Evergreen Everleigh - The Wattys 2020

Chapter Twenty-Five - Dreamless Sleep

Chapter Twenty-Five

Dreamless Sleep

Today I have awoken but in every practical way, I am still asleep. I walk to the kitchen with the edges of my vision blurring, and my very name wavering on the edges of my mind. For breakfast, I eat one of Perennial's brown scones. Dry, without butter or jam. Aster asks me a question but I don't hear it at first. Yarrow's brow furrows but he holds back whatever comment will likely find its' way to me later. 

But how can I tell him the truth? Or anyone, even Sweet Pea?

The truth lies in the tremor in my hand and the dried blood on the inside of my thigh from an old scar turned new. No, the real truth lies with the boy with fiery hair whose answers lie within these walls.

The room suddenly feels full of too many eyes. Muttering a weak excuse, I step away from the table. I move without direction down the fire escape. Tears, unexplainable damned tears, prickle my eyes as I move towards the one place I know that I will find him.

Lake Clover is slightly choppier than during our game several days ago. The wind runs my tears to my chin and an unearthly shiver courses through me when water laps into the holds of my white sandals. I close my eyes, giving over the senses and abilities which have always acted like rabid dogs at the fence. Never far from overrunning me entirely.

I feel his small hand on wrist, death against my pulse before I see him. He looks like sunlight at first. Then the details of his pale blue skin and bloated cheeks become more real than my tears of the bile rising in my throat.

"I saw you, in the water. Floating there, staring. And every day since," he says to me, with piqued interest, as though he was not a dead boy speaking to the living. He does not look a day over eleven. I place a hand over his and it occurs to me that even in death, I am nearly smaller than this boy. 

As though he could read my thoughts, the boy looks at my hand on his and gently let's go. He wears no bandages on his wrists today. A different day, a different apparition.

"What is it you want with me?" I ask him, watching him take in my experience curiously. My yellow hair ribbon is not twisted through my braid today but is instead holding back my loose curls. I couldn't bring myself to care about how I looked this morning. "I've only seen you twice."

Suddenly, I feel so overwhelmingly tired. Tired with my abilities, tired of seeing two sides of existence. Impulsively, I plop onto the ground, sitting in the shallows, ignoring the cold-water seep through my dress. My mother would have told me I was inviting in a kidney infection and she would have been right.

"You see me when you are open-minded. I'm always there," he says, sitting down a little way away from me. "There are others, too. Those who know what you can do."

At this, I snap my eyes to his with a fierceness I haven't felt since I stopped feeling altogether.

"I've been here for five minutes now and I still haven't found out what you want. Quit wasting my time."

Another time, another day, I would have considered myself harsh. But now, with the birds cawing over the trees and the smell of pine needles and freshwater all around, it is hard to care about the wishes of the dead.

"I just need you to tell him, tell him that I miss him."

The boy's voice has become so small that he seems truly like a ghost. The very edges of his existence seem to be fading, and my tolerance with it. But I cannot bring myself to snap at him when I see that even the dead can cry. His face is red, as though flushed with blood and emotion but his eyes are squeezed tightly shut. He raises his hands to his head and tugs on the red tufts of hair by his hairline, seeming unbelievably frustrated. 

He looks so like Henry when he twisted his ankle that I prop myself on my knees before him. My stomach heaves with the reality of the situation, of what doctors and even I have called hallucinations. Pressing my hand to his cheek, I close my eyes and force myself to give another part of me away to this gift. The gift that might help people. I cannot be self-serving forever if I do intend to live.

"Tell who? Tell me, and I'll make sure it's done," I promise to both of us.

Before he can speak, before the shock has left his eyes, I hear someone breaking the treeline and footsteps falling onto the rocky earth before the water.

The moment that I shift my gaze from this boy, this broken boy, to Yarrow, I feel him leave. The boy is gone from me at that moment and there is only me, crouched in the shallows, my knees cut open on the rocks, kneeling into someone who is no longer there.

I take a deep breath and pull myself to my feet. I cannot turn to face Yarrow and his questions. Not just yet. Instead, I try to rationalise all of this.

"Last night I ran to Wister. To tell him what I saw. He believed me so easily," My voice is a hush of fear brought about from telling the truth to myself. And to this peculiar, suspenders-wearing boy. "Sometimes I wonder why I can't believe myself that easily."

Tears flow freely down my cheeks, entirely without my permission.

"My feet must be terribly numb if I am crying," Trying to act as nonchalantly as possible, I wipe my tears away and force a smile. With one glance at my wane smile, Yarrow crosses the water to me in three long strides.

When Yarrow crushes me to his chest, my tears return in full force. I sink to my knees and Yarrow follows me.

"I believe you," He says and no doubt immediately regrets when this brings about another set of heaving sobs from me.

After a considerable length of time, Yarrow carries me back to the house in his arms like child. When I close my eyes to sleep that night, despite wishing for nothing more than a night of dreamless sleep, all I think of the red-haired boy's wish. Perhaps I hadn't found the recipient of his message. Perhaps he had found me.  

A/N

Hello, my little lambs, 

I hope you are enjoying the story getting a little grittier - it will a lot more so from here on out! I also hope you're having a fabulous week!

Love, 

Jen xx