Broken

Chapter 4

As I turned my light out and got into bed I realized there'd been one bright spot to the day. Brandon Worthingfield III might not really be interested in me, but he was obviously at the top of the social food chain, and he'd already shown me way more attention than any of the boys back home ever had. Maybe there was some hope after all.

**

I was lost, not just in the sense of not knowing where I was, but because I'd never been anywhere even remotely like this. The breeze was louder than any I'd ever heard before, and was laden with an unimaginable host of scents.

It took me several seconds to sort through things enough to realize I was smelling things I didn't even have a name for. After several seconds of trying to catalog the most delightful of my new discoveries, I realized I'd had my eyes closed since I'd gotten here, possibly an unconscious defense mechanism meant to protect me from sensory overload.

The distant sound of water trickling down a rock face, of leaves gently caressing each other in the breeze faded away as I took in an amazing wonderland of light. The trees I'd been listening to were exactly where I expected them to be, but it took me several heartbeats to recognize them. Gone were the sturdy, brown behemoths I'd spent so much time climbing with Cindi.

Instead, pillars of soft light reached up to the sky, swaying slowly back and forth with the wind creaking in a rhythm I'd known by heart since I was seven. I felt tears collecting in the corners of my eyes as I reached out and touched the nearest tree. It was as if the world I'd known my entire life had been simply a moldy cover designed to hide the true nature of my surroundings. Now that the mask was gone and I was immersed in vivid colors, living lights, and a sense of harmony so strong it nearly overwhelmed me.

It was impossible to say for certain how long I sat looking at the gentle motion of the tree branches, marveling at the way things made up of light could still cast shadows when silhouetted by the harsher light of the sun.

Only somehow the sun had disappeared, replaced by the paler, colder light of the moon. The trees were still graceful strands of light, but the breeze had changed to a harsh thing, one carrying new scents that somehow represented danger.

Something inside me forced my limbs into motion. I was running before the first howl tore through the night. I was moving unimaginably fast, jumping fallen trees and bounding over other obstacles which even my improved vision struggled to make out in time for me to avoid them. The speed of my passage wrung tears from my eyes, but I didn't dare slow.

They were back there, four of them moving with speed only slightly less than my own, noses to the ground to follow my scent, save for the moments in which they let loose their unearthly howls.

A flicker of motion up ahead should have made me pull up in fear, but the smell accompanying it was somehow familiar, somehow safe. I knew if I could reach the shadowy person I'd been unconsciously following, I'd be safe, but he was so incredibly fast and my pursuers were gaining.

**

The sound of my alarm pulled me out of a whole series of nightmares in which I was running from unknown menaces. Each had been terrifying, but none as vivid as the first. Bad dreams had become a frequent companion since the accident. It'd become nearly passé to wake up emotionally exhausted from what should have been a restful night, but these dreams had been different.

I'd played out nearly every possible combination of events since the accident. Dreams where I was the one driving instead of Cindi. Dreams where I got a ride home with someone so dad and Cindi didn't have any reason to be on the road. Dreams where I was in the truck that killed them, even dreams where I was in the back seat as a passenger at the moment of impact.