How many days had it been since Brooklyn was found? Celeste wasn’t sure. Maybe it was weeks? She still couldn’t tell. Days seemed to blur together, none any different from the last. She was just going to through the motions of school, dance classes and home. The same routine as she had once been used to. A routine that was as easy as breathing at one point in her life, not all that long ago - though it felt like a lifetime. A different life. One where she was in the shadows and no one paid attention to her. Now though, everyone looked at her - stared really. Some even tried to talk to her. It was a bit strange and unnerving.
There had been no word from Nate in the time since she had seen him outside of Sam’s brothers house. She hadn’t seen him either. He hadn’t bothered coming back to school since that night. She didn’t blame him, he was most likely still trying to get over everything that happened. It did hurt like crazy every single day though. The up side to it all was that she got a call from Mr. or Mrs. Anderson every night and she got to see Jessica every day.
The morning after Brooklyn was found both Anderson parents showed up on her doorstep with tears in their eyes. They hugged her and cried, she cried with them. They thanked her over and over for bringing Brooklyn back to them. Saying that if she ever needed anything - anything at all - to let them know. They felt as if they owed her so much for something that anyone would have done if they had been in her position. To Celeste, no one owed her a thing. She would do it all again in a heart beat.
Celeste stared at herself in the mirror and sighed. The bruises left behind from Sam’s assault were steadily fading away. But the pain left behind by Nate’s obvious avoidance was what hurt the most. She missed him so much it was physically painful. She needed to see him or at the very least talk to him. But talking was out of the question since his phone had been turned off for days. She wasn’t certain how many voice messages she had left, she hadn’t gone too over board with the messages.
“You ready to head out?” Aaron asked
Looking up in the mirror she spotted him leaning against the doorjamb of her bedroom. “Yeah,”
“You’re healing up nicely” he commented
“I guess,” she shrugged
“He’ll come around”
Celeste let Aaron’s assurance go in one ear and out the other. She understood that he was just trying to make her feel better and pull her out of the rut she was now in. But, the truth was, it wouldn’t work. The twins had tried to cheer her up as well by taking her on a day trip to Phoenix that didn’t work so well either. Nothing felt right without Nate. Celeste knew that she was too young to be wallowing over the whole situation, it just couldn’t be help. She also knew that people would say that she was too young to know what true love was. But when it was real, you just knew. And what she felt for Nate was more real, more consuming than anything she had ever felt before.
Before her older brother could try another attempt at making her feel better she walked out of the room. Through this whole ordeal she didn’t one hide the bruises with makeup. What would have been the point? She wasn’t ashamed of them, didn’t want to hide them. It’s wasn’t like any one was in the dark about what happened. News had spread damn fast after that night, everyone in town now knew that Nathaniel Anderson had a child. It seemed to make him all the more endearing to the girls in school.
The drive to school was a blur as it had been lately. She didn’t stop at Danny’s like she usually did, hadn’t been there in a while if she was being honest. For a while after pulling into the school parking lot Celeste just sat in her car staring blankly at the building in front of her. She didn’t want to be there. Didnt’ want to hear what people were saying. It was wearing on her last nerve. What she would give to have Nate there beside her, telling her everything would be alright and they could get through it together.
