I still can’t believe it, at his graveless headstone, even though part of me knows it must be true.

I rested in my bed, the door wide open – I can’t sleep any other way. I was woken ubruptly by a banging on the front door of the farmhouse. I heard my mother’s footsteps toward it, so I turned over and closed my eyes again.
“Hello, officer,” I heard my mother say. My eyes shot right back open.
“I’m afraid we have some bad news,” the policeman said.
I was racking my brain, trying to think of what could’ve possibly happened in such a small, cozy little town as the one in which I lived.
The next bit of conversation was too hushed for me to make out from upstairs, but I knew I heard my mother sniffle. “I’ll tell him in the morning…let him have one last night.”
She had to be talking about me. Dad had left us shortly after I was born.
“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Johnson,” the officer said solemnly, “I knew your boy was his best friend.”
Then I knew it. Adrian was dead.

They never found his body…