Free Silverlighters by Ellem May

catching the moonlight.
    I could see the side of Melissa’s face, her mouth open in a silent scream.
    I thought I was dead.
    But then I realized I could feel the damp grass beneath me, and that something warm – and very much alive – was lying on top of me.
    I could also hear someone else breathing.
    I turned my head.
    It was him. The boy with the silver eyes.
    “Who are you?” I breathed the words heavily. They sounded flat and strange.
    He smiled – a slow, sad smile that took my breath away.
    “You saved me,” I gasped.
    “You saved me first.” His voice was a low rumble, filled with an emotion I didn’t understand.
    He turned his head, a deep and terrible sadness in his eyes.
    I remembered the others then.
    The thump I heard before the world went silent.
    The awful scream.
    I pushed him away and got to my feet.
    I didn’t stop to wonder how I ended up in the park. Not then.
    It had all happened so quickly. It was only later that my shattered brain realized the impact I had felt was him, scooping me up in his arms.
    I ran toward the road, and the world seemed to catch up, as though I had passed through a barrier of some sort.
    Sound returned, slow and drawn out at first, so that I wasn’t sure what I was hearing.
    The black car finished its assault on Mick’s car, time returning with a vengeance as metal screeched against metal.
    I caught a glimpse of a figure in a hood through the window – then the black car took off, tires spilling burning rubber into the air.
    Melissa was screaming as she scrambled out of Mick’s car.
    The indicator light was still flashing.
    “You killed her. You killed my best friend–”
    “I didn’t see her. I couldn’t see anything – that car – it came out of nowhere.”
    “How could you not see her,” Melissa screamed as Beck stood up.  
    Did I mention Melissa was prone to exaggeration?
    She was also worried about the wrong person.
    “I’m fine,” Beck said. “Honestly. Chris saved me – he pushed me out of the way. Where is he, anyway? Chris? Chris?”
    A horrible weight settled over us as we turned. Saw the broken body that was wearing Chris’s blue sweatshirt hanging over the window ledge of the Pizza parlor.
    The lights suddenly came back on.
    Neon colors flashing on and off. On and off. Lighting up his twisted and contorted body.
    “ Nooooooo ,” Melissa’s scream filled the night as she fell to her knees.
    And in the distance I saw them, walking away without a backward glance.
    As though they’d seen what they came for.
    They moved slowly and surely, like they had all the time in the world. And in a way I guess they did.
    It was Chris’s time that had come to an abrupt, earth shattering end.
    The rest of that night melded together.
    The sudden onslaught of rain as the skies opened up. The flashing lights of an ambulance that wasn’t needed. The lights of Chief Gordon’s car. The colors mingling, swirling, so that we couldn’t escape them. Blue and red reflected all around us. In the puddles on the ground. The shop windows.
    Forever reminding us it was too late.
    Until Melissa started screaming, unable to stop. Telling them to turn the lights off. Turn them off.
    I still remember the fear on the faces of the men crammed into the police cruiser as it screeched to a halt.
    They were piled one on top of the other, their faces pale as they scrambled over each other in their hurry to get out.
    Fear on faces that only moments ago had been laughing and joking and acting all tough and manly as they played poker.
    I had never seen such fear before. Such raw, naked fear. Such vulnerability.
    But mostly, I remember the relief. The relief on my father’s face when he saw me. The relief on Chief Gordon’s face as Beck threw herself at him, and he folded her into his arms, holding onto her like he would never let go. The relief on the faces of people who lived in a town so small that everyone knew everyone else.
    But the reason I remember it so well was because