I can’t stop moving. Lucca was shot. My heart tumbles in my chest with panic and desperation with every hurried step I take.
“It’s not what you think,” someone who sounds like Jon, Lucca’s best friend, answers. “I’m so sorry, Lucca. You were like a brother to me, but you dug too deep.”
Marylin and I stop short when we see Lucca lying on the ground with blood pouring from his stomach. That’s bad enough. However, the sight of Jon standing over him with his gun aimed at him in one hand and a metal bar in the other makes my blood boil. That answers the question of how the men got on the grounds.
“Lucca!” I scream, and my eyes lock with his silver ones.
In that split second, as I look at him, memory hits me as clear as the image of him lying before me.
I remember the day I first met him. It was at music class. I heard him playing the piano. I was seven, and he was ten. He was playing that song that unlocked my heart.
Clair de Lune.
He offered to help me with my piano lessons so my mother would allow me to play the violin.
That was the moment we began. That was the beginning of our unexpected journey and an unexpected friendship that has lasted my whole life, even though he might not have always been with me. My accident might have robbed me of memories of the magic we shared, but I feel it.
That’s the first memory I’ve had of my childhood that wasn’t locked in a dream.
As the horror hits me that I’m watching him die, I try to get to him. Marylin holds me back, but I try to get away so I can save him.
“No, Aria, we have to get out,” Marylin urges.
“Lucca!” I wail.
“Go!” Lucca shouts to me, and his eyes roll back in his head.