Dead

It all began with a scream.
A ear piercing, it came from outside. The last kind of sound you'd like to hear when your parents are out. There is nothing ever comforting about a woman's scream, it gave chills down my spine. 
What is most natural reaction it it? Hide under a coffee table until the screaming died down? Or turn up the volume of music until it drowned every sound and guilt ate you up from inside?
But I did neither of these. Instead I ran to the front door, throwing it open and I could clearly see what was happening outside.
Mrs. Caulfield crumpled on the walkway between her front gate and front door, her screams down to sobs. Her voice cut through the thick fog hanging in the night air. Fog was nothing, it cut through my soul.
Cuahht in the shadows between pools of yellow light, Jane Caulfield drooped over the wrought iron fence, her fingertips reaching the ground.
My heart tore itself between stopping and pounding away. All the sandwich and pizza I ate threatened to come back up. I fought the urge to the give into nausea.
Mrs. Caulfield was breaking down next door. Like the way mothers are able to lift off of cars from their children to save from death, I had the ability to think what had to be done first.
I pulled the phone from my pocket and called 911. I quickly told my emergency before getting too close to Mrs. Caulfield. It wouldn't do her good to hear those words. They meant something; especially words like dead.
I stayed on the line, my phone pressed against my chest as I made my way towards the Caulfield's gate.
Beneath Jane, the dark pool grew wider, blood dripping off her fingertips making a way down the path that was her outstretched arms on one side and dripping on the leaves of roses on the other side. Her long hair covered her face partly, leaving it in shadows.
The longer I stared, the harder it became to differentiate this Jane from the Jane who lived next door. Jane with long dirty blonde hair and a neutral, disinterested face was much better than the Jane whom I staring now at.
Her wide open eyes felt as if she was staring at me as I knelt down beside her mother. Mrs. Caulfield never cared that we stayed next door. We never talked once. She only cared that someone walked past her daughter's limp body to comfort her. Salt tears soaked my shirt while I held up my phone, still answering to the questions the emergency dispatcher asked.
"Mrs. Caulfield, where is your husband?" I tried.
Nothing. Mrs. Caulfield had erected a glass wall around herself and no one could go through it.
"Mrs. Caulfield, I called the 911." I said. "They will be here any minute."
The gated front yard was flooded with uniform clad men and women, many with a notepad in their hands, crouching next to us, ushering us away from the scene. I was wrapped in a blanket, inside a cruiser, feet out of the vehicle. A Ford Crown Victoria. Most of the police cars in Drummond were Fords.
"What is your name dear?" A woman crouched beside me, outside the vehicle.
"Emma Elwood. I called the 911." I tucked the blanket under my chin.
"Did you know Jane long?" The officer asked not exactly in an interrogating tone. She lacked urgency. And then the questions went on.
And then someone asked me for the first time, how properly I knew Jane Caulfield, if she ever said anything about wanting to die.
How was I supposed to answer this question? Did I knew Jane well enough to know the answer?
I couldn't answer the why of it.
"We had different groups." I said, but that did disservice to Jane. She never ran in any crowds at all for that matter, nor did I have any groups. There were better people than me in this town who would answer why Jane didn't really got along with anyone, not that I ever noticed. For a year in Drummond, I didn't see her sit with anyone during lunch or go to classes to anyone.
By this logic the whole night could be so easily dismissed as the tragedy of lonely girl who had no one to talk to. The whole case could be closed.
Officer Ryne finished her questions. Her name was pinned to the front of her, the only thing I could focus on. Anything else fought against my focus.
"You're in shock." She explained.
Shock didn't describe the hollowness. Instead of terror or blue devils, my body felt numb as a whole. The first dead body I ever saw was of a girl whom I knew. I wasn't a jogger on a morning run coming accidentally across a rolled up rug on the side of the road. That would be shock. I wasn't a real estate manager hammering on a door to collect overdue rent only to find a cat nibbling on someone's ear. That would be shock.
Shock was a word that stretched itself thin trying to encompass that night. The coiled springs that kept me from crumbling like Mrs. Caulfield into the front yard abosrbed the brunt of the force.
"Can I grab my own blanket from my house?" I asked. There were probably more questions to be answered and I just wanted to second myself.
The police left me slink off in my house, all the lights were left on, my TV, my laptop.
Before I entered the house, I noticed the mailbox wide open. Mail on a Sunday night?
I pulled out a rectangular thing wrapped in plain brown paper and tried with a twine. Before anyone could ask amymore questions, I took the parcel inside.
Outside, the flurry of activity continued, neighbours peeking from their windows the police tape, the cars, the squeal of grinder cutting away metal. Where were they when I called 911? Hiding under their coffee table or turning up the volume of music to drown Mrs. Caulfield's despair?
There wouldn't be an investigation, not right away. A girl threw herself from her window onto the spiked fence, leaving a mess to clean up but not a mystery to solve. Teenagers killed themselves sometimes. Adults did too. But adults even died of strikes and heart attacks which teenagers weren't prone to having.
When I tore open the thick paper, an envelope fell out first, sliding away from the top of the book to beneath it.
Emma.
Letters crunched together across the letter, it was undoubtedly my name. My heart finally decided what it needed to do, pounding against my ribs like the cage they were.
My nails slid under the flap, pulling it loose from the glue.
Inside the envelope there was card and there was a key.
Watch the house.
The same crammed letters strung together three words. That was it. That was all I got as an explanation for the envelope, for the book, for the night.