Rising From The Ashes

Chapter 18

Chapter 18

They have found us, the Officials. It’s only a matter of time before they come for us all, to kill or worse. (Lines 2 & 3 from the final entry)

                                                                                               -The diary of Lucinda Jane Waders

This was it. The night everything had been leading up to was finally here. Tonight, if everything went well, Cameron would return to the safety of his side of the wall. Although, if they found out where he had been all this time then even his own home wouldn’t be safe for him. Their side didn’t like people crossing the wall any more than mine did. The thing was, I’d probably never know what happened to Cameron after he stepped foot on the other side. They might kill him and I would never know. After tonight he was no longer my concern, whether I wanted him to be or not.

All day I’d been trying to pretend that I was okay, that nothing out of the ordinary was going on in my life. I had to leave Cameron early this morning, even though I’d rather of stayed with him all day. If I didn’t go home, though, my mom was likely to get suspicious and then all of our plans would be for nothing.

Catherine was doing a much better job at acting normal than I was. I just couldn’t help thinking that every moment I wasted at home doing nothing, I could be spending with Cameron, and it was driving me insane. However, I had to stay here and pretend like it was exactly where I wanted to be. That way if something happened at least Catherine and I would have our mom’s word that we were home all day and night.

Around the time my mom started getting ready for bed was when I think it hit me that this was real. In just a few hours I would be out there risking my life, not only for the person I cared so much about, but also for the cause he stood behind. He still didn’t know that Catherine and I had a plan of our own for tonight. Cam still thought we were all going together and just hoping to get him across without being noticed. It killed me to lie to him, but he made it impossible to tell the truth on this one.

Soon I was in my room, after my mom had gone to sleep and I was pretending to do the same. Then I waited. And waited. The only sound I could hear was my heart beating as I counted down the minutes. It filled the silence in a way no other sound could, reminding me that I was alive, but that by the end of the night I might not be.

Just when I thought I would explode, Catherine poked her head into my room and motioned me to get up. I did and followed her all the way down the stairs and out into the night. Both of us were wearing dark clothes in the hopes that we wouldn’t be seen by sticking to the shadows on our walk to Cameron’s. This would be the last time we would ever go there. There wouldn’t be any reason to return once the spirit that had given the house life once more was gone. Without him there it would be just another abandoned house. And I would be just another abandoned girl. He wasn’t abandoning me, though. Not really. I knew this, yet I still felt the sting as if it were the truth.

“You’re sure you want to do this?” Catherine asked as we walked side by side through the night. Her voice was the barest of whispers as she was fearful of breaking the silence of the emptiness surrounding us, yet there was still a strength behind the words. A strength that said she would stand behind me, no matter what I chose. I never felt more connected to her than I did just then.

“It’s the only way,” I replied and she nodded in a grim agreement.

There was an exceptionally large chance that something would go wrong tonight. I was beginning to like taking risks, though. For someone who was content to live their life in oblivion, there was something so liberating about taking charge of a situation, even one that was likely to fail.