Ethereal Love (Book 2 LS Series)

Chapter 1

Eleven days.

It's been eleven days since Michael shattered the already broken pieces of me into microscopic shards, and then set them on fire.

The past few days have been the definition of hell, the definition of struggle. With every breath I take, the pain is like knives in my lungs, but with every breath, the pain dissolves just a little more.

I'm not the proudest of my immediate actions after Michael's... 'Confession.' His eyes were glossy after I spit 'I hate you,' and ran through the crowd to escape him. It was like I couldn't breathe around him, I had to get away. After that, I hopped into Vegetable and sped down the street. I soon realized that everything about the car reminded me of Michael, the Queen tapes, the leather seats... Even the smell.

I looked in the backseat using the mirror, and spotted a bottle of whiskey. Michael had left it there on our last trip to Gary, and I hadn't cleaned out the car since then. And that gave me a not-so-bright idea.

I drove into the nearest alley, and screaming like a madwoman, crashed the car into every wall possible to destroy it. The impact was painful, but that is what I wanted, the physical pain distracted me from the pain inside. I dented the car to China and back, before I stumbled out of it, covered in my own blood and bruises, and poured the whiskey all over the interior.

I set flame to that whiskey, and smiled while I watched that car burn.

The long walk back to St. Mary's gave my anger a long time to subside, and that it did, before it morphed into full-on depression, loss, grief, and humiliation. By the time I arrived to my dorm, I was sobbing so hard I couldn't breathe, choking on my own tears. I couldn't force air into my body no matter how hard I tried.

Day one was spent glued to the floor of my dorm with the door locked, crying my pain to the world. I mentally begged god to spare me, to end the pain, but obviously, I'm still here so that didn't happen. Becky and Ana practically banged a hole through the door trying to get in, to apologize, but there was no way I could deal with anyone. I didn't eat or drink, but what's new there? I soaked the carpet with my tears, and released the pain.

On day two, I picked myself up off of the ground, the last of the tears finally fading away. They were soon to return though, as directly after I got up, I proceeded to destroy everything I ever got from Michael with a pair of surgical shears, even his clothes.

The only thing I couldn't bear to part with was a mere sticky note Michael passed me in class once, when the professor was going on about colonoscopies. It was a stick-figure drawing of us holding hands. I'd laughed about the way he'd drawn my hair, and grinned like an idiot at the heart he drew between us. "Smell it." He whispered.

I brought the paper to my nose, and wanted to kiss him right then and there. It smelled heavily of Michael, and I didn't even know he knew of my weird obsession with the scent. "I rubbed it against my shirt," He later explained as we walked out of class hand in hand. It's a memory that probably isn't real, but it's enjoyable all the same.

After lovingly tucking the note into a drawer, I threw the dorm room door open and sped past the sleeping bodies of Ana and Becky. I couldn't stay at school one more moment, with everyone whispering, mocking my horror.

Thunder boomed and lightning struck the earth as I walked through the freezing rain, but I didn't even feel it. I walked into the hospital lobby, and it seemed nobody knew. Nobody stared at me, pointed, or stood in clusters to read the paper, instead, they carried on with normal hospital things. They didn't notice the soaking wet girl with frozen hair.

Everyone except for Will. He stared at me with wide green eyes, doing his best to bite back the pity that he knows I hate. I walked up to the nurse's station, leaving a trail of water behind me, to where he stood.