CHAPTER 35
*PRESENT*
“My worst nightmare; my reality”
Maya
I woke up screaming, my voice hoarse, my throat dry. I tried to swallow to not use it, so I got up from the seat. My neck was in pain. Some dry drool was in the corners of my mouth. The room was bathed in darkness.
What time was it? I tried to turn on the laptop. The dark screen reflected my face. It wasn’t working.
I turned around and opened the curtain. The pouring rain looked straight out of an apocalypse movie. The wind was trashing the nearby trees. Now that I focused on it, I couldn’t block the sound at all.
My hand started to touch the desk, looking for my phone to no avail. I raised from the chair and tentatively looked for the lighter.
“Aaron?”
I screamed, getting closer where the light should be. I called his name again. He should be at home by now. Unless—
I needed to find him. I lit the room and found my phone. With it in my hand, I started to light every single room that I entered while calling Aaron’s name. I entered our room and the made bed made me panic. He was still not replying. I grabbed my phone and started calling him.
Voicemail.
Worst-case scenarios came to my mind. Here it was. My worst nightmare was coming to life. I might still have been dreaming. This was not real. I called him over and over again. Then, I started to call his mom. I didn’t want her to worry, but I was about to burst out of my skin.
Voicemail.
I checked the hour finally. 4:00 am. Everyone must be sleeping.
Reminders of the last hours were coming to me.
Me packing a suitcase.
Screaming.
Asking him to leave to his parents’ house.
Did he arrive safely?
I was freaking out. Something was wrong. I kept calling, but to no avail. I changed strategies. I started to search for the car keys. I must have left them somewhere. I looked at every place that I used to leave them, but nothing. My heart was beating loudly; my brain kept reproducing horrible images of Aaron being hurt, and soaked, and alone somewhere.
“Fuck it.”
I grabbed an umbrella and the keys of our house and left while keeping calling him on the phone. The road was not well illuminated, but I put my phone’s light on and kept looking for any sign of Aaron.
“He’s at her parents’ house. He’s fine. Safe. Warm in bed,”
I said aloud, over and over again.
I stumbled and I fell down.
My knees hurt.
I needed it to keep going. A sob came out of me. My chest was in pain. Please, please, I just want Aaron to be fine. The tears kept flowing and I had the bad feeling that this reminded me too much of the day that my parents died in that awful car accident.
I needed to grab onto the idea that everything was going to be okay. That it was just my anxiety talking. I kept walking even when the wind was sending me back, when the rain and my tears made me see where I was going hard. I just needed it to keep going. My face was frozen, my umbrella broken and my emotions out of control. I cried and cried like I had never done before. Like the doors were open and now the flood had come. There was no car outside, no people. Just me and the weather fighting to let me get to the Willows’ house.
I walked and walked and felt like I wasn’t getting closer until I finally saw their house at the end of the street. I tried to see if Aaron’s car was in the driveway, but the rain didn’t let me see from that far. I opened the fence with the key that I had on the key chain. Luckily, I had had this key since I was a teenager and it had helped me to open the fence for when I got here by car. I sprinted to the door, and no sight of Aaron’s car almost made me fall to the ground and weep like a baby. But I didn’t see any of the cars, either.
I didn’t have the keys to the house, so I knocked on the door and rang the doorbell.
A loud sound came out of the doorbell, but the thunder helped soften the noise.
I kept knocking on the door.