Chapter 20
Three
Iwandered again. Sometimes, I find myself in different rooms or even random places throughout the estate’s property.
When I get lost. Not lost in the house or the grounds, but in the before.
When the memories overtake me, and I relive those moments of peace and happiness and feel the warmth on my skin for the first time in… I don’t know.
But then something happens, and it’s like I wake from a dream.
A beautiful, happy, care-free dream so vivid and detailed and just…
there. Right out of my reach. Just beyond the tips of my fingers.
Ghosting along my skin, like the caress of her presence follows me even here, in this strange beyond.
I like living there. With her. With those memories.
With that light, airy, hazy dream-like happiness that fills the bottomless hole in my chest. God, it hurts. It hurts so much.
The weather is colder today. An icy bite nips at my heels as my bare feet trudge through the frost tipped grass brushing against my ankles.
Each breath leaves a cloudless fog before me.
It’s an odd thing, being dead, knowing you are, knowing you are invisible to most naked eyes, not truly feeling physically.
I know it’s cold, I can see it, I can feel the sensations of the wind against my cheek, blowing my hair wildly around my face.
But that bone deep chill, a grip of potential death tangling in my lungs, it’s no longer there.
There is no crunch to the grass as I walk the slow path around the garden to the river bank beneath my favorite tree.
I know the blades are sharpened by the frozen dew clinging to each one of the thousands covering the lawn, but there is no sting. I almost miss it.
The large oak tree looms over the sharp drop off into the chilled water raging below. After the storms the past few days, the river has risen, roaring rapidly. The others don’t seem to venture out this far from the interior of the home. Perhaps they can’t. Not the way I can.
Most of the time I only leave the home during the memory “possessions” as I have taken to calling them the last few weeks.
When I am lost to the dreams of the past, I relive them so thoroughly.
Speaking the same lines aloud, reenacting the movements.
Well, as much as I can, until I fall through them into the now.
My mind has felt clearer, but the memories feel stronger. Today was not much different.
It was the first day of school. Nothing new, nothing out of the ordinary sitting there in the desk by the window, the seat I always sat in in each class.
I’m not sure why I would always choose that one.
Maybe it was due to a nervousness that would take hold in the middle of the room, surrounded on all sides by my peers, not having a place to hide, or turning to for isolation when it would become too much.
It usually became too much rather quickly, especially when Kyle Holmes would inevitably show up late.
I always found myself alone. I didn’t talk much, or to really anyone. It had been that way for years.
I stuck to my usual routine, head down, earphones in, music playing loudly, while I stared out the window at the people out on the basketball court and picnic benches during their free period.
The music echoes in my mind. I blink. The courtyard image blends into the view behind the Venom estate I can see from my room window.
That lone oak tree, the one I feel a sense of kinship with, comes into view, but I blinked again, and I was back at my high school.
“Having free period first has to suck balls, don’t you think?” A soft voice spoke from my left. I glance at her through the curtain of my sandy blond hair and she’s leaning half out of her desk, using the corner of my own to stay up right as she peers out the window.
I don’t look at her, unsure if she was talking to me or the guy sitting in front of her half turned in his own seat.
“Having your free period at 7:30 in the morning has to suck serious balls. I mean, yeah, you could skip and come in late, but then you have that marked on your attendance and there’s all the issues with that.
So, imagine, waking up at the ass crack of dawn, just to come here and what?
Waste what could be a very useful break later in the day?
You know, after you're exhausted from classes all morning? But, no. You’re stuck twiddling your thumbs instead.
Like, sure you could nap, or do some homework, but then you're faced with the next seven and half hours nonstop.
It just has to suck knowing that your friend is probably gonna get to have a long lunch and you're only gonna get, like, 30 minutes. The person that made their schedule or even considered free periods before lunch being a thing has to be a sadist or stupid. It makes no sense at all. Anyways—”
Oh, my god, she’s still going. That guy must really not give a shit, or he’s like me and likes her voice.
It’s soft and melodic. She speaks each word like it’s a symphony of sounds.
She does have a point, though. I have always wondered how that would feel.
I was lucky last year having my free period last.
“—I went to the movies this weekend. I watched, like, some weird romcom or something, but to be honest I don’t see how anything the guy did in that movie was romantic at all. He was kind of a stalker—”
I finally turn to just stare at her incredulously. Have I ever seen her before? Nope. Do I know her name? Nope. The girl finally pushes herself upright, holding out her hand with a bright smile…and I swear my heart stops beating.
My ears began to ring. She continued to speak as I stared at her.
A slight dimple indents her cheek by full rosy, pink lips, and her dark brown eyes are bright, with an honest to God sparkle shining in them.
But there she was, shoulder length chocolate brown hair, a dark blue, jean jacket draped over the back of her desk chair, green flannel, and light wash jeans torn at the knees.
I knew then that it didn’t matter if she talked for the rest of time, I would be hanging on to every word uttered from her lips, memorizing the way she enunciates each syllable.
I wanted to know more. I wanted to hear every single thought that entered her mind, know all of her favorite and least favorite things, her quirks, her interests, her dreams. I wanted all of the little things that made her etched into my soul.
“Uh, you okay?”
“Oh, um…” My cheeks heat and I look away quickly, glancing around the room.
For fucks sake, Laney, just act fucking normal.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m okay, uh…” I scratch the side of my neck as I look back to her, her dark brows furrowed.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were talking to me.
I thought you were talking to him,” I mutter nodding to the guy in the seat in front of her, who I now see has been flirting with Daniella in the aisle across from him, sitting in the back row like me and her.
She turns to look at him just as I see him throw Daniella a really bad wink and what I guess is a flirty smile. I hold back a laugh, as the girl snorts to look at me like I’m crazy.
“Really? Him?” Her eyes are wide with mirth and a sheepish grin on her face. I can’t contain my giggle, and she begins to laugh with me. “I do have some standards, ya know,” she giggles.
“I’m Laney Greene, by the way,” I said with a smile. “I’m sorry, again. I really did think you were talking to him.”
“I was half laying on your desk, and you still thought I wasn’t talking to you?” She raises her brow in amusement. “You say that like no one ever speaks to you.”
“Yeah, well…” I fidget with the corner of my textbook, not looking at her as I feel her eyes assessing me.
“Well, that’s cool. No one talks to me, either. We’ll just not talk to anyone together.” I see her shrug in finality as she grabs a piece of paper from her pocket, tossing it on to my desk. “So, which classes do we not talk to people together in, Laney?”
I open the folded paper to see her schedule, surprised at the classes I see listed.
“All of them, for the whole year. Not just this semester.” I give it back to her as she nods, folding it back into her pocket.
“Perfect. Laney Greene, you aren’t getting rid of me.” She smiles brightly turning to the front of the room as our teacher walks through the door. I smile too, my cheeks heating, and for some reason I’m not so upset by the thought of that.
The bell rings signaling the end of the day.
The girl and I walk out of the school’s large double doors.
As I blink, the lawn where people are grouped up talking about their plans for the evening or gossiping about what happened during the day, changes to one that’s far smaller, colder, empty, highlighted in frost. I follow close by her side toward the parking lot.
A slightly disappointed feeling inches up the back of my mind as I realize that my time with her is coming to an end shortly…
and perhaps tomorrow she may have changed her mind on our “friendship” agreement.
God, what if this was just a joke…What if this was a complete fluke and I have just been following along behind her all day like a weird little shadow. She was talking about that stalker dude in that romcom earlier, am I being the weird stalker dude now?
“Where do you want to get food from?”
Her question stops my thoughts in their track. “Food?”
“Yes, food. You know, the stuff that is, like, “nutritious” and fuels us. Though, if I’m being honest, I don’t think you could say what I’m wanting to eat right now is very nutritious.
” She looks me up and down pointedly, wiggling her eye brows.
My face heats and I freeze as I stare at her wide-eyed.
She chuckles. “Calm down, Laney, I’m joking…
mostly. For real, though where would you like to get food from?
” She unlocks her car door, throwing her backpack and jacket into the backseat, turning with her arms crossed as she leans on the top of the open door.
I’m still blushing as I tuck a strand of hair behind my ear.
Food. Food. Food. Think of something!
All I can think about is her. The comment about eating as she stared at me like I was her meal. I know it was a joke, but fuck. I bet her lips taste so sweet, like that strawberry scent that has clouded her all damn day. They look so soft.
“Laney,” she whines, stomping her foot. “Anything, please, I’m starving. You didn’t warn me the lunch at this place was a step above dog food.” She points an accusing finger my way.
I grin, throwing my hands up defensively. “You never asked. I take it you weren’t a fan of mystery meat tacos?”
“Pfft, no. No, I was not. Get your ass in my car.” I walk around the hood, blinking back tears of laughter.
Each time my eyes opened, the parking lot changed.
The pond of warm concrete shifting into a sea of white tipped grass.
I shake my head as her car interior came into focus, a large smile still on my face.
“Not sick of me, yet?” My question catches her off guard, and she stops flipping through the large case of CDs she pulled from the back seat.
“Never.”
That’s how I found myself standing on the edge of the river bank, overlooking the rapid water below soon after she parked her car at her house in the memory.
As I stood on the curb, the toe of my shoe touching the lawn, a sudden drop in the pit of my stomach jolted me back to reality.
Just as I was taking a step toward her home, my foot hung over the edge of the drop off into the icy water.
I don’t know what would happen to me if I just…jumped. If I walked straight off this ledge. I know that I am trapped here. I know there is something that keeps my spirit tied to this property, but where is that line drawn?
Would I just float through the water until I reached the edge of the estate, then just…reappear? Reappear where? My room in the house? Here beneath this tree? Or is it more like a gate, or a wall that keeps me held there against the current? I can’t drown, but would it still feel like I am?
I can feel the cold around me, but it has no effect.
There’s no shivering or chill in my bones.
Is that what it would feel like to drown?
Feeling the icy water filling my lungs with each inhale, but the sharp pain accompanied never quite reaching me.
The same with the burning cold, numbing my flesh threatening to stop my heart, but what’s there to stop if it hasn’t beat in so long?
Perhaps it would just be the current latching onto my body and never relenting its hold.
Dragging me down into the dark depths below.
The weight of that current pushing me deeper and deeper couldn’t be worse than the weight of this grief and anger and…sadness…so much sadness. It feels like I have been torn into pieces and left to float through the wind like trash. I just don’t want to be alone anymore.