Chapter 1 #2
“No! If you’re incapable of being rational right now, then let me fucking tell you this as clearly as humanly possible: this is the worst goddamn idea you’ve ever had.
Which is truly saying something, considering I’ve seen you do some very dumb shit for such a smart person.
Seriously, Kae, going to a third-world country is the very last thing you need to be doing right now.
I can’t believe I have to tell you this. ”
“Fine. Fine.” I know she’s being the voice of reason, but I wish it didn’t have to be this way.
I’m so fucking bitter with my life circumstances, I don’t even know what to do with myself.
“There’s a deferral option I can look more into…
Because you know I’m still going once I get a bit better, right? ”
She sighs, heavy and dramatic, to make a point. “Of course. You can run along and do your heroic future surgeon shit once you’re sleeping a functional amount. I know I can’t keep you here with me forever.”
“So you’ll still support me?” My voice comes out quieter than intended.
Jackie looks less than amused, glaring at me for a moment before quickly grabbing my hand.
“Don’t be fucking stupid. No matter what you decide, I’ll still support you.
Even if you decide to say fuck it, drop out of school forever, and become a starving artist in Russia, I’ll still be cheering you on.
” She squeezes my hand hard enough to make me wince.
“But that doesn’t mean I won’t yell at you when and if you decide to put yourself in danger. ”
“Thanks, Jackie. It means a lot to me. Truly. Can you please stop trying to break my hand now? I get it, you’re strong.”
She snorts a laugh, letting go to collapse back on the towel. I watch as she closes her eyes, settling in, before I follow her lead in relaxing. The quiet is divinely peaceful, broken only by the gentle rise and fall of the ocean.
Eventually, after several minutes have passed, I look over to make sure my company hasn’t fallen asleep on me.
As if she can see with her eyes closed, Jackie mutters, “Yes?”
She wants to pretend she’s invincible, but she forgets I can read her just as well as she can read me. I also know the skeletons in her closet by name.
“I haven’t really had a chance to talk to you since your graduation,” I start gently, still passing for casual conversation.
It’s a delicate balance, trying to get Jackie to open up without her shutting down.
She’s repeatedly tried to act like her associate’s degree isn’t important, but I know how hard she’s worked to put herself through school.
“Did only your sister and I make it there, or did I miss your mom in the audience?”
She shakes her head, keeping a straight face. “Mom’s still on contract in Arizona, so she couldn’t fly out—which is fine. And I didn’t even invite my grandparents, since I was worried my sperm donor would find out about it from them and ruin it for me…”
I’m getting closer. “Did something happen?”
“Well, he found out anyway, somehow. I got some mail from him this morning.”
There it is. “You opened it.”
“Yeah. I thought it might have cash in it, which I have no problem taking from him. I was planning on throwing away the card without reading it, but I couldn’t stop myself.
” She purses her lips before releasing a deep breath.
“He said he was sorry he couldn’t make it to my graduation.
As if he knew about it in advance. As if he didn’t come because it’d inconvenience him, not because he respects that I am clearly committed to full no-contact with him.
Which fucking figures. He was probably too busy beating up his wife and miraculously avoiding liver failure to make the drive. ”
“You shouldn’t let him get to you, Jackie.”
“I know, but—”
“No, listen to me. This is your achievement. Your accomplishment. He doesn’t get to rain on your parade. Would you put up with me doing that shit? No, you wouldn’t. So snap out of it. You have everyone you need, and we’re very proud of you.”
She cracks a lopsided grin at me, and her voice becomes taunting.
“I’ve rubbed off on you.”
“Maybe.” I shake my head, laughing silently. “You’ve come a long way from the traumatized little girl I met fourteen, fifteen years ago.”
“And you’ve come a long way from the annoying little girl that my mom insisted I hang out with.”
Ha! As if it took much convincing. At the time, Jackie needed me a lot more than I needed her, though she’d never admit to it. Especially after our roles reversed. “You know, now that I think about it, it was pretty smart of our mothers.”
“What, working the same shifts so they could split a babysitter between us? I can’t imagine it saved that much money.”
“Oh, definitely not.” I grin up at the stars. “It did much more for us than it ever did for them.”
She glances at me, scowling, before giving me a playful little shove. “Right. Because who else would have forced you to be social?”
“Is that what we’re doing right now?” Though it’s barely audible from this distance, I can still vaguely hear the thump-thump-thump of the party music when I listen for it. I don’t particularly care to. I’d much rather focus on the healing trance of the ocean’s musical push and pull.
“Sure. We made an effort by coming here.” She readjusts, situating her palms under her head like a pillow as she stares at the moon. “It’s just not our night.”
Not my year, more like, but I let the thought pass in favor of tranquil silence.
The moon looks so beautiful, hanging unapologetically in the sky without a care for the world.
Its secret forces conduct the ocean like an orchestra, putting on a performance for us.
It could just be the sleep deprivation getting to me again, but I almost want to cry at the magnificence of it all—how small I am, and how vast the world out there is.
If only I could bottle this moment and keep it with me forever.
In the light of day, I find myself sitting on the beach again.
My head is tilted back, my face breathing in the warm sun like a flower growing towards the light. I can’t get enough of that beautiful sound of the waves, crashing and pulling and shifting with melodic intent.
“Isn’t this lovely?” I ask, looking over at Jackie. To my surprise, though, she isn’t there. Nobody is. The entire beach is abandoned, and… I can’t remember how I got here.
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
I’ve never been successful in waking myself from a nightmare, but it doesn’t stop me from trying.
I squeeze my eyes shut again, willing the warmth to fade away, to find myself sleeping in our rental condo’s bed.
The beach is my goddamn happy place. Can a girl not have one good, uncorrupted thing to hold onto?
When I open my eyes again, lo and behold, nothing’s changed. Great. What miserable, horrible death awaits me this time?
Almost instantly, the scenery answers me.
An intense light shoots up from the tide, connecting with the sky like lightning crashing in reverse. It’s loud, violent, and brutal. Instinctively, I flinch, but the strange force of nature keeps thundering on with unnatural persistence, as if demanding my attention.
The moment I bring myself to look back at it, the cacophony ceases. In its place, a man appears, rising out of the water’s depths to walk on the still ocean.
No—not a man.
An angel.
I’ve never seen anything more magnificent.
His back bears the oversized wings of a white swan, dipped in gold and shimmering with ethereal light.
He wears a pristine white robe, so formless and shifting that it looks to be spun from clouds.
His skin, the color of warm desert sand, reflects the light like it’s made of diamonds.
The supernatural beauty of him is beyond words. Beyond comprehension. I am both awestruck and terrified.
His glowing gold eyes pierce into me with the fiercest expression, exacerbated by the sharpness chiseled into his features, as he walks toward the shoreline.
Somehow, I get the sense that he’s looking at me without really seeing me.
It’s as if we’re both peering through a looking glass, crossing time and space to meet each other.
He looks down at a scroll of parchment in his hand, unraveling it, and begins to speak in synchrony with thunder from every direction.
“Be not afraid, Kaelene Lambros. If the sheep remain faithful to the shepherd, their flock will be spared from the wolves. You, however, are to be a lion amongst them.”
An unearthly chill takes root deep inside me.
In all of my many nightmares, nobody has ever spoken to me.
Not once. I’ve always been a specter—just another lost soul, wandering around in the desolation.
But this dream is something entirely different.
Like a mother knows her child, I recognize it in the cornerstones of my soul.
I’m compelled by a nearly tangible force to stand up and walk towards the angel, as if a rope is pulling me towards him. It is not a sight, smell, or sound—but it is everything I feel.
I listen, walking down the sandy bank as the angel leaves the sea behind him.
The more the distance between us closes, the more I can feel the pure power radiating off him.
By the time I’m standing before him, it warbles through the air like a magnetic cross between a low sound and a heat wave on the horizon.
“Take this and consume it,” he commands, holding the scroll out.
Simultaneously, the same otherworldly force that compelled me to move materializes inside me. It speaks without a voice, writing a secret promise deep within my soul:
Devour the message. Accept the call. The seeds of purpose will be born from the tree of sacrifice. I swear this to you.
A foreboding terror seizes me, but I endure, if only because taking the scroll feels inexplicably right. Even if I don’t understand the strange command, every fiber of my being tells me that I should listen—that I was born for this moment, and nothing in the entire universe could take it from me.
However, when my fingertips graze the parchment, it instantly turns to ash.
An astonishing, strange, horrific change rises in my body. My blood seems to turn into electricity—only a gentle vibration at first, but the voltage rises rapidly. It becomes so strong, so fast, that it feels like lightning struck within my core and is bursting out of me.
A blood-curdling scream flies past my lips.
I’m nailed in place, unable to move, unable to collapse. My suffering seems eternal, without an end in sight. I fear there must be no way out of this but to explode from within and cease to exist. Every inch of me, beyond what should even be physically possible, crackles in the power, the pain.
Indescribable, endless pain swallows me whole until there’s nothing left.