Too long passes.

I lose track of the time easily in this tiny windowless room. Eventually the men come back and graciously remove my handcuffs and place a black bitter coffee in front of me in a styrofoam cup. It tastes like ass but at least it's warm.

They continue to ask me question after question. Questions I do not have the answers to. Questions that don't even make sense.

I didn't know that girl.

I didn't hurt her.

I don't know why I was on that road.

They already know about the pills, so I tell them, I tell them I was high and frustrated and just drove. I didn't know to where I just ended up there. I only got out of the car to help the kid.

But the more they keep asking the same questions over and over...

I just stop speaking.

They aren't listening anyway.

They want me to slip up. To say something that doesn't match what I've already told them. They want to wear me down until I admit to something I'm positive I didn't do.

They're wasting time with me.

They should be looking for real clues. They should be finding the creep who killed Linn, not grilling me.

I've given them everything I'm giving.

They say I'm not under arrest.

They can't hold me for that.

But they can hold me for being on drugs.

I'm not on drugs!

I want to keep shouting it.

I don't do drugs!

I'd been offered drugs earlier today and I'd not done it. I am not a drug addict. I'm not. I'm not a drug doing maniac. I just need those pills sometimes. I just take what I need to survive.

They are for the anxiety and the depression. Those things are very real. They're medical. I have an imbalance in my brain. I need those. I'm not some back alley drug user. I'm not.

A doctor gave me those pills...

Or at least they used to.

It can't be a problem if they were given to me out of need.

But still, they don't care.

I told them everything I've been doing since I got here. Told them they can check my story with Mrs. Statham. She'd know I was with her all day, and across the street when I wasn't.

She and Kelsea can both vouch for the fact I'd been with them.

They made the calls.

The embarrassing ones.

Following up to check my story.

I know they'll mention the pills.

If she didn't know already, she will now. Maybe she will be so angry with me for stealing from her, she will refuse to be my alibi.

I should have known though. Mrs. Statham is a good person. A kind one. They tell me they spoke with her and my story checks out...for now.

They move me from the cold single room and shove me into a large holding cell with five other people.

"Sleep it off." Officer Gillian is back. "You can leave when someone comes to pick you up in the morning."

"Ok." I sigh. I'm tired of fighting. Tired of speaking.

"And Jacobs?" I turn to face him as he shuts the cell door in front of me. "When you do get out." He grimaces. "Don't go far. We are going to have more questions for you. I'd suggest a lawyer."

He turns to leave me there.

Leaves me in this cell with a man who has pissed himself and a woman whose thick black makeup runs in streaks down from her eyes to her neck.

I don't belong here.

I'm not like them.

I pick a bench furthest from the others and I lay down. I tuck my knees up to my chest and try not to cry.

I beg for sleep to come. I search inside of myself for that dark warmth. I search for the place to hide.

But there is nothing.

Just the steady thrum of my heartbeat and my shallow breaths. Just the pounding in my head.

I can't sleep without them.

I can only lay here and wait.

"Jacobs."

I jump at the sound of my name. I blink away the dryness in my eyes, lifting my head to see where my name has come from.

It's an officer at the cell door. She's staring at me as she unlocks the door and beckons for me again.

My body is sore, everything hurts. My bones creak as I stand and walk to her. I can already feel the sheen of sweat clinging to me. I'm cold and hot all at the same time.

The pounding in my head has spread. Standing makes it worse. Like a knife slicing into my left temple over and over. My head hurts so bad the pain seeps into my jaw. Into my teeth. I can't close my mouth.

It's mechanical, the way I follow the woman down the hall. We stop at a window and a different man than before slips the grey tub with my things back through.

I put on my jacket and put the phone and my ID card into one pocket and then reach back to find the tub is now empty. I let my hand drift back into my other pocket, fist closing around the emptiness I find there.

The woman passes me a card with names and numbers on it and tells me to call if I think of anything else. Adding that they will be in touch.

She leads me right out of the building and I shield my eyes from the mid morning sun. The snow has stopped but everything is blanketed in a blinding white.

"There you are."

I blink and see Mrs. Statham waiting for me on the stairs, the other woman has already gone back inside the police station.

"What are you doing here?" I ask her, my throat dry and my voice coming out cracked and hollow.

"They called and asked me to pick you up." She tells me. "You look like you've had quite the night."

"I can drive."

"Hon, your car was impounded." She tells me softly. "We can go pick it up tomorrow when they're done..."

When they're done looking for clues.

"I didn't do anything." I say for what feels like the billionth time.

"I know." She nods. "And I told them that, I swear. I know you didn't do anything. They just have to do their due diligence." She waves me forward towards where her red car waits at the curb. "It's just awful what happened to that poor girl, but I know you didn't have anything to do with it."

My body moves on autopilot down the steps, careful not to slip in the spots of hidden ice.

I reach the bottom, my eyes still trained on the ground when I hear it.

"Oh my god!" Someone shouts from my left. "Misery?"

My eyes jerk to look up the road. To see the girl who is now shuffling faster to get to me, a baby stroller in front of her.

"Misery!" She shouts again. "Misery Jacobs!"

I run.

Every part of my body screams against it but I take off up the sidewalk, into the thick of downtown.

All around people are already shuffling into the coffee shop or to Mark's Bakery for a late breakfast.

I push around a few, trying to create distance.

I slam into the shoulder of a couple and they look at me wide eyed.

Before I can even mutter an excuse me or a sorry, the man is blinking at me. "Misery!" He says my name and the woman with him jolts as if she sees it too.

"Oh god, you're back." The woman says.

They both look vaguely familiar, shells of people whose faces I once would have been able to put names to.

I keep running.

They call to me from behind, asking something I can't hear. All I hear is Misery.

I come to a cross walk and am about to dart across the street when I see him.

Waiting on the other side of the road for the light to flash white. He's standing with a woman, someone I know but still can't place.

For the briefest of moments, his eyes and mine lock. Both of us trying to blink the other away. Both of us sure we aren't seeing the ghost we are almost certain is actually staring back at us.

Aries.

He's not a boy anymore.

Not at all.

Now he's a man.

He looks exactly as he did in that picture in Mrs. Statham's living room. He's taller. More filled out through the shoulders. His hair still kisses those shoulders. It still curls ever so slightly from under that backwards ball cap he always wears.

And his eyes....

Even from here, across the street but separate by worlds of wrong decisions, his eyes still seem to shine that impossible blue.

His jaw slackens ever so slightly.

I think he's about to say something when a hand touches my arm.

"Misery!" The woman with the baby stroller is beside me and I have to turn away.

I yank my coat around me tighter and I run up the road, ducking into an alley between buildings.

I think of running through to the other side but the people on that street are just as thick.

Instead I duck between two dumpsters, pushing myself so far into the brick wall behind me as if I think if I just push hard enough I can melt into it. I can become it. I can be this wall if I just try hard enough.

I hold my knees tightly to my chest and squeeze my eyes shut.

Like a child.

If I can't see you...you can't see me.

I hear people passing the alley.

I hear footfalls stop, looking up the alley, then continue on with their days. Hopefully forgetting all about the girl they used to know who ran from them.

I wait a few minutes.

The smell of the garbage around me burns my nose. Sour milk and rotten food permeates the air I try to breathe. I breathe through my mouth but I swear I can taste it.

I pull my jacket up to my face and breathe in the fabric. I'm begging myself not to start crying.

Not here. Not here. Not now.

I will myself to have some semblance of composure. To not fall to pieces and give the town a show they'd really never forget. I've already run. I can't make this worse.

"Missy?"

My breath catches inside of my coat.

"Missy?" He calls again, still soft, not drawing attention but just enough that his voice reaches me.

It stabs through me like a million darts thrown at the bullseye that is my frantically beating heart.

His voice hasn't changed.

It still melts over me.

It still warms me from the inside out.

He still sounds like him.

It's so unfair when I'm no longer me.

Part of me wants to leap from this hiding spot. To go to him. To shove him. To slap him. To demand he tell me why he left me the way that he did all those years ago.

I want to shake him and make him make sense of how someone who made me feel so happy and so cared for could be the same person who made me feel a coldness like no winter could ever touch.

I want to put him up on a stage in front of hundreds of camera flashes and ask him the same questions over and over.

How could you leave me?

How could you forget me?

How could you run when I needed you most?

Why did you do it?

Why?

Why?

Why?

I want to look into his eyes and make him see what has happened to me since he's been gone. I want him to know how much his leaving took what small fragment of a heart I had left.

Even still...

Another part of me...

The one that feels so lost and alone....

That part of me want to run to him, to fall back into his arms. I want to feel him wrap me up, press his lips to my hair, tell me everything is ok.

I want to see if his embrace can still do it.

If in his arms I can still feel safe.

But I know that I can't.

Too much has happened.

Too much time has gone by.

I'm not the girl he left behind anymore.

I am Misery more now than I have ever been.

No matter how hard I tried to find the safety his arms used to hold, I know I wouldn't reach it. There are walls built between us. Walls I don't have the tools to destroy anymore. Walls that will keep us apart as they've already been doing all this time.

He calls to me, one more time.

My name on his lips, floating down this alley to my ears. It hurts. It hurts so fucking bad.

But I don't go to him.

Not to demand answers, and not to hold him.

I stay here hidden amongst the trash, becoming a part of the wall. Part of the wall that will always keep us apart.

I hear him sigh, then a woman call his name.

I hear his footsteps, slow, deliberate, as he walks away.

Something he's always been so good at.

Leaving was always his specialty.

I wait for as long as I can stand it. The smell here worse than any trash I've ever smelt. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't found myself in similar positions as this...

But it's not ever been this hard.

Knowing he's out there somewhere makes me stay longer than I ever would have before.

I count to one hundred.

Then to two hundred.

Then to three hundred, just for good measure.

I take one last deep breath through my coat then let it fall away from my face.

My breath comes out in thick little puffs of air in front of me and I brace the ground to try to hoist myself up from my uncomfortable position.

I flinch as my right hand presses into the freezing cold ground, coming back sticky with leaking garbage. But my other hand hits something hard on the ground beside me.

Something that feels... wrong.

Soft and hard and cold.

I turn my head to look down at my hand and a scream curdles in my throat.

I kick back, my body slamming into the dumpster on the other side of me as my eyes try to unsee what I'm seeing.

Tears burn my hot cheeks as I look.

Sticking out, just barely, from beneath the other dumpster is a foot.

A sock less, bluish grey, foot. About an inch of the ankle visible.

I jump to my feet, stuck between a scream and a sob fighting each other to burst from between my lips.

I don't know what to do.

I can't scream.

I can't cry.

I can't go get help.

Whoever that is, or was, is not alive.

I look up and down the alley, waiting for the police to come running, to put me back in the cuffs, to lock me away for good this time.

Then I realize which alley I've ducked into.

This can't be happening.

I suddenly know who is lying dead beneath that dumpster.

The second girl.

The one who is still missing.

I know this with and sick and twisting finality.

It's all the same.

The same exact spot where my father's second victim was found.

I want to vomit, my stomach curdling and churning my insides into knots. But I can't. I can't get sick here.

They already have my prints at the station.

I've already disrupted this crime scene too.

Crime scene.

My body roils in disbelief at what I'm seeing, what is happening.

I don't know what else to do but do my best to get rid of the places I've touched, scrubbing my booted feet all around the spot where I'd been sitting. The spot where I'd laid my hand.

Tears pouring down my face I use my jacket to rub against the foot where I'd touched it. I try not to look but I can't help it. I can't stop. I keep staring as I try to rid any trace of myself from this place.

I turn and run.

I run back to the police station, ignoring any stares I get on the street.

I get two stairs up the steps of the station when I stop.

I can't go back in there.

If I do, I may never get back out.

Guilt swallows me whole as I turn away from the station and walk back to Mrs. Statham's red car still parked in the same space. A thick plum of white smoke coming from the back.

I jump into the passenger seat, startling her.

"Oh, honey, I didn't know where you went." She turns to look at me. "You're as white as a ghost." She says. "I am so sorry you have to be here."

Here.

I know exactly where I went.

Hell.

I am in hell.

"Please just take me home."