Shatter Me (The Real Shatter Me#1)

Chapter Two

It smells like rain in the morning.

     This room is heavy with the scent so wet stone, upturned soil;the air is dank and earthy. I take a deep breath and tiptoe to the window only to press my nose against the cool surface. Fell my breath fog up the glass. Close my eyes to the sound of a soft pitter-patter rushing through the wind. Raindrops are my only reminder that clouds have a heartbeat.That I have one,too.

    I always wonder about raindrops.

    I wonder about how they're always falling down, tripping over their own feet, breaking there lages and forgetting their parachutes as they tumble right out of the sky toward an uncertain end. It's like someone is emptying their pockets over the earth and doesn't seem to care where the content fall, doesn't seem to care the raindrops burst when they hit the ground, that they shatter when the fall to the floor, that people curse the days the drops dare tap on their doors.

    I am a raindrop

    *My parents empties their pockets of me and left me to evaporate on a concrete slab.*
  
     The window tells me we're not far from the mountains and definitely near the water, but everything is near the water these days. I just don't know which side we're on. Which direction we're facing. I squint up at the early morning light.Someone picked up the sun and pinned it to the sky again, but every day it hangs a little lower than the day before.  It's like a negligent parent who only knows one half of who you are. It never sees how it's absence changes people. How different we are in the dark.
  
    A sudden rustle means my cellmate is awake.

    I spin around like I've been caught stealing food again. That only happened once and my parents didn't believe me when I said it wasn't for me. I said I was just trying to save the story cats living around the corner but they didn't think I was human enough to care about a cat. Not me. Not *something* someone like me.But then, they never believed anything I said. That's exactly why I'm here.

    Cellmate is studying me.

    He fell asleep fully clothed.He's wearing a navy blue t-shirt ad khaki cargo pants tucked into shin-high black boots.

    I'm wearing dead cotton on my limbs and a blush of roses on my face.

    His eyes scan the silhouette of my structure and the slow motion makes my heart race. I catch they rose patels as they fall form my cheeks, as they float around the frame of my body, as the cover me in something that feels like the absence of courage.

    Stop looking at me, is what I want to say.

   Stop touching me with your eyes and keep your hands to your sides and please and please and please -

     What's your name?" The tilt of his head cracks gravity in half. I'm suspended in the moment. I blink and bottle my breaths.

      He shifts and my eyes shatter into thousands of pieces that ricochet around the room, capturing a million snapshots, a million moments in time. Flickering images faded with age, frozen thoughts hovering precariously in dead space, a whirlwind of memories that slice through my soul. *He reminds me of someone I used to know.*

     One sharp breath and I'm shocked back to reality. *No more daydreams.*

     "Why are you here?" I ask the cracks in the concrete wall. 14 cracks in 4 walls a thousand shades of gray. The floor, the ceiling: all the same slab of stone. The pathetically constructed bed frames: built from old water pipes. The small square of a window: too thick to shatter. My hope is exhausted. My eyes are unfocused and aching. My finger is tracing a lazy path across the cold floor.

     I'm sitting on the ground where it smells like ice and metal and dirt. Cellmate sits across from me, his legs folded underneath him, his boots just a little too shiny for this place.