Author's Note

Chapter 8 - Hospital

I looked at Keith, who appeared to be unaware of my gaze upon him, his eyes shut peacefully. Perhaps he was trying to hide; at least, that's what it seemed like. He seemed off that night.

Maybe Keith acted like I do when I'm tired.

If I get sleep deprived, I get emotional, I tell people whatever I'm thinking and immediately regret it in the morning. I don't really think I know what I'm doing or why I'm doing it: it's like I'm drunk - I can't think straight. I think that's what Keith did, too.

It'd make sense, considering it was around half past midnight, and he'd been woken very, very abruptly.

My eyesight blurred with tears, self-reproach hissing at me in my mind. All I was trying to do was write a book, all I was trying to do was get a good grade, all I was trying to do was complete my schoolwork. But oh, so many complications. So many unnecessary complications.

It wouldn't hurt if I didn't care. I shouldn't have cared, I knew I shouldn't. They weren't real. Technically, they weren't real. No matter what stupid alternate universes said otherwise, these people, these characters weren't real, I knew it deep down in my gut. If I'd told anyone, they'd tell me that they weren't real too.

Faintly, I felt my nails digging in to my palms, though I hardly payed any attention. My hands shook with disgust, loathing for myself. In that moment, I didn't want to care, about any of this, about any of these words. Because that's all they were, they were just words on a screen, maybe some day on a page. Depending on whether I could get over my stupid, pathetic guilt.

Thomas's hand rested on my shoulder and squeezed.

I turned to him, to look into his face, to at least try. However Thomas was a blur, hidden behind my tears that remained trapped in my eyes. One fell, rolling down my cheek, cool against my face. It caught on my lips, and as I opened my mouth to try and speak, I felt it fall in and salt blossomed over my tongue. His black hair was all I could make out, a smudge upon pale skin. I shut my mouth and lifted my hand up to wipe my eyes, sniffing, then blinking furiously.

Finally, I could see. I could see the warm smile on his lips, the smile that I knew wasn't genuine. Thomas felt just as hurt, just as upset, just as lost as Keith did. And seeing that look on his face sickened me, because it was all my fault. I used to convince myself that I was a nice girl, that I was someone who made people happier. That's what I liked to think of myself. But in that moment, the realisation hit me like a hurricane that I was so, so very wrong. I wasn't a nice girl, not really. If I was a girl who had the capability to do such things to someone with no second thoughts, then I was the furthest from being "nice" than I could even imagine.

I smiled back at him; a wet, watery smile that was empty, that meant nothing. Thomas thought I was crying because of Keith's story, because it had resounded deep within me. In a sense, he was right, but he didn't realise the true depth of my aching for the resting boy. So I didn't correct him, didn't let him know why it had bothered me so much, why it had hit me so hard.

"Sleep," he told me quietly, that annoying smile still on his lips.

Thomas and I appeared to have moved over anything rough that had happened between us. I forgave him for what he had done during the training, I forgave him for our small argument, and, guessing from the look in his dark eyes, he deeply longed to apologise to me. Yet I had made him the sort of person who didn't like to apologise, or rather, didn't have the strength to. So he didn't apologise, but I could see it in his eyes that he was sorry, so I just sort of nodded and stood up.

"You too," I responded quietly, then turned and made my way over to my spot on the floor, flopping down onto it and wrapping myself in my blanket, facing the wall instead of the others. Faintly, I heard Thomas shuffling slightly and getting himself into bed.