Waking up to Corgi bubble butts in hot dog buns was a blessing in disguise she determined with an exaggerated yawn. Apparently, Dr. Reynolds hadn't thought about that when he asked her to leave his office.

It was his loss.

Collins groaned when her eyes read the time on her rooster wall clock. Jonah had always claimed she could sleep through a zombie apocalypse. She really should be thankful nothing bad had ever happened while she slept through the night since it seemed she could and would sleep through forty-five minutes of her alarm going off.

It was Wednesday morning and she had about twenty minutes to get ready if she wanted to make it to school on time. That was a rhetorical question though, because she didn't really care one way or the other. Since Principal Flannigan removed her from all advanced courses, she was finding it very hard to stay interested in anything school related.

She sighed when her eyes collided with her reflection in the mirror. Honestly, if she lived to be a hundred years old, she'd never get used to the monster she resembled every morning.

Rolling out of bed and onto the floor, Collins made sure to thank the floor for always holding her above the depths of hell. Or at least, she appreciated the floor for keeping her from falling into an abyss worse than the town she was stuck in.

But as she reached a hand beneath her bed for her yellow Converse sneakers, her fingers closed over the pointed edge of the postcard she'd hoped wouldn't be there come morning. But while the ground tried to spare her, the heavens chose to laugh at her.

Oh, man, Collins thought with a grin. That one was pretty good!

She closed her fingers over the glossy print and dragged it out along with her shoes. Collins glanced down at her worn black sweats with random blotches of bleach scattered about the once dark material. Jonah had thrown them out twice in the last year, but her spider sense wouldn't let him get away with it.

It was vintage, at least twenty years old. She'd snuck it out of Jonah's closet back when puberty had first hit her like a freight train. The monthly cramps had made it impossible for her to wear anything that wasn't stretchy around the waistband.

They'd been through thick and thin together.

Which was how Collins came to the logical conclusion that it was totally appropriate to wear the old sweats to the one place in town where all eyes were on her. She rolled the bottoms up to just below her knees and stuffed her feet into the bright shoes. She picked out a cropped white tank top to finish the outfit, then hurried into the bathroom right across the hall to wash up.

Ten minutes later she had her book bag hanging from her right shoulder, ready to face another day of high school students' hostility.

Jonah was in the kitchen making toast when Collins rushed past him and out the door. "Make sure to get something to eat during break!" he called after her with a laugh.

She gave him a wave as the screen door slammed shut behind her. And though she'd sworn that she would never, ever throw her dignity away to do it...

Collins ran to school.

vVv

Waking up after crashing a motorcycle into a pole to save a squirrel wasn't exactly the most impressive thing Collins had ever done. Nope, the most impressive thing she'd ever done was have a complete nervous breakdown in the seventh grade because she couldn't stand the thought of diving into a pool in front of the entire school.

That along with stealing a few cans from Jonah's beer stash to drink in the graveyard with Simon. She'd learned the hard way that she really couldn't keep that stuff down.

Simon smiled down at her when she winced.

He was such a handsome guy. Like, the kind of handsome that didn't hit you like a ton of bricks the first time you looked at him. No, his handsome was the kind that took months to notice. It was little things like the way his eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled or the dashing dimples that bracketed his mouth. He had the kind of eyes you could look into for hours before you realized they were endless... like true windows into the soul.

She supposed that was why she loved him so much. She hadn't even thought about it. It just happened one day, no questions asked.

"Hey, Sleeping Beauty," he greeted, flashing those adorable dimples.

Collins groaned. "Don't lie to me. I probably look like Scar after he was skinned for a rug."

Simon laughed, and like everything else about him, that, too, was beautiful. "You know to me you're always the fairest one of all," he told her.

The kiss he placed on her forehead was sweet. "Wrong fairytale, bud, but thanks for loving me."

That was it. She'd nearly died because she'd been stupid enough to accept some loser's bet and take Jonah's motorcycle out for a drive. Simon had warned her not to do it, that she wasn't going to prove anything to anyone. She'd done it anyway, and Simon had come rushing to her side the minute he could.

And the idiot she'd made the bet with? Turned out he didn't even have the money to pay up.

Jonah disposed of what was left of the motorcycle. Always the caring brother, he'd figured getting it fixed would only serve to tempt her in the future.

They sat in silence for an hour, scrolling through channels until they stumbled across an episode of Friends. At one point, Collins ended up curled up against Simon when he slipped into the hospital bed with her.

It was perfect. The pain in her legs and her sides was dulled thanks to the painkillers. Simon's fingers played in her hair, gently massaging her head until the pounding subsided. And in her ear, the steady rhythm of his heart played, her own fingers tapping along atop his chest like nothing else in the world mattered.

Not even her terrible reflexes while driving under pressure.

But Collins was used to good things coming to an end. It was a part of life. Childhood ended so that children grew up and suffered through the trials of life as an adult. Christmas was only one day a year, and sometimes you still didn't get what you asked for. The innocent love you developed for someone you thought you knew soured over time until you realized you'd made it all up in your naive little head.

Which was exactly why, knowing all of that, she should have been prepared for her best friend to leave her, too.

He pulled away from her when the nurse stepped into the room with a tray of food for her. Simon cleared his throat and gave her a smile that didn't quite reach his sparkling eyes.

That was the first sign that something was wrong.

"Collins," he breathed her name, almost like he needed some time to work through what he was going to say. "You know how we've talked about the future? The plans we made about starting over somewhere else once you graduate high school?"

She really wished she had kept her mouth shut now. Maybe then he wouldn't be planning to leave her so easily.

But Collins had learned from the last time someone had walked out of her life that no matter how many tears were shed, the result would be the same. So she pushed those emotions aside and met Simon's kind brown eyes with a tight smile.

She nodded.

He grasped her left hand and squeezed. "I've decided I'm going to join the Marines," he told her.

And subsequently broke her heart. Because no matter how far Collins might have imagined he would go, the truth was that this path choice was infinitely worse. He might not understand that, and she couldn't say she could blame him for it. Heck, she hardly understood what was so wrong with her sometimes. But she knew that Simon away at sea for any length of time would keep him out of her reach for good.

"Simon, that's..." but the words stopped there. She couldn't think of how to put what she was feeling and thinking and fearing into sentences he could understand. "I never thought-"

"I know." For the life of her, she could believe he did know more about her than she did. "I know you're scared of it. That I might leave and never come back."

Normal people didn't have this internal fear of being abandoned, and though her brother had spent lots of money trying to figure out why she was programmed the way she was, no one had a clear answer.

Simon, dear, sweet Simon, saw that and chose to see past it. "I know you can't shake this terror you have of water either, and that my choosing this route is going to be hard for you," he continued. His hand around hers tightened, lending her strength. "But I have a plan, Collins, and you'll hardly miss me in the time it'll take for you to finish school."

Anyone else would have accepted his logical, clear plans. Why not? He'd graduated high school with honors, his sister struggled to keep food on the table for both of them in this town. Simon deserved everything he wanted in life and more. No one could fault him for wanting to live beyond what he'd experienced in Sailor's Port.

But Collins wasn't like everyone else. She'd always suspected there was some switch inside her that had been turned off long ago. That or she'd been dropped as a baby.

"No, Simon!" Collins begged, hysteria making her voice louder than she'd meant for it to be. "I'm happy with you doing anything else. Just, please, not this."

He cooed at her, like a patient parent calming a frantic child. His thumbs swiped beneath her eyes, wiping away the tears she'd told herself not to cry. "It's okay, Collins. I'm not going to leave you. Not forever."

It wasn't even the thought that he would leave her at all that broke her. It was the thought of where he would be during that time. It was the water.

"No, no, no!"

She couldn't stop it. The panic did something devastating to her functioning brain. She lost control. Her eyes could still see everything around her, the frightened face of Simon as he tried to calm her. But her ears rang with a deafening roar, so she was helpless and deaf to anything but the crashing waves in her head.

She couldn't breathe. An invisible force settled above her chest and she clawed at it to free herself. But like the countless times before she scratched at air.

The doctor burst into the room followed by two nurses. Simon was pushed back from her as they tried to pretend they knew what was wrong with her. She saw a thin red line along Simon's cheek and the blood that slowly oozed from it. She'd hurt him when he'd only ever been kind to her.

She felt a prick and then a merciful burning in her veins as the sounds faded.

Simon turned to her once more, his smile genuine because his eyes smiled, too. "I'm not leaving you, Collins," he promised.

And she believed him as she drifted off.

vVv

She knew now that Simon's lie had been a necessary one. The way she was, she never would have let him go otherwise.

But it hurt. Goodness, it hurt.

Collins snapped the library book closed and pulled the postcard out of her book bag. It was from Simon. Apparently he'd decided that before he officially committed to the Marines he was going to see a little bit of the world. At least that was the explanation he gave for being in Texas.

What didn't really make sense was the return address. There was none. So even if she had wanted to reach out to him, she couldn't.

Which only made it harder for her to believe he'd ever intended to come back. He claimed she would hardly miss him in her last year of high school, but she saw now that all she did was miss him. Because without him, she was completely alone. An outcast in the tidy halls of Sailor Seas High.

The photo in the front was of a ranch with sprawling green hills. It was beautiful, a world apart from the one she lived in Sailor's Port. The post card didn't tell her much about what he was doing or what he was thinking. In it he claimed to be safe, happy, free. He was finally getting to see all he'd missed.

Don't worry about me, Collins. I'll be back before you know it.

Love, always,

Simon

He'd even signed it like always. Like there was nothing at all that had changed in the weeks since he'd left town.

Maybe because for him nothing much had changed? a dark little voice suggested.

Which was a completely humbling, terrifying thought. Because for Collins, everything had changed the day she woke up to find her best friend had skipped town. It had all started falling apart from there.

The sheriff claimed she wasn't a person of interest in Regina's case anymore. In other places, those words would have meant something, too. But in Sailor's Port it only seemed to add another sin to the running list of reasons Collins Estrada wasn't welcome. Even Simon's decision to leave was somehow her fault, though Jonah assured her Simon was of age and not really missing.

He was just gone.

The bell rang, forcing Collins out of her trance. She yanked the last five books from the book cart beside her and placed them on the newly cleared shelf. Not bad for daydreaming away thirty minutes of the full hour she was required to help the school librarian.

A glance around the empty library proved that she'd helped to restore the school library into some order. This was her favorite place in the entire school, but it was easily the most neglected. The shelves were old and splintering, the walls were painted a muted gray that had needed a fresh coat two summers ago. The chairs scattered about the room were as mismatched as the hamper of lonely socks in Collins' bedroom. Compared to the gym, the library was a dump. Which was exactly why it was perfect to her.

It was the magic she found in books that gave it charm, and thankfully, those books were still in stellar condition.

Collins rolled the book cart back to the front desk and waved goodbye to Mrs. Ruben. The purple haired, fifty-year-old mumbled her thanks before pushing her rainbow rimmed glasses onto her pointed nose. Truth be told, Collins had always found Mrs. Ruben to be a little magical herself.

The walk back to the school hallways was packed with students scurrying to leave school. She was used to the shoving now, realizing it was either that or being avoided completely as if she was a plague. She would have preferred having people stay clear of her, but some folks just loved to torment others.

Like the entire football team.

Collins cursed when the top three football stars noticed her squeezing past a couple who looked delirious enough to reproduce against the school lockers.

She closed her eyes, hoping for divine intervention. Literally anything to divert the bulldozers' attention span long enough for her to make it out alive. They'd taken so much force to their heads in between practices, she was surprised they could remember her name at all sometimes.

"Hey, Collins!" Trey Woods, the star quarterback, called.

Just that voice coupled with the laughter of his friends was enough for her to pick up speed. Which, in hindsight, probably wasn't the best way to escape when her eyes were still tightly shut.

She was dedicated when it came to prayers.

Again. Collins winced at the laughing voice in her head. You were definitely dropped as a baby.

She bumped into something hard and went crashing to the ground. Her eyes flew open. She searched frantically, trying to find Simon's postcard in the midst of the books and papers she'd dropped. It didn't even register that her leg was throbbing from the way she'd landed on it. Neither did she immediately notice the eerie silence that filled the building as she scrambled to collect her things.

Until her fingers closed over the postcard tucked safely between two booted feet.

Wait a dang minute!

Collins' gaze flew up to meet eyes the color of a summer storm. The same storm that had haunted her dreams on and off for over a year.

And just like all those times before, she felt herself drowning in the bottomless depths.

It was the strangest thing. She felt herself pulled to them, to him, at such a level that she forgot she needed to fight it. She feared everything else that tried to suffocate her, but with him, she was helpless.

She heard a locker slam nearby, and that sound saved her from greater humiliation. Really, it freed her. Without a word, Collins scrambled to her feet, making a pile of her books in one hand, and headed for the doors. The closer she got to them, the louder the whispers from onlookers got.

Because it had been over a year since Collins had given everyone a reason to think her a freak. And that reason had finally caught up with her.

Vance Brock was back from Europe.

Collins burst through the doors. Froze with one hand in mid air at what greeted her just beyond.

"Collins," Jonah whispered her name, turning away from Sheriff Tills and Mayor Brock.

The other two men turned to look at her, their faces set in stone. Jonah stepped towards her when she instinctively stumbled back and collided with something hard at her back.

Cool hands closed over her bare upper arms, steadying her, but they fell away the instant Jonah grasped her wrist and pulled her forward.

"What's going on, Mayor?" a cold voice she'd never wanted to hear again asked from behind her.

Mayor Brock shook his head, the normally jovial face marred with new lines and a growing chestnut colored beard. "Regina's been found."

Shouldn't he be happy that his daughter was safe? It didn't make sense why everyone looked so somber when the mystery had been solved. Right?

"We've recovered Regina Brock's remains," Sheriff Tills explained as more students stepped out of the high school. "She's dead."

One Brock returned to town, while the other was lost.

----

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