***********

We are all here. The five of us. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know, indeed. Why?

She seemed well. I don’t know. Maybe I knew her less than I thought. She seemed strong. She was cheerful and she said life had to go on. Even without him.

Yesterday she wasn’t at home when I came to drive her to school. Then, I went to her bedroom. She wasn’t there. She wasn’t at school either. She skipped her shift at work. Nobody had seen her. I asked Alex, but he neither knew anything. She wouldn’t ever have cut her classes. There was something very wrong. Max was worried. Even if they broke up, he still loved her. He loves her even now.

His eyes full of fear. Terror that something had happened to her. Then, suddenly, he didn’t speak anymore. We were in the quad. Tears. We didn’t understand what was happening. Isabel drove him home. Michael followed them. Alex and I went to her home. Her parents were crying and Valenti was near the door, looking away.

I don’t want to hear, to see or listening to anything. I don’t want to.

Her bed is cold.

Alex cries. Isabel hugs him, crying. Michael looks at me for a while and then away. Max is outside, sitting in the lounge chair. Empty eyes and a smile on his face. I don’t think he has understood what happened.

I’m fine, I think. I can’t cry.

Liz is dead.

Her parents were crying. The sheriff went near us. And he told us what happened.

She was found in a motel. Dead. She has been found because the time for the room was up and she hadn’t left yet. The door locked. Her things still there. The bathroom door locked. Something heavy against it.

Max is still on the chair. He hugs her blanket. Isabel is still crying. Alex is sitting on the floor. His hands in his hair. Michael is looking for something.

Something.

Liz is not here anymore.

They told me she didn’t suffer. I don’t think it would make any differences. What she did, she did it because she was in pain. Pain.

They told me they found her sitting near the tub. Her arms plugged in the water. Red. Water. She's worked things out so that nobody could save her. She wanted to die.

I know why. I don’t want to think about it.

I can’t cry.

Michael hands me something. I know what he’s giving me.

It says she felt bad. Her stopped _ broken _ heart. Her crushed _ torn soul. She couldn’t live. She depended so much on him for living. Sure her life was gone when he went away. The death of the soul without the death of the body.

I know what she felt. I know what she wanted to say.

Suddenly her little, perfect world seemed too small, even to breathe. It wasn’t perfect anymore. She was sinking in her own feelings. No ability to manage the pain. No being in control anymore. She felt herself dying inside.

(It says) she was tired, so tired she couldn’t sleep. She was so scared of sleeping, because during the slumber everything came back to her multiplied by thousands. She felt so alone, so empty. She couldn’t eat, sleep or think of anything else. Such a pain. She wanted to runaway from Roswell, NM, from him, from that whole destiny crap, from that soul mates thing, that were destroying her. But she couldn’t. She was tied here, to him, to us, to this situation. And then her body betrayed her, it was a wreck, she could feel herself dying day by day. She was running away. At last, she was trying to. But everything was after her, she could feel it.

Only death is the end of everything.

She hadn’t been selfish. Neither coward. She only couldn’t win the pain, the sorrow, the loneliness.

I hope she’s well now, that what she has done is right, that the pain’s gone.

Everything's a end. Life, too. But, what if the soul dies before the body? Now, I have the answer.

I don’t think Max knows Liz is dead. He’s eloped in a world. His own world. With Liz. He’s been blocking the pain out. What will happen when he is not able to do that anymore?

Alex is crying. Isabel, too. I can’t.

I can’t _ cry.

The funeral. I don’t know. Maybe to help people who stay.

It has been three days.

Isabel says Max is getting worse. He doesn’t react. Doesn’t talk. Doesn’t eat. Doesn’t sleep. Goes out only to sit in Liz’s balcony. I’m here, too.

He has read her journal. I don’t think it’s a good thing. I don’t think so. I know only two things. He’s going to die. Liz didn’t think of that. And nobody of us will bear the pain.

The beginning of the end.

I only hope it is not painful. To die, I mean.

Don’t cry ‘cause the sun'd disappear: the tears wouldn’t let you see the stars.