CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

It’s happened so many times: the world fading to black and then relighting moments later somewhere warm and bright and safe, a familiar and comforting presence almost always by my side. Not always the same one, but always there, always watching and hoping, filling the time before my awakening with whispered words and nervous habits – clasping and unclasping hands, tap, tap, tapping on the arm of the chair, the bedside table, the dusty wall.

There’s always someone. And that’s what I hold on to as I wake: the promise that I am not alone, that I’ll never be alone.

I’m in that room again, the one with the ordinary ceiling, thin dark cracks spread across the white like an inverted spider-web. I don’t need to look to know he’s there, but I do anyway, my eyes falling on his limp form, arms covered in white bandages. He’s sitting in a chair, his upper body sprawled across the bedside table, eyes lightly shut. He’s sleeping.

How long has he been here? How long has he stayed by my side, even while his own injuries demanded rest? He’s wearing a watch and the time says: 20:08. I haven’t been out for too long then, not unless it’s still Monday. I hope it’s still Monday.

I look at him again, at his face which seems so peaceful, so gorgeous even while sleeping. And as if he can sense me watching, his eyes flutter open and he meets my gaze. For a while, we just stare at each other, shrouded by a quiet that gives everything a dream-like quality. Then he extends a tentative arm, his hand pausing above my cheek as if asking permission.

“Don’t,” I whisper as his fingers get close, hovering millimetres from the burning cold surface of my skin.

“It’s okay,” he says softly, and then his fingers drop onto my icy cheek. He runs them lightly down the side of my face and I lay still, allowing myself to melt into his eyes, into his touch. He doesn’t wince – doesn’t even notice the pain.

Then I snap out of it. Abruptly, I sit up in bed, all of my yesterday’s rushing back into my mind. Caden’s arm falls away and he pushes himself up off the table, a frown on his face.

“What is it?” he asks.

A look at him, at his deep brown eyes pooling with concern. And then looking away. Because I can’t handle it – it being the way he looks at me and the way I know I look at him. He shouldn’t affect me like this.

“Nothing,” I say, and it’s all lies. I’m as far from nothing – from feeling nothing – as I’ve ever been and it scares me.

Why are you scared? whispers that voice in my mind. And I just sit in silence, because it’s a question I don’t have the answer to, another lock without a key.

Caden’s still there, still watching me with unrestrained concern. He’s not ashamed of what he did, but then again, I don’t really expect him to be – I don’t want him to be.

“Are you okay?”

Of course I’m not okay! I yell hopelessly at the walls of my mind. I sigh. “I’m fine. I just need some time to myself.”

“If it was something I–”

“Please,” I say. I meet his gaze. “Please, just go.” There are tears welling up in my eyes and I don’t know why. I look down at my hands, avoiding eye contact, and wait for him to move.

Caden stands. “I’ll be downstairs.”

A moment later, he’s outside and the door is shut behind him. In the silence, I burst into tears, even as the ghost of his touch burns on my freezing cold cheek.

-:-:-:-:-

I don’t cry for long; the tears dry up in a matter of minutes and then it’s just quiet. Almost.

Why are you scared?

There’s still my thoughts and that voice in my head that just won’t shut up. There’s still my memories of a hundred different yesterdays, each day like a room filled with pain, the doors to which have been left wide open, inviting me in like a history book left open on a random page. Come take a look at your past. A hand waving me over.

Fire rippling through the air. Smirking eyes, slowly approaching. Blood dripping onto the floor.

I slam the history book shut.

My memories are cruel and indifferent. They exist to cause me pain – they push themselves to the forefront of my mind, forcing me to look at them, and they don’t apologise afterwards. They don’t care because they can’t. And I do, because I have no other choice.

Why are you scared?

Why am I scared? Because Caden is a friend who’s becoming more and I don’t know how much longer I have left. Because it’s not just about me – it’s never been just about me – it’s about those I’ll leave behind and those who will go down with me. I can’t pull Caden down with me.  Our friendship is already pushing the limits – testing the amount of guilt I can handle. Crossing the thin line between us would be like setting him up for pain and heartache – no, it would be setting him up for pain and heartache. And all so I can have a few hours, a few days, a few months of something more before I’m gone.

And so I’m scared: I’m scared for him, I’m scared for me.

I’m scared for all of us.

I get up, changing out of my burned and bloody clothes and into something clean. The long-sleeved shirt I had been wearing is a mess, with a big hole in the shoulder. I throw it in the bin. Then I look at the jeans. And decide to throw them out as well.

A while later, the door opens. Sarah smiles, walking over to the chair that barely fifteen minutes ago held a boy I pushed away.

“Hey,” she says, still smiling. “I heard you were awake.”

I nod.

“How are you feeling?”

Dark metal glinting as it flies through the air. The sound of a body falling lifelessly to the ground. Screaming.

“Good,” I say, and toss a smile on the end for good measure. “My energy is almost completely restored and I’m pretty sure my arm has already mended itself.”

She looks impressed. “Wow…that really is quick, isn’t it?”

I nod. Trying not to think too much. Shutting all the doors in my mind. Looking for the key to lock them.

Half a minute later, her voice breaks through the quiet. “I thought I’d stay up here for a while. You look like you could use some company.”

“Sure,” I say, grateful, but for some reason, not really showing it.

“I mean, I won’t stay if you don’t want me too, but if you do...well… We don’t have to talk – I brought up a book with me anyway – we could sit in silence, you know, if you want.”

I don’t know why, but suddenly a bubbling feeling wells up inside me, as though I’ve been pumped with helium gas, and it’s all I can do to contain the laughter that’s bursting for a way out as she talks.

“What?” she says, noticing the hand over my mouth, the unusual light in my stormy eyes.

“Nothing,” I say. But I’ve had to remove my hand from my mouth to speak, and so now there’s nothing stopping the bubbling from escaping, and I laugh, letting the sound flow out like a stream of warmth. I relish the feeling of it in my chest, knowing that a bottle within me has been uncorked, and this one has contained happiness instead of anger.

“Why are you laughing?” she asks, actual confusion resting deep in her eyes.

I shake my head. “Nothing,” I say again. “It’s nothing.”

She sighs. I laugh harder.

“Okay, come on – games over. Out with it.”

“’We could sit in silence if you want,’” I mock and her cheeks turn a deep shade of crimson.

She hits me on the arm. “I was trying to be considerate. I didn’t know what you wanted or where you were at.” A pause. “Sometimes you have those moments, you know, where it’s as if you only have half a soul.” Serious now, her eyes cast downwards, her voice soft. I stop laughing. “Sometimes I feel like anything I say might tip you over the edge.”

The last echoes of my laughter have faded from the air. It’s quiet now. And into the quiet comes my voice: “Sarah, I’ve already tipped over the edge. I’ve been falling for years.”

She looks up at me and I see the tears welling in her eyes. “I’m scared,” she says.

“Me too,” I say. I reach for her hand and her fingers curl around mine. We don’t feel like friends, we feel like sisters – like more than sisters. We share a bond that is greater than any family relation. She is me and I am her. We are one person, split a part. When one of us smiles, we both do. When one hurts, the other feels it.

And when one of us goes down, we both fall.

Eventually, her hand slides away and she picks up her book, opting for an imaginary world over the real one. And who can blame her?

I don’t have a book, so I sink into the depths of my mind instead, still searching for that key, and we ease into a companionable silence.

-:-:-:-:-

It’s been half an hour when the realisation finally hits me – half an hour of uselessly twiddling my thumbs, Sarah reading her book, while the world outside keeps moving onwards, pushing relentlessly forward without me.

Before now, it had never even occurred to me. Why was there only one man on the road? Where did the other three or four go? What happened to that women, who I was so positive was going to show up on Rand’s doorstep or on the sidewalk as I walked to and from the car?

A lady in the crowd with a piercing gaze. A flash of long curly hair, swaying in the breeze. Ever-present eyes always watching, slicing through the distance like it doesn’t exist. A group of girls, their excited whispers and giggles floating in the sea of conversations.

The lady appeared twice: once to me as I walked to my locker, eyes sending a message I’ll never understand; and a second time, as I headed for the school gates, her gaze locked onto a girl whose only sin was being kind to me.

It was no accident I saw her the second time – she wanted me to see it, wanted me to know that there were other ways of getting to me that didn’t involve me.

My eyes snap wide open, my breath catching in my throat. “Oh, crap!”

“What’s wrong?” asks Sarah.

My head whips around. “The party!” I say as the puzzle pieces fall into place. “They’re going to the party!”

Sarah’s frowning. “What? Do you want to go now? It’s a little late, don’t you think? I mean, it started an hour ago.”

“I don’t want to go, I have to go. She’s going to be there. She was watching Lauren after school and she wanted me to see, she wanted me to know…” I’ve never been so sure of something in my life. The woman and the rest are going to the party for Lauren, and if I don’t turn up, who knows what might happen.

What if it’s happened already?

“We have to go.” Scooting out of bed now. Sarah still in her chair, still not getting it.

“Melissa, you’re in no shape to go to a party. You’ve just suffered a broken arm and third degree burns to your shoulder. You need to rest.”

“I’m fine,” I say, knowing for a fact that I am. My broken bone mended itself hours ago, before I woke up. And the burn on my shoulder is already half healed.

“No, you’re not fine.” She grabs my hand. “You have to stay.”

I stop dead in my tracks, my eyes trailing down to where our hands touch. “You’re touching me,” I say, my voice slightly shaky.

“So what?” She’s forgotten.

Our eyes meet. “I burn everything I touch…”

She quickly pulls back, remembering now, and looks at her hand. Her eyes light up in astonishment. “I’m not burnt.”  

“Must be because we both share the same disease.”

“But mines been contained,” she says in awe, slowly shaking her head. “I don’t get heat attacks and my skin doesn’t get ice cold.”

“Maybe the heat leaking into your body is enough to ward off my cold,” I suggest, but I’m as incredulous as she is. I’ve burned everything I’ve touched since I was ten and now suddenly Sarah’s grabbed my hand without earning the red welts to prove it.

“Maybe,” she says. Deep in thought.

A minute later, I shake my head, as if clearing leaves from my hair. “We have to go,” I say.

“How about I go and you stay here,” she says, searching for a compromise.

“Not gonna happen.” And I swing open the door and head for the stairs before she can get in another word.

It’s a trap, and I know it. Lauren’s the bait and I’m the fish. They’re luring me in, but that doesn’t stop me from putting one foot in front of the other as I descend down the stairs. I can’t let them take another life because of me. It’s my fault – my mistake to right – and no one can stop me.

“The nameless group are after Lauren,” I say as I make my entrance into the living room.

“Who?” Rand asks, blinking.

“A girl in our year,” Caden explains to him. Then to me: “What makes you say that?”

I explain seeing the lady at school and witnessing her watching Sarah. Then I tell him about the party and the lack of people attacking us on the road. “…Why else would there only be one person when we’d already seen four or more of them watching us at school?” I finish. Somewhere during my explanation, Sarah enters the room behind me, stopping quietly over my shoulder.

Rand’s thinking. “Well, I suppose it couldn’t hurt to check it out. If they aren’t there, then we know no one will get hurt. If they are…well, we can try our best to ensure that no one does.” He nods, agreeing with his own plan. “Caden, Sarah; you two should go.”

“What about me?” I ask.

“You’re injured. You have to stay.”

“Like hell I’m staying. She’s my friend. I put her in danger. Therefore, I should be the one to fix the mess I made. Besides, Caden’s injured too and you’re letting him go.”

Rand stares at me for a moment. “Okay, fine.”

“What?” Caden and Sarah say simultaneously.

He shrugs. “I can’t argue with that. She’s right.” His eyes on me now. “Don’t kill yourself.”

It’s a phrase that’s usually meant to be humorous, but neither of us is laughing. “I won’t,” I reply, dead serious.

“Good,” he says. “Now go.”