made anyone in there cry. But none of them did, because those childhood stories and livelong memories felt almost like describing another person. It wasn't the Rick they had known. It was bizarre and they felt like outsiders there, observing in silence, at the end of that moderately long row, a tribute they weren't invited to. Darren was sweating under the suit when the coffin was descended out of his sight. It wasn't a long ceremony.

Lauren reached him by the end, her toes humid from the occasional contact with exceedingly long grass; she couldn't stand being there anymore, she needed to go home. She gave him a hug and proceeded to ask if he'd be okay. She was wearing a black and white knee-length dress, and she looked absolutely gorgeous, dainty and serene like a young widow. He explained he'd stay a while with the guys and she understood instantly. Call me if you need anything, she said. He kissed her sweetly and shortly before she leaved.

A few beers in the way, they walked to the calmest, bleakest part of the cemetery where nobody would bother them. It was strange that all of them were there, dressed up for such a sad occasion, and that nobody really knew what to say but they felt a peculiar need to be with each other –whether it was out of social conventions or because they were genuinely in the need of support.

"How are you coping with all of this?" Darren asked to Brian. He, Joe and Rachel were sitting on a bench, and Brian, Jim and Jeff were sitting in old unremembered headstones in front of them. Joey Richter went, and leaved after giving all of them his condolences, giving Darren the heads-up he wanted to share a talk with him later. Darren didn't really care about anything he could possibly say, but he just nodded.

"Like all of us, I guess." Brian replied calmly. "I could only sleep after getting so drunk I passed out last night. It just doesn't feel real enough yet. I don't know how I'll handle it when it actually does."

Darren had reached that point, and he hated that he didn't have a single useful advice for his friend.

"I know what you mean."

Brian drank from the Heneiken bottle and handed it to Darren. "Listen, about what Lauren did that night… She saved us. She knows that, right?"

"Of course. It's pretty clear."

Brian's surprise came from a place of admiration. "I didn't really buy that you guys were serious before. But seeing that… She must truly care about you."

It had been a long time since Darren heard someone saying that in that tone of voice, it was sort of hard to believe and even less coming from someone like Lauren –why was she losing her time with him anyway? But he shut that question out because it was the worst time to bring it up.

"She really does, doesn't she?" He drank from the bottle before passing it to Joe next to him, "She's something else, Brian."

Brian's slow nod agreed with that statement. A strange, slightly uncomfortable talk took place between the group. Kind of sharing old memories, kind of crying every now and then, kind of ranting about the world's unfairness. Rachel leaved after yelling at Jim, though nobody could really become angry at her for being upset. Soon her departure was followed by the rest, until the only people there were Darren and Joe, sharing the last traces of the already warm and distasteful liquid in a bottle and not talking.

It had become a bit cloudy by then, the wind turning colder. Darren let Joe finish the bottle as he lighted a cigar. He had only given a few puffs before everything came out again, like the day before, looking at the peaceful landscape of the cemetery, throwing the smoke to one side. Maybe everything would stay there, at the rim of his skin, seizing any downfall of self-control to slip out.

"I killed him." He threw off, harsh and cold. "Rick. You know?"

He said it with such honesty and graveness that Joe stared at him for a moment, speechless.

"Nobody killed Rick, Darren." He finally said. "It was an accident."

Great part of him wanted to scream it, let everyone know, that it was his fault and –if anything- he should be the one feet underground. But the most common reaction, people's pity, was something he didn't want or could even handle right then; so he only confessed it to those special persons he knew would not give those christian eyes and a look of mercy back at him.

Darren's voice was doing that thing again, breaking and crumbling down until it choked against his teeth.

"I acted like a complete asshole to him that night. He was my responsibility since the start, and I signed him up on that race almost by force. I practically sent him there, Joe, to that stupid curve to die."

Joe could see Darren's eyes and what they were holding, but he didn't mention it. He looked much more hopeless and depressed than an hour before, in the actual ceremony, and it was physically painful to observe.

"How could you know?" Joe shook his head, slightly moving closer and with not much idea about what he was supposed to do. It was rare that Darren could not keep himself together, but right then he was in a very dark place and it was more than obvious. "Listen. Listen. You're a good man, Darren. It's –you're not a murderer, and you could never be."

Joe pulled Darren's head to his shoulder after the first sob broke in his throat before reaching the air, and Darren cried there the same way he had cried 24 hours before in Lauren's arms, time crossing them thorough without compassion; the feeling of losing something else besides a person clinging with long, stinging fingernails from places he couldn't point out.

"The door." The voice reached a hand shaking carelessly his shoulder as he still tried to wake himself up on his own.

"What?"

"The door." The feminine voice repeated, before the body turned around and continued to try to sleep. "There's someone calling you."

Joe rubbed his eyes, sighing with a throaty voice, and then dragged himself to the door. An employer gave him an exceeding amount of information for that hour of the morning, he caught merely something more than errand and garage and signing but the relation of those words with each other made no sense.

He almost asked again what was the deal, once he followed the employer to the ground floor, and he was actually aware that there was something going on. But he lost his breath for a long while when a garage door was opened, and he understood everything and absolutely nothing at the same time.

The steps he gave were almost out of will. His hands extended forward to the leather, and glass, confirming that it was real, and he could not fall into the count of it.

"Who left it here?"

Something about a weird confidentiality and a third acting out in nobody's name was mentioned, but the thing was that his old motorbike was right there, in front of him, appearing the same way it vanished: as a mystery. And he almost couldn't feel guilty of being happy in a moment like that.

Lauren would never say it to him, but the truth is that things got better. It's a cliché but time does heal, and while two weeks later Darren still woke up often in the middle of the night with his entire body covered in sweat, slapping his way off a nightmare that was really more of a memory than anything else (Sometimes a call followed that moment: Are you awake?; Yeah, sweetie, what's going on?; You weren't awake… and well, I am now, so you'll have to give me some talk anyway). But he stayed as close to his friends as the need for loneliness allowed him, and he felt like slowly coming back to normalcy; a normalcy in which something was missing, but was slightly more familiar and comfortable than the feeling of numbness intruding from inside out.

Brian often visited him with Caliban, the dog that was supposed to be his birthday gift, until the gatekeeper stopped believing either that Brian was blind or that Caliban was a guide dog –as if. Meanwhile, they'd stay there on his couch, whether it was mildly studying, or drinking, or sharing careless talks. Caliban would mess up the entire place until Darren gave up and served him a plate of any kind of food.

Darren was hanging out at Lauren's apartment for no reason in particular, she was working on an essay in her laptop though not really putting her mind into it, and he was jamming a bit with his guitar, though he wasn't playing anything consistent neither.

Darren thought it came out of nowhere, really. Maybe it was just that she needed to check if they were ready to have another one of their usual pseudo-intellectual conversations she had missed so much.

"Hear this. Do you believe in God?" She stuck her head above the laptop to fix her gaze on him, curious.

He turned around to look at her, confused, while a finger slid through the guitar's chord. "What kind of essay are you writing?"

Lauren shook her head, "It's nothing. I was just thinking."

He thought that maybe Rick's death didn't mess up only him.

"You go first." Darren lied against the couch, his chin resting on the top. "Inspire me."

Lauren shrugged first.

"Well, I've always participated in my parent's religions, both Jewish and Christian. You could say I even had plenty of options. I do enjoy it, but at the end of the day…"

"It's not enough." Darren abridged.

"I mean, I do believe in something, you know. Something greater and bigger that gives order to the universe and our lives. The logos, right? I need that reliability to feel comfortable. But sometimes I feel noting of it makes sense, and that I'm just cheating myself the same way people did when they created a God or whatever."

"But first, it was chaos." Darren commented while raising an eyebrow. Then he added, in a more serious tone, "I don't think the point of religion is to make sense, it's just about faith and if you can't find it by yourself they won't help you. If you question it, then it's simply not for you."

Lauren found funny that he seemed to have it all figured out.

"I can guess you have a reason to stand up against all of that," She replied, entertained while a grin was drawn on her lips. She was learning to not take those conversations so at heart, "I'm waiting."

Darren laughed shortly, "I suppose my reliability consists in the lack of an universal order, organization being the most human, therefore vulgar of things. If I believed in something, it would surely not be someone that needs to have a book of rules. Like, fuck you, I have another humans to annoy the shit out of me already."

Lauren giggled quietly and bit her lip before teasing, "God is dead, then?"

"More like out drinking while the kids are in the charge of a teenage babysitter."

"You should write that down, Nietzsche." She suggested, amused, pointing at him.

"Trust me, I will." He joked, turning back again to go back to his guitar. Then, when the conversation seemed to be over, he added lowly, "Right now I wish I believed in any of it, though. Like, anything."

Lauren's grin faded, and she observed him and realized there was nothing she could say.

Darren's phone rang and he was surprised to see Brian was calling him, and less at that hour of the night.

"Hey, what's up?"

"Darren. You need to come to my apartment right now. It's urgent."

"What's going on?"

"Just come. As soon as you can."

He replied that he'd be there in a few minutes before hanging up.

"What's wrong with him?" Lauren asked, surprised, at his announcement.

"No idea. He sounds pretty serious. I'll update you later." Darren said, quickly grabbing his stuff.

He kissed her before taking off. When he got to Brian's apartment, Caliban jumped onto him.

"Hey, buddy. I've no food for you." He said, petting the brown dog's neck and ears, but he didn't understand Darren's message and continued to smell him all over.

Brian opened the door with a pale face that frightened him much more than the strange phone call, that part of him still hoped it to be some sort of bad prank. When he first asked what was going on Brian just repeated come in, come in, shaky hands in pockets and a strong smell of nicotine over him. Darren swallowed heavy, nervous, resting his guitar against the wall of the room.

"You're scaring the hell out of me, Brian. Just tell me already."

Brian grabbed a pair of keys from his bedside table, and he pushed a package of cigarettes into Darren's chest.

"We'll need them, just take 'em." He explained, walking out of the room. He looked uneasy, like if there was a secret consuming him deep inside, a feeling Darren was very familiar with.

Darren followed him through the intern garden of the building, which was now pretty sad since it was dark, poorly lightened and with plants that college students had no time to waste on. He unlocked the padlock and opened the door of the garage everyone in the building shared.

"Joe had talked with Rick's parents to let them keep the bike once the police returned it, but since miracles happen and he got his bike back, I was keeping it for a while in here." He explicated, while they walked through the shed full of all kind of vehicles. "I figured to take a look at it, you know, find out what happened. And I realized that the police didn't even check it out, or they just didn't care enough to say something." They finally got to Rick's bike and Darren's throat tied itself. He didn't know what that was about, but seeing his last ride there, mudguard broken and one rearview mirror less… he wasn't ready. Brian turned on a light near, and then crouched next to the bike. "I thought the clutch cable simply snapped, since that's something that can happen if you're unlucky, and it actually did, so I thought for a while that was it. An unfortunate accident, but something didn't fit because Rick was an expert in these things. He wouldn't just let his motorcycle broke down before a race; that didn't make sense. And then… I realized there was something wrong with the chain gear too. It's been manipulated in such a way to… get increasingly loose, I suppose." He pointed at things, and the details escaped from his friend's ears, trying to catch the point of that explanation before it was articulated. "That way, when Rick needed and tried to slow down, not only he couldn't do it in the short time he should've, but the motorcycle went out of control then."

Darren frowned. He wasn't getting it. He couldn't be getting it. "Brian. What are you trying to say?"

Brian breathed deeply before his eyes fixed on Darren's, severe and bitter.

"That Rick's death wasn't an accident." Nothing felt as real as when those words were expressed out lout. His voice sounded, if it was possible, both worried and relieved at the same time. "He was murdered."

A/N: Chapters are getting harder and emotionally intense to write. A review would really mean a lot to me right now! You don't even have to sign in. x -Natt