The Least He Could Have Done

This is a short story I wrote for a creative writing summative. It's my first story published to WritersCafe, hopefully it'll be well-received!

Sleep used to be a haven for Dylan, an escape from the life he lives. It’s the sort of life most people don’t want"life on the wrong side of the figurative tracks. But somehow, sleeping isn’t so welcoming anymore. That changed with Peter.

His best childhood friend; Dylan thought he knew him better than anyone else. They grew up together, both happily oblivious to their apparent social differences. Dylan’s father was a mechanic; Peter’s a surgeon. While Peter was the proud owner of six LEGO sets and a playroom full of toys, Dylan had a couple action figures that were shamelessly displaying signs of use.

Peter was supposed to head to NYU this fall to study photography. Dylan’s staying home, working at the garage with his father. Everyone knew this would happen, knew that Peter would be the one to go off somewhere better and Dylan would stay here, where he’s always been, wiping grease off his hands with a rag. Peter was supposed to be the one who made it. Neither cared.

In senior year, however, Peter’s brand of not caring changed to something that bordered on scary. Dylan wasn’t sure when, or even what, exactly, shifted within Peter, but something most definitely did.

Once, Dylan entered the school’s photography lab to find every single piece of  Peter’s work destroyed. Peter was sitting in the corner of the room on the floor, knees tucked to his chest, head against the wall, staring intently up at nothing. Dylan realizes now that he should have recognized this as the beginning of something"the beginning of the end. “What happened, man?” he remembers asking. Peter just shook his head and looked at Dylan with empty eyes and a numb expression on his face. He didn’t say a word, just got up and left. It wasn’t the torn photographs strewn around the room that unnerved Dylan the most. It was the complete lack of anything alive in Peter’s eyes.

Their friendship became dramatically different. Peter kept withdrawing and Dylan kept trying, but there’s only so much a human being can do. There comes a time when there’s nothing left to try.

For Peter and Dylan, that time came in early July. Dylan remembers the exact date--July second. He was supposed to pick Peter up; they were going camping, sort of a grad celebration. Memories of this day ended up jumbled in Dylan’s mind. They appear in brief, choppy images rather than one solid one. The roof, the bright blue sky, cloudless and entirely perfect. Peter’s arms spread wide, leaning back, falling, falling, falling. Slow motion memories now, black and white. Dylan yelling, running, getting there too late. Peter was gone.

Then sirens and voices and chaos. In the hours afterward, nothing was real, nothing made sense. It was all a tangled mess of question and answers and guilt, guilt, guilt, eating him alive.

The funeral was something out of a nightmare, just a crowd of people tied together by black clothes and the shared loss of someone they’d known. When someone dies, people clamor to remember them before they have time to forget. Everyone cried; everyone but Dylan. It’s this fact that keeps him up at night. He didn’t cry at his best friend’s funeral.

He didn't save Peter. The least he could have done is cry for him.

He hasn’t slept a full night since.

Author's Note

Any and all comments/criticisms are welcomed with open arms!

Reviews

[xxxxSweetDreamsxxxx]

I loved it!

[Norma M Sutton]

I like it. Re-read this:
Sleep used to be a haven for Dylan, an escape from the life he lives. It’s the sort of life most people don’t want"life on the wrong side of the figurative tracks. But somehow, sleeping isn’t so welcoming anymore. That changed with Peter.

You have some typos in it. I think you will spot them. :)

[JelliFyshKissUs]

Moving. Absolutely moving. Probably doesn't help that I was listening to "Lemonade" by CocoRosie while I read this.
What is there to criticize? No grammatical errors. And all stories don't end with optimism. Brilliant.

[Nikhil Sharda]

Brilliantly written piece. Wish I could some more like this. All comes down to something that I believe in that if it's never our fault, we can't take responsibility for it. If we can't take responsibility for it, we'll always be its victim.

Please Write of such beautiful stories. There's more to explore on relationships.