dawn

Chapter 36

“Let me see!” she commanded feebly, wobbling still, kneeling before me as I was before her on her bed after sealing off the house.

I had grown tired of fighting this version of her. I didn’t want to tell her that I wasn’t hurt again because she wouldn’t believe me. She wouldn’t give up. I unbuttoned my shirt and pulled it off behind me and she blurted into tears.

I turned to see the damage. There was a red-purple burn looking mark curving into my left side. It burned too. 

I turned up as she threw her arms around mine and she shook. “I want them back! My Paolo and my uncle! I want them back!”

I put my hands on her back and pressed her up against me. “Everything will be okay,”

“I couldn’t stand it if you got hurt again!”

I tilted her chin up and she sniffled, trying to control herself. “I won’t get hurt again. What good would it do me to keep you alive if I died and you lost interest in yourself?” I forced the words out.

She whimpered and held me tighter, her crying slowing into nothing. “Please stay with me. I’m scared…”

After her humming broke off, I noticed her asleep in my arms as we lied in the stillness of her shaken world. Her world, that I valued so much, could be interrupted. I played with the curls of her dark hair without looking and glanced out the window. The moon was still out over the small circle meadow just a few minutes from her back door.

Ariel

I was so tired. I felt dead. I felt worse than ugly. I walked into school with Eric holding my hand secretly between us. I turned up and everything hit a halt.

No. Not again. So soon?

The blonde, Angeline, stood glaring at us, dressed in a black leather jacket and tutu with buckle up leather boots and fish nets.

Eric’s hand applied a little pressure but nothing as stressful as preparing to fling me back again. She was being towed away! I noticed who, though, was pulling away.

“No.” it slipped by accident. Edmund! I wanted to scream his name, to warn him but the smarter part of me knew that he wasn’t in danger or being deceived. I was.

He was muttering, bored, indifferent, cold. Not the Edmund that glittered vibrantly through darkness, like a comet. Then he turned up.

His face was oddly familiar: shock, pain, realization.

Edmund. I mouthed but there was no sound.

Then he was shoved toward the doors and into the hallway in front of Angeline.

Edmund? Edmund was…was the bad guy?

Why? Why did that always happen to me?

Edmund

“Well?! Is it or not?!”

She knew the answer. Why did I have to repeat it if it hurt so much already? I wasn’t past the main level: how was it possible? Much less to the part where it was really real.

“Well?!?”

How? Angeline said—but how? Her, of all people; him, of all people. I used to look up to him when I was a kid and I…

“Well?!”

I winced again. “Yes,” I got up.

After thinking it over (unnecessarily) for a full half hour, I dumped the band. I rushed through the halls Tuesday morning. It was a decent time to leave them, anyway. They needed to recover before they could kill me.