pengychan:

Sure!

Héctor exchanged another glance with Imelda, and a nod, before he turned and walked into the street Ezequiel had come running from.

In the back of his mind, a memory tried to resurface: that of two children chasing each other through dark streets in Santa Cecilia far past their bedtime, scared of the darkness but ready to die before admitting as much aloud, letting out with fake howls and hoots and trying to catch each other by surprise. There had been a few loud shrieks – Ernesto shrieked the loudest, Héctor remembered – and several annoyed people yelling from windows that it was past midnight, some people have to work, chamacos, go home before we give you a beating.

They’d laughed it all off, of course, the threats and their own childish fear and the relief that followed the shrieks, when they’d found each other again and headed back together, laughing and joking. The dark was not so scary, then… but then Héctor remembered another walk in the dark, one to a train station he would never reach, and the memory turned sour. They’d laughed and joked then, too, and Héctor had thought Ernesto meant it. If he’d noticed a blankness on his face from time to time, if his gaze had seemed too distant and yet too fixed at the same time, he had thought nothing of it.

You thought he would never, until he did.

Héctor scowled, and chased the memory away. Dwelling in it would do no good; it was all in the past, deader than they were. Whatever – whoever – he would find in those alleys, it wouldn’t be his best friend. The boy he’d known would not come running out of there like he used to, like Ezequiel had. He was not there.

He wasn’t anywhere.