She knows

She knows.

She knows that I was fifteen when I took my last breath. She knows that I was small for my age. Yes, I am – sorry was – a late bloomer. I had just gotten my first period last month. As odd as this sounds, I was ecstatic. I was finally going to start growing up into a woman. No more training bras or cotton panties with the cutesy cartoons on them. My mom was supposed to take me shopping for my first real bra next week.

The woman in the blue lab coat and ponytail knows that won't happen.

She also knows that I played piano. Yep, every day since I was six for two hours. That sure paid off, didn't it? She probably doesn't know I'm a smart ass though, does she? No, you can't tell that from two hundred plus bones laid out on a shining table.

The lights are bright in there. Bright lights that the eyes I no longer have cannot squint against. It's better than the dark though. I never used to be afraid of the dark. I teased my little brother mercilessly about his fear of it but I never was. Until now.

The darkness terrifies me now. I'd say it terrifies me to the bones but I'm not prone to bad puns. I know what's going to happen though. Maybe not today or tomorrow or even for weeks, but one day I will go back to the darkness. The same darkness he kept me in for three days.

I would tell you that I was brave; that I didn't cry but I really don't have the need to keep up appearances any more. I did. I cried for my mom. I sobbed so hard that my insides ached. My tears ran down my smudged cheeks, leaving streaks that his hands would them smear across again as he held his hand over my mouth.

She knows that he did this because he fractured my jaw when he pushed down so hard as I tried to scream. She observed this coolly to her partner – major hottie by the way – but I saw her own jaw flinch a little as she said it. She saw what happened. I can tell that she has a vivid imagination. It's always the quiet ones who see the most.

She knows that I fought. Yes. I fought. Hard. I didn't want to die. I didn't want him to touch me like that. I didn't want...

But I don't want to talk about that. There are only three people in the world who knows exactly what happened in those final moments. She is one of them.

She knows.

She doesn't tell him though. Well, she tells him the bare facts. She tells him that I resisted because of the defensive wounds on my wrists. She tells him that he broke two of my ribs with his knees when he pressed down on me. She tells him exactly the size of the metal statue that killed me. I could have told him too. It was on a shelf in the basement. It looked like a bird of some sort but with an odd beak. It was freaky-looking. It stared at me when my hands were bound behind my back and I had no other choice but to stare back. I couldn't take my eyes off of it. I didn't know then that it would be the thing that would make that big gash on the back of my head; the thing that made my dark blood ooze out onto the concrete.

She knows there will still be evidence of that there when they find him. And they will find him. I have no doubt. I've seen the way they work. They egg each other on, pushing for more, pushing for the truth, pushing for me. They fight sometimes over it but they will find him.

So she tells him all these sterile facts about me that will help the case but I can see it in her face that she can paint the picture far more vividly in her head. She relives it with me. Every terrifying moment.

Maybe she's protecting him. Maybe she's protecting me. Maybe she's protecting herself.

She knows that I broke my right arm when I was eight. A neighborhood boy dared me to jump a ramp on my bicycle and, as my dad can tell you, I was never one to back down from a dare. I don't remember it hurting so much as I remember my mom coming in to the ER room, tears streaming down her face and me trying to comfort her more than the other way around.

She also knows I had a crappy doctor who set it wrong in the first place so that one arm was always slightly off more than the other. I could have told her that though when I was eight. He didn't give me a sucker after he set my cast. Come on! What kind of a doctor doesn't give a kid a sucker after they break their arm?!

She knows that I won't see my high school prom. That I won't graduate. Get married. Have children. I was going to have five. I even had their names picked out. I guess you shouldn't really plan so far in advance, huh? In a moment, everything changes.

But with all these things that she knows about me, there's a few things I've learned about her too.

I know that her eyes grow as dark blue as her lab coat when she's angry. I could see her pulse jump a little as she skimmed her glove-covered fingers over my cracked ribs. I know that she skipped lunch today to figure out what the mark on my cheekbone was. I know that when he slips his hand to her lower back to lead her out the door she lets him guide her out, away from me. I bet she would have stayed up all through the night if he hadn't.

And I know that she feels more than her cool, detached gaze lets on. You want to know how I know?

In the quiet of the lab, before he came in to get her, she was leaning over me, her beaded necklace swaying over me like a pendulum. Her breath puffed out against my bones, her eyes squinting at a thin crack on my clavicle that nobody else would even think twice about and out of the corner of one eye, a lone tear splashed down onto my forehead.

She panicked then, hurriedly wiping at it with a Q-tip. She scolded herself for contaminating evidence. I couldn't have cared less though. Because in that one moment, someone who didn't know me when I was alive cried. Cried for the life I should have had. Cried for the innocence that had been ripped from me. Cried for the pain I had to endure.

Cried for me.

So that's how I know. I know her just as she knows me. I speak to her just as she speaks to me when she whispers that she will find justice. And in that moment, I'm no longer afraid of the dark because I know that when they lower me into the ground and my parents begin to get the closure they deserve, she will be standing beside the grave too, her hair shifting in the breeze and her sunglasses hiding the sadness she feels for me.

And though it's not as it should be, it's okay. I'm thankful for her.

She knows that too.