Fragile

Nathaniel

I stood in my usual spot and watched Hope as she tumbled out of bed.

I watched her everyday, which is actually less creepy then it sounds. My brother's made fun of it, called me a "Peeping Tom", but that was because they didn't understand. I turned my eyes away when she undressed but I watched when she threw her head back and laughed, when she sat at the piano and played music that would put Beethoven to shame, and when she cried herself to sleep at night; I had seen her in every vulnerable form. I knew I would never be able to shake my brother's perverted belief that seeing a girl naked was the end-all be-all of male existence, but as far as I was concerned Hope had already shown me more of herself then I should have been allowed to see, and she didn't need to take her clothes off to do it.

Hope sat down and ate her cereal, which I noticed wasn't her usual routine. It must be because Jace had left the house around the time that I arrived. I looked out from behind the same tree that I always did, the one I had come to know as the tree of forbidden fruit. It was the only thing separating me from the town which felt as close to civilization as I was ever going to get, but it was also the only thing separating me from Hope, my own human form of forbidden fruit. 

I had really begun to hate this tree.

I watched Jace pull out of the driveway in his parents old minivan, the second vehicle that had been owned by the now deceased Whitaker's. The first had been a station wagon which I guessed was now lying in it's own grave much in the same way the Whitaker's were lying in their's. The only difference was the station wagon had gone to it's grave in a junkyard, the Whitaker's were lying 6 feet under. I waited until I could no longer see the tail-end of the vehicle before stepping out from the shadows. Hope lay in her bed, as still as if she were dead. I knew better though, I could hear her heart beating slow and steadily so there was no reason for me to panic. When I first began to watch Hope at the beginning of the summer, I could see how badly she had been effected by everything.  Her eyes would dart back and forth whenever a gust of wind made the doors creak, her hands would flinch whenever the house phone rang  (a reaction I was sorry to say I was going to make her replicate today), and whenever anyone besides her brother went to hug her (which was usually either Roe or Gideon) her entire body went stiff. But it wasn't just the physical aspects that Hope displayed that made me notice the high level of PTSD she was suffering from, it was the way she felt things. 

She would absorb herself in the morbid works of Edgar Allen Poe and Ernest Hemingway, or play the piano so ferociously that it was like all the pain and hate and fear that she felt was being sucked out of her soul and dispersed into every musical vibration that came out of the banged-up keys. 

I had to wipe away tears from the corners of my eyes in these moments. I could feel myself yearning for my long-lost parents the way Hope longed for hers, I felt the constant desperation Hope felt whenever she thought about saving her brother from being stuck in this nothing of a town, and I always felt the same numbing pain in my chest that had made it's home in Hope's heart whenever she stared out the windows that no longer held a view to the outside world. It was like I was inside her head, I could see how she imagined her old life, and the love that she used to have for the woods as a little girl was the kind of passion most people only dream about. She belonged there, more then me, more then my family, more then anyone I'd ever known, and I knew I had to bring that feeling back to her.

I waited until I could see her through the window, my eyes seeing past the blackened panes. Jace had done his brotherly duty when he had spray painted the window glass so Hope wouldn't be terrified every time she walked into a room. It made it impossible for someone with basic human abilities to see in or out of them, but I wasn't all human, which in this moment was an advantage.

She was standing in front of the piano in the foyer, running her hands over the keys. I winced, the familiar, Hope-adjacent pain creeping it's way over my ribs and squeezing my most vital organ. I reached into my pocket and dug out the cell-phone I had but never used. It was only for emergencies, a burner phone that Fenris made me replace every few weeks so we couldn't be tracked. We weren't running anymore, but all those years spent hopping from town to town like we were fugitives had made Fenris the kind of man that was always looking over his shoulder, as if he is just waiting for the past to catch up with us. 

I drew in a deep breath and punched in the numbers that I knew by heart, wiping my thoughts clear of the old life I had lived. I was here now, finally about to do what I had been waiting for all summer.

There were three distinct rings before she picked up the phone, and I didn't even let her speak before words came tumbling out of my mouth like vomit.

"Hope. It's been a long time."