The Essence of Water

OLD VERSION Chapter 18

We run to the road to meet Doug. He looks startled and relieved when we burst out of the trees. "Are you alright?" Aiden asks Doug. He nods.

"A little shaken but fine...did you...?" He waves to the cop but Aiden is already shaking his head.

I stand over the cop and look down upon his expressionless face. I hold a hand over my mouth and bend over the ditch. The wonderful soda I had before burns its way back up my throat. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. What did I do? What was I even thinking?

You weren't thinking that's the problem.

Just shut up and leave me alone.

Honestly though. What were you expecting to happen? You think just because Aiden starts teaching you how to focus that suddenly things are just magically going to fall into place?

"Shut up, shut up, shut up."

"Adie?" I spin around, wiping my mouth. Doug and Aiden both look at me worried. Aiden has one of his hands out, as if he means to reach for me if I fall.

I take a shaky breath. "I'm fine."

"No you're not. You're as pale as a ghost."

I look at the cop. "Shit." I hold a hand against my mouth, but I don't feel anything come up. Just my words, "What did I do?"

Doug leans over the cop and Aiden snaps his attention back to me, he takes a small step forward. "Do what Adie?" He stares me down, his eyes hard, calculating.

I shake my head. "I didn't..."

Doug touches the cops' throat, holding his fingers there, while my own heart pounds. Please don't be dead. Please. Please. Please. Don't be dead. Just don't be dead.

"Adie look at me." Aiden grabs my shoulders and shakes me hard. I meet his eyes. "What did you do?"

I open my mouth, but the words seem to have lost their way. I shake my head again. He shakes me again. "Tell me Adie. What. Did. You. Do."

"He's not dead," Doug announces. I feel relief, but not much.

"I don't know." Tears slip down my cheeks. I'm a monster. "I don't know." I'm dangerous. I'm a Misfit.

Aiden grabs my face with both his hands and forces me to keep my eyes on him. "Adie, I need you to count your breaths. Do it now."

Onetwothreefourfive.

I'm hyperventilating. Calm down.

Six.Steven.Eight.Nine.Ten.

Slow it down Adie. Focus.

Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen.

Good, deep breathes now.

Sixteen.

Seventeen.

Eighteen.

Nineteen.

Twenty.

"I'm OK." I manage.

"Good. Now tell me what you did."

It takes me eight tries to get the right words out of my mouth before Aiden understand what I was attempting. "Why would you even think that's possible? Where did that idea even come from?"

I shake my head. I'm sitting in the passenger seat, the door is open and my feet hang over the edge but I feel safer in here somehow. Aiden stands in front of me, behind the truck Doug is situating the cop in the driver's seat, hoping that maybe he'll believe that when he wakes up he'll find that it was all just a terrible nightmare. A part of me wonders if he'll wake up at all. We told Doug that I knocked him out, we left out the details.