Shadowed Destiny.

When I heard the sirens, my heart started racing.

"Shit," West muttered, excitement tinging his voice. I caught a glimpse of the smirk on his face before Laura and Ariel leaped to turn off the spotlights. We stepped back to admire our masterpiece-an explosion of blue, grey, and black with Athena emblazoned across the large brick canvas. Dropping our empty spray cans, West quickly snatched up the lights.

"We gotta go!" Laura squealed, anxiety in her voice. Her boyfriend, Ethan, grabbed her hand and yanked her towards the far end of the alley. We each had a route planned to avoid getting caught by the police-a maneuver we'd practiced many times before. My route was the toughest, taking me right past the cop cars on the main road. Moving determinedly, I followed my boyfriend toward the alley's opening.

"Run fast, baby," Nate murmured quietly as we approached the alley's edge, the blue lights getting closer, sirens blaring. In that brief moment, everything seemed to slow down. I caught the light reflecting off his serious blue eyes, his intense gaze searing into my memory. I wanted to kiss him, and a smile curled my lips, despite my pounding heart.

"You too," I whispered as the others slipped away in different directions. Nate and I bolted out of the alley, splitting up-he went right, and I went left.

I let my legs carry me as fast as they could. A cop car screeched to a halt when they spotted me, the tires wailing like a banshee as I raced down my route. My breath quickened as I inhaled the cool spring air, my bandanna brushing against my lips. I didn't look back when I heard the cops get out of the car. Panic clawed at my throat as I felt one of them close in, heavy on his feet. My skate shoes hit the pavement quietly as I ran on the balls of my feet, my muscles burning with the effort. The dark sky contrasted with the city lights that glittered off the broken glass on the sidewalk, resembling freshly fallen snow. Wearing all black, I was like a shadow, the blue lights bouncing off the windows of the towering buildings beside me.

I slipped into an alley, leaping past a few sketchy guys who scattered when they realized I was being chased. My friends were long gone, each heading home by their own route.

We'd done this so many times, but the rush never faded. My shaky hands gripped the cold metal of a chain-link fence separating me from the dark woods beyond. I threw myself over and landed on the other side, taking one last look at the uniformed officer before backing into the trees, out of the orange streetlight's glow. The cops never followed once I crossed that fence, and tonight was no different. The officer sighed in frustration, catching his breath, before retreating with his walkie-talkie.

Once I'd caught my breath, I took off my hat and bandana, stuffing them into my bag as I made my way home. I wondered if anyone had managed to snap a picture of our art before we scattered.

The next morning, I took my usual route to school and met my friends at our usual spot-a picnic table on the school grounds. I threw my arms around Nate and kissed his cheek as the others greeted me.

"How are you?" I asked cheerfully.

"Fine," he replied, his usual lie. I ignored his gloomy attitude, something I was used to, and slid in next to him. His blue eyes met mine coldly from under his blond bangs, and my smile faded, sensing his mood.

"Nate, what's wrong?" I asked softly.

"Nothing, Athena. Forget about it." He looked away, avoiding my gaze. The table fell silent, everyone pretending not to notice.

"No, tell me," I pressed, not wanting to let it go this time. He shrugged off my touch, refusing to meet my grey eyes.

"It's fine," he lied again, more convincingly this time, waving a pale hand dismissively.

"Okay," I said, letting it go for now, but I made a promise to myself to figure out what was bothering him by the end of the week. I fell silent after that, pretending it didn't hurt every time he pulled away from me. I didn't think I was clingy-I didn't always touch him or show affection in front of others. We both hated that sort of thing. But it was hard seeing him in pain. I tried convincing myself it was just the Monday blues.

"Guys, check it out!" West announced, moving closer to Nate's other side to put Ethan's phone out in front of us. I leaned in to see the picture of our art with interest, but my eyes gravitated to Nate's non-existent reaction. Even though West's face was pulled into an excited smile, I could see the worry in his eyes. So it wasn't just me who was worried about Nate...

Ethan was looking over too, with seriousness on his face. He hugged Laura's petite body to his skinny frame and his blue eyes went to me like he was communicating his concerns silently. I was sure I had communicated my worries back.

"It looks so good, you guys!" Laura chimed with a smile on her round innocent face. Her hair was impossibly long and cascaded over her shoulders down to her elbows. Her beige skin seemed to glow as much as her bright personality.

"Too bad we didn't quite finish." Ethan sighed.

"I think it looks finished enough. At least none of us got busted." Ariel insisted from my other side as she took the phone from West to look closer. My eyes went to Nate almost subconsciously. He didn't look like he had gotten caught, but then why was he having such a tough Monday?

West joined me as we moved off to home room after the rattle of the bell. His tall, muscular form always made me feel short. I couldn't even see his buzzed black hair that was only a few millimeters long on his head.

"Do you know what's up with him?" he asked quietly with his sculpted lips pulled to the side and his thick dark eyebrows pulled up in concern. I'm sure I had a miserable worried frown on my pale face.

"No. Maybe he'll talk to me when we're alone?" I hoped as I watched the other four disappear into the building across the lawn. West let out a sigh, biting his full bottom lip.

"He sure as hell doesn't talk to me... I already asked if he got caught, but he said he didn't."

"I'm so worried about him. He gets pissed if I pry, but I just don't know what else to do." I whined.

"Same. I've tried distracting him, but he's just not interested. I feel like it makes him angrier when I try to cheer him up."

"I tried getting to go out and do fun things, but it's hard. My mom was pissed I was out last night." I admitted.

"My parents caught me too. I'm friggin' grounded." West chuckled.

"That's terrible. I'm sorry." I couldn't help the laugh that escaped me as I looked up to see his unconcerned smile. He grinned wider at my response and his brown eyes seemed to glitter with mischief. There were kids at our school that would've pegged West as a jock, but he was an artist and a skateboarder like me. West had been friends with Nate and Ethan for years before I met him and I remembered being glad that we got along. I often sought out his opinion if Nate was in one of his moods, but from what West said, it sounded like Nate was shutting him out just as much as me.

"We'll figure it out. He knows we're there for him." West reassured me as we moved through the crowds and I stopped in front of my homeroom. His dark-skinned face seemed to drop into a more solemn expression when he saw the hopelessness in my eyes. "It's fine, Athena. It's Monday." He insisted, pulling me into a quick hug as if to reassure me.

"You're right." I muttered even though I couldn't quite believe it could be that simple.

At the end of the day, Nate had already gone home, according to our friends, so I decided I would head home too and then text him to see if he wanted to hang out. Really, I wanted to talk. I felt uncomfortable leaving him alone when I knew he was struggling with something. When he didn't answer like six of my texts, poignant irritation rose in me, making my eyes water and my eyebrows press down. I'll just have to go bug him in person, I growled to myself, grabbing my bag and heading back out towards his house.

No one answered the door and I made a noise of frustration before deciding to use the key he'd given me. I always carried it, but I never used it because he got mad at me one time, saying that he didn't want me to invite myself in when he wasn't home. At the time I thought I was just going to surprise him, but later I realized it looked bad.

I figured since he had been in a bad mood all day that it was urgent enough for the key. The feeling in my gut was telling me that something was wrong. If he wasn't home, I decided I would go for It was dark in his parents' dirty townhouse. A cat scampered out of my way, and it looked like his father was down in the basement watching tv as usual. He lived in the bad part of town so there were a lot of feral cats and gangs, but also his parents were weird. I skirted a garbage bag in the hallway and knocked on Nate's door. It never closed fully and the old 'keep out' sign hung crooked along with ripped remains of different pieces of art that he had taped on there and then tore down. I put my ear against it and when I didn't hear anything, I worried about if he had wanted to take a nap or something. I would be disturbing him. I decided to text him one more time and when I heard his phone buzz, I stubbornly pushed myself in. It was one of those doors that didn't open very easily because it didn't fit in its frame and the top corner rubbed the frame while the bottom didn't reach. The hollow sound of the door scraping its frame filled the room as I tumbled in to stand on his clothes. The first thing I noticed was that he looked so pale he could have been grey. The lack of sunlight in the room made it hard to tell. His lava lamp lent only an eerie red glow and his black curtains were drawn to block out the afternoon sun.

"Nate?" I asked, going closer to him as he lay practically frozen on his clothes next to the bed. I approached him carefully, waiting for him to wake up and yell at me. When he didn't, I opened the curtain and then dropped to my knees, landing in something wet. "No." I shuddered, barely audibly, my hands flying up to cover my mouth in pure shock. His wrists were slit.

After I took a moment to recover from the paralysis of shock, I jumped into action. First, I called 9-1-1 and as I held the phone up to my ear with a shaking hand, I bravely touched his cold skin. I knew he was close to dead, if he wasn't dead already. When a woman answered my call, hopeless tears streamed down my face as I crouched over him. I couldn't feel a pulse and his skin was pretty cold. My hands shook as I touched his pretty face and tried to find a sign.

"Wake up!" I whimpered. I could barely manage to breathe. "Wake up, baby! Please." I whispered into his ear cradling his shoulders and rocking back and forth slowly. I was waiting for him to look up and hug me back or move his fingers or blink. I wanted to tell him it was going to be alright. I wanted him to move, to do something, anything that would tell me he was there. Nothing happened. His blood had soaked his dark clothes on the floor and as I looked closer, there was blood on his bed too.

"9-1-1 what's your emergency?" the woman at the other end repeated. "My boyfriend's dead." My voice wavered out like a ghostly moan. I had gotten there too late. She told me they were sending an ambulance, but it didn't matter, because I was too late. My breathing was coming out like sobs and tears were gathered in my eyes as I shakily tied t-shirts around both his forearms with slim hope. He wasn't breathing and there was so much blood.

I didn't even know who to call. What would I say? My heart felt like it had been stabbed in the back and strangled and my stomach felt like it was full of ice. My breaths came in short sobs and my eyes leaked, ruthlessly. I felt destroyed and I desperately wanted this nightmare to end. I couldn't believe it was happening. My mind and heart wouldn't accept it.

I was jolted back to existence after I had attempted CPR when someone was tugging me away from him. It was Nate's dad and he seemed mad, but I didn't register what he was saying or screaming. Suddenly the room was full of strangers and I was pulled away by several different pairs of gloved hands. I stumbled back and looked into Nate's dead blue eyes as I was pulled out of the room. My heart was broken and the picture burned into my mind's eye.

"Nate killed himself," I said quietly into the phone as I watched them take the body away. How could he do that to me? My sulky, blond, blue-eyed boyfriend was dead. I was in total shock.

"What?" my mom's stunned, confused voice asked from the other end.

"What happened? Are you okay? Where are you?" she fired questions at me urgently. I could barely find the energy to answer. "His house." I answered slowly through a sob. His dad seemed like he was going to murder somebody or something. I wasn't sure if he was mad about the people in his house or upset about his son. The next few hours went by in a blur of tears and chaos. The police asked me a few questions that I was surprised I could answer and my mom picked me up in a panic. She knew I didn't want to deal with any more questions so she told them something and I was relieved when she drove me away from the mess, but I felt like I had left something important at his house.

I got home in a haze and stared blankly, trying to comprehend what had happened. My mom guided me to the couch.

"I'm sorry." She said simply, with a dark look on her face. She squeezed my hand.

I wasn't sad at first. I was confused after the shock had worn off. She said something about dinner and then turned on the TV. I sat on the couch, but wasn't really watching it.

All I could see was his beautiful, blue eyes staring into oblivion. I couldn't cry anymore. I felt paralyzed. Like rigor mortis, I thought myself, imagining his body as it reached the morgue. That brought back tears to my eyes and painful sobs that I struggled to hold back.

I didn't remember falling to sleep that night but I woke up automatically and collapsed when I remembered the previous day. My mom's request that I stay home from school that Friday was met with no resistance.

As I sat alone in my room, I thought back to when I had met Nate at summer camp. I had just turned thirteen and we kept in touch throughout the school year. It was his first year of high school while I was finishing middle school. He was so full of life and happiness back then. I remembered feeling so full of glee when he visited me after school. We'd walk to his house and hang out and sometimes West would join us to play video games and listen to music. We had bonded over our similar tasste in music and our love of art. Finally, my freshman year came and I went to high school with him. Nate introduced me to his group of friends and I was so happy that they accepted me. I didn't have many friends in my year. It was a year of firsts for me and Nate seemed so happy that I was with him. It wasn't until the winter of my sophomore year that things began to change with Nate. That was when he bleached his black hair without telling me. I didn't like it as much, but he was still my Nate and his hair color didn't make too much of a difference to me. He had gotten annoyed that I didn't seem crazy about it, but really I was just wishing he had told me. He withdrew slowly, almost unperceptively, but I noticed certain things he'd say and I remembered the moment when I realized a lot had changed with him.

As the loss set in, I started to wish I had died with him and felt like part of my spirit had. I felt like I needed to go back to his house to get something, as if I'd be able to find him alive there, but I knew that he was gone forever. After spending a day sitting on the couch thinking and crying, I looked down at the black heart I had drawn on my wrist during third period the day before. It caught my eye and made me sob harder. The tears stained my face with makeup and I hadn't washed the blood off yet either. I went to the bathroom when I finally summed up enough courage to look at myself in the mirror.

My blond hair was tangled and forlorn, my white Stars and Straps t-shirt was stained with blood and dark tears splattered across it. My face was pale and dirty. I had gone to sleep in the same black skinny jeans that I had worn to school and they were chafing me behind my knobby knees. My makeup had run and smudged all around my eyes so I looked like a demon. My fingernails still had a nasty rust color in the creases that hadn't washed off and I cried as I remembered, it was Nate's blood. My heart felt like it was being crushed within my chest as I remembered his eyes. I fell to my knees because of the pain in my chest and my empty stomach felt twisted uncomfortably and hollow. I grabbed some black scissors from in the cabinet and before I knew what I was thinking I swiped the scissors through the heart I had drawn on my wrist. Anything to distract me from the pain that gripped me at my core. The bright ruby blood from my sinewy wrist ran down into the palm of my hand. I uttered a small low gasp after my blood started pulsing from the cut with each painful beat of my still aching heart. It hurt and I grimaced in pain but didn't utter another sound. I cradled my arm as it bled harder than I thought it would.

I watched it bleed redder and redder and thought about letting it kill me. It felt like giving up. I hated giving up. I wasn't weak and I didn't want to be thought of as weak. I thought about how mad I was at Nate. How could he do this to me? I thought as I threw the scissors against the cabinet and stood up slowly and dizzily. As I staggered to the wall, I gripped my dripping wrist and grabbed my towel to muffle the cut. I sunk to the floor holding it there for what seemed like forever, waiting for the bleeding to stop. I lifted it up after what felt like an hour sitting on the cold tile floor to check if I had done myself in and was relieved to find that the blood had congealed and stopped coming. I pulled myself painfully together and took a quite needed shower. I washed off all the blood and tried to wash away my sorrow along with it. The bleeding seemed to release some of the pressure and stress, sort of like crying. I felt hazy though and guessed; by the damp towel that I had lost enough blood to dehydrate myself. When I finally finished cleaning the bathroom and throwing my blood-soaked clothes and the towel in the laundry, I bandaged my wrist careful not to let anything show and put on a leather wristband to hide it. I felt empty now like I had lost all my emotion and energy. I felt like I had bled some of it away and the rest I pushed to the back of my brain. I didn't want to do anything except sit there in front of the TV or sleep. My mom came home and was glad to see I was clean. I skipped dinner and went to bed. I was numb as I went to sleep until I had a dream. I relived that terrible moment and woke up with a gasping scream. My mom would have come in but she was a heavy sleeper and the walls in our apartment were thick, although I'm sure that even if I had woken her, she probably decided not to bother me. She knew I was in a lot of pain and when I was growing up, she had often left me alone rather than comfort me. I guess I preferred to be alone. After all, I didn't like crying in front of people, even my mom, and I think she knew that.