I still remember it. All of it. The temperature as I walked home from school: seventy-nine degrees. The substitute teacher filling in for Mr. Sanchez as he underwent knee surgery in Charleston: Ms. Welsch. The song playing through my headphones as I struggled to unlock our trailer’s janky front door: Girls Just Want To Have Fun, by Cyndi Lauper. Tyler insisted I listened to it. Unironically.

The flowers my dad picked up at the Mini-Mart the night before in an effort to ‘liven the place up’ were lilies. They were a welcoming fragrance that I inhaled deeply after dropping my backpack next to the growing stack of bills on the front table.

The bill on the top of the stack: overdue.

My shoes as I walked into the living room were pink. Again, a completely unironic purchase made with Tyler on a two a.m sugar-rush trip to the 24/7 department store in town: Charlie’s Donuts.

I inhaled again, but instantly regretted it when the pungent scent of copper filled my lungs instead of the sweet smell of lilies I’d grown quite attached to in the last twenty-four hours.

I remember being confused at first. The only other time I’d smelled something so similar was when our next door neighbor slammed his pinkie in his Toyota’s car door, and I had to go to the hospital with him and my dad so that he could get stitches.

Why do it smell like blood?

Then I looked down. And suddenly, I was no longer confused.

And my shoes were no longer pink.

They were red. Everything was red. The wall was splattered in it. The rug was stained with it.

The pool of blood collecting underneath my father’s skull was made of it.

I had to flag down Mrs. Bakerfield who lived across the alley so she could call 911. At first she didn’t believe me. She was very straight forward when she called me a liar. She said Daniel Mitchell would never do such a thing, but then proceeded to scream louder than I did when I dragged her into my house to prove her wrong.

Last I heard, she’s still in therapy for what she saw that day.

By the time the police arrived, a small crowd had gathered on our front lawn. I wanted to maul every last loiterer trying to get a glimpse of my daddy. I remember one of them asking me if I was okay. It took two grown men to yank me off whoever bothered to ask such a horrifyingly stupid question.

It wasn’t until Tyler finally evaded three policemen and sprinted his way into my arms that it felt real. He held me then, for an awful long time as I screamed and sobbed. Told me that it was all gonna be alright. Caught me when I finally fainted from lack of oxygen.

When I regained consciousness, Finlay was there. His eyelashes were glistening and the smile on his face was award-winningly pitiful, but he was heels in the mud determined to stay by my side. Despite just finding out that the only father figure he’d ever had killed himself, Finlay refused to leave me to suffer alone.

It soon became clear that he was going to saw off every last one of his toes in an attempt to alleviate nothing but an ounce of my grief, and I couldn’t take it. It was that possessive selflessness that ultimately sent me out of his arms and into the forest beyond.

I couldn’t fathom having someone in my life who was all-too-willing to die for my sake. Not when I was still covered head to toe in my favorite person in the wild world.

It was just yesterday that I was sitting on my dad’s lap as he twirled my hair through his fingers. He slaughtered men in tornadoes of dust and chopped wood with his bare hands, but he was never more gentle than he was with me. He would watch me dance in the glow of the living room lamp that always only had one functioning light bulb, and he’d make me blueberry pancakes when I was missing the moon and couldn’t fall asleep.

Soon enough, I had run all the way to the other side of town. Daytime had turned to nighttime. The moon was hiding out behind the clouds. Probably mourning, as I was. In the distance I could see a mountainous hill peeking out from above the tree line, as if it was too shy to say hello, but I was determined to meet the top of it. So I hiked. And my bare feet splintered, and bled. But still I persevered. The flowers I walked across were all dried up and dead. A coincidence that did not go unnoticed. But they were still soft. Just like my father’s skin was as I ran my fingers over the creases on his forehead, right before two police officers politely asked me to back away so they could ‘continue doing their job’.

Was he scared?

Did he cry out?

Was it quick, or did he have time to feel regret?

I wonder if each atom had to suffer the pressure of the bullet slicing through the center of his skull.

I wonder if he knew I would be the one to find him.

The hill ended up being bigger than I thought it would be. As I stood at the base of it and looked up in wonder, the clouds finally decided to part, allowing the moon to shine.

A crescent moon.

Years later when stubborn curiosity outweighed my efforts to stow away that day for all time, I researched the spiritual meaning behind a crescent moon. Google claimed that the moon glowing bright the day my dad died symbolized new beginnings. Of what— I’m still unsure. I’ve been frozen in time for the past twelve years. If anything new began, it began without me.

“I figured I’d find you up here.”

“I never did stop being mysterious.”

Tyler laughs, taking my sarcasm as an invitation to sit down beside me. Criss-cross-apple-sauce. Just like when we were kids.

“You can’t smell the ocean from up here.” He sighs. “It’s… nice. All my clothes are stained with saltwater.”

Finlay didn’t find me that night.

Tyler did.

And he sat with me exactly where he’s sitting now.