Celeste POV
I am running. I don't know where to, but I know that I'm going somewhere. Behind me, I hear people calling my name, but I don't look back. I force my legs to run across the uneven ground, pumping my arms as fast as I can.
Suddenly I trip. I throw my hands out to catch myself, and suddenly I am on my back, staring up at the sky. It is gray, clouds covering the sun. I squint, my eyes blurred. I realize that they aren't clouds, but smoke. I sit up and look at my surroundings.
Everything is on fire.
Burning buildings are crashing to the ground and people are screaming and flames are consuming everything. I try to stand, to shout, but I can't. I am stuck to the ground, as if I were glued there. My lungs burn, as if I had embers flaming inside of them. Suddenly, two figures step out from all the chaos. I immediately recognize their features.
Kate and Seth. They look at me with remorse and what looks like betrayal. "Why did you leave us?" Kate says, her arms outstretched. Seth says nothing, only stares at me. I try to open my mouth, to speak, but nothing comes out. I might as well be a corpse.
Then they start to burn. Flames consume Kate and Seth's bodies and the melt into a pile of ash right before my eyes. I find my voice again, only this time I am not able to say words. I scream. A bloodcurdling scream that makes my own eardrums vibrate and my hands are in my hair and suddenly I am spinning. I scream out names of people that I know, and I can't keep track of who exactly. I hear someone calling to me, but I can't answer. I can't breathe. I can't function.
I hear another voice in my head. "Love gets you killed, Princess."
I am shaking, or rather someone is shaking me, but I can't see. I hear the voice again, oddly familiar. "Celeste! Celeste, wake up!"
~~~~~~~~~~
My eyes flash open and I am jolted back to reality. The concrete ceiling, the blaring single light. Someone is touching my shoulder, lightly shaking me. I sit up and scramble against the nearest wall, my eyes wide and blinking thousands of times. My head turns right and left wildly and I am breathing incredibly hard.
My eyes finally land on the other person in the room. Joe is staring at me, his eyes wide. He has his hand stretched out, almost as if I yanked away too early. "Celeste." He whispers. "You--"
"How long have you been here?"
Joe swallows. "Probably longer than you'd like."
I let my body relax against the wall, but my fingers are still digging into the palms of my hands. Joe continues to gaze, chewing the inside of his lip. His eyes are a cross between sympathy and fear. "Celeste.... you... you were screaming."
I glance up. "What?"
"I think you were having a nightmare. You were just screaming... screaming out names. Kate and Seth and... You said my name at one point." He balls his hands into fists, looks down at his shoes. I don't say anything; just try to get my breathing under control. "Are you alright?" He finally asks.
I shake my head, glaring at him weakly. "I haven't been alright for a while now."
He frowns, but it isn't out of annoyance. He looks almost... guilty. He slides down on the wall next to me, pausing when he sees my shoulders tense. "Why are you here?" I ask.
Joe looks up at the ceiling. "I was watching you on the security cameras," he gestures toward the camera in the corner of the room, "And you started... I don't know, writhing. You were sleeping at first, and then you just started screaming. So I came to check on you."
"Won't Jasper get angry?"
"He's out with Butch and Carl right now. And I disabled the security system."
"Oh."
"Um... I brought some pain meds, in case you need them." He pauses and scratches the back of his head, running his fingers through his hair and looks away. "They help me sometimes whenever I-- yeah. Can I see your arms?" I furrow my eyebrows, but don't see the point in rejecting him. My arms are black, blue, purple, and green from Jasper's rampage. I touch the hem of my shirt and lift it up to see what my stomach and ribs look like. On the right side, the entire length of my torso is blue and black.
Joe curses under his breath when he sees all the bruises on my arms and torso. I simply ignore him and survey the damage. I tenderly touch the area on my rib cage that hurts the most, gritting my teeth together to keep from crying out in pain. Finally, my fingers reach an area that feels different. My rib is cracked. I learned how to determine the difference between a cracked rib and a shattered rib at BPA in intro to medical. A cracked rib isn't as severe, but it is still a serious injury.
"It's cracked." I say with a sigh as I lean my head back against the wall and let my shirt fall back down.
He instantly grabs the pill bottle and hands it to me along with a water bottle. I haven't realized just how thirsty I was until now. I haven't had water in almost 24 hours. I pause before taking the pill. "How do I know this isn't a fake?"
"You don't." Joe simply shrugs. I take the water bottle and the tablet, throwing it down and chugging the water.
"Thanks." I say quietly. He just nods in return. Next he hands me a protein bar, which I wolf down hungrily.
"Why are you helping me?" I ask him carefully, catching my breath from the effort it took to eat the bar and drink the water, which was made much harder because of my cracked rib.
Joe sighs and wrings his hands together. "Because it's wrong."
"You didn't think that a few days ago."
"Well things change."
"Apparently." I snap back at him, still not trusting him completely.
"I... I didn't like it when he hit you. What gets to me is that it's never bothered me before but--" He trails off, as he reaches up to touch the spot on his face where Jasper hit him. I notice the dark bruise forming on his cheekbone, and feel the slightest temptation to touch it...
I erase that thought from my mind as quickly as it came.
"Well now you've had a taste of your own medicine." I say towards him bitterly.
Joe looks away. "It wouldn't be the first time."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
He just sighs and runs his hand through his hair. "Princess, what I don't get about you is why you refuse to comply. You're only making this harder on yourself." He tells me forcefully, grabbing one of my arms and gesturing to the bruises everywhere. His grip is hard, but he is careful to avoid the injured areas.
"I've already told you! It's because these people mean something to me! Kate and Seth, they... they're--" I pause, "I don't know. I don't know how to explain this to you. But haven't you ever felt that way about someone?!" I say forcefully, my voice raising.
"Yes." He says it quietly. Almost as if he didn't intend for me to hear it. I watch as he reaches his hand in his pocket and grabs hold of something, but he doesn't bring his hand out. I furrow my eyebrows and watch his face. It goes from confused, to sad, to reminiscent all in the course of a few seconds.
"My family." He says simply. Leaving those words to hang in the air. After several seconds of awkward silence he continues with a pained expression on his face. "My dad disappeared when I was a kid and my mom..." He shakes his head. When he says the words, there is no emotion in them. They are hollow and empty like it is just a known fact not worth wasting time over. So repetitious that it is now meaningless. My next words come out without my approval.
"My parents died in a car accident. I was in the backseat." I tell him. I don't know why, but I feel like I should. He looks at me with a dumbfounded expression on his face. I hate that look that he gives me. He pities me.
"Stop looking at me like that. I don't need your sympathy. This happens to a lot of people." I spit the words at him. If there is one thing I hate it is being pitied.
He just shakes his head and puts all his weight against the wall. "Why did your dad..." I start to ask, but I instantly see rage and anger flash in his eyes. He stands up from where he was sitting against the wall and I do the same. If he is going to hurt me it will be harder for him to do if we are on the same level.
"I don't know and that's what makes it the worst!" His voice raises, his hands into fists and pacing back and forth across the room. "Princess, I know you probably don't think about it but the things you say to people can mean more to them than you ever intended to." He looks at me with a mixture of emotions playing across his face. Anger, frustration, inner conflict, and sadness.
"Remember when you said that my family committed suicide because they couldn't stand being near someone like me?" He asks me, stepping closer to me. I back up against the wall, pressing my palms into it. He takes another step closer towards me as if that will fill the silence.
"Well you were right about that," he says, "About me."
I bite my lip. "I didn't mean--"
"It doesn't matter. And you couldn't have known before."
"Know what, Joe?" His name slips out almost easily. I haven't said it in this manner before... A manner where all I want is for him to talk to me. It's terrifying in its own particular way, the fact that I don't want him to leave me hanging like this. It's a strange and foreign feeling, one that I don't want to stay but at the same time, I do want it to.
Joe stands glued to the floor, refusing to move. His hands clench and relax, over and over again. "I was five. My dad had already fallen between the cracks, we hadn't heard from him in a year. It drove my mother insane. I just remember her always screaming, crying..." Joe swallows, closes his eyes. "It got to the point where she never came out of her room. Not once."
My heart clenches as he continues to speak. A sudden image pops into my head of a five year old Joe sitting against a wall, covering his ears as his mother's screeches resonated throughout the house. It makes me sick. "And then one day... she didn't pick me up from school. She had dropped me off that morning, and she didn't say a word to me. She just handed me my backpack and told me to go inside. I didn't think anything of it. When she didn't show up to take me home, I just walked back. We lived right down the street."
Joe pauses and looks to the side, crossing his arms. He looks insecure, like he doesn't have enough strength to hold his usual rigid posture. "I found her on the kitchen floor, just lying in a puddle of her own blood." He looks up at me, his blue eyes dull. "She shot herself, Celeste."
"I remember just staring, not knowing what to do," he continues, "What I don't remember is if I cried or not. I just remember being in shock, and standing there for hours. And what the worst part of it was that I realized slowly over time why she did it. Why she left me behind."
"She had always constantly told me that I looked like him. And I did. I remember pictures around our house of the three of us. I have my dad's eyes and hair. Facial structure. You couldn't find any of my mom in me unless you really looked hard. I remember her sometimes calling me his name. Michael. She always called me Michael. And then she would just... stare at me for the longest time before walking away and throwing another tantrum. She killed herself because I reminded her of my father. I looked so much like him that it was unbearable for her to see me. I had become a monster without ever intending to."
I am silent, too afraid to speak. And even if I could, I don't know what I would say to him. Why, I think, why did you have to tell me all of this? Don't you know how much it hurts me? Don't you know what this is doing to me?
"The neighbors eventually found me. I was just sitting on the floor across from her body. That's when Jasper took me in. He had close connections with my father and was the first person to call should anything ever happen to my parents. He's raised me ever since." A muscle works in his jaw, and Joe finally makes eye contact with me. I suddenly feel frozen to my spot, because the expression on his face makes my heart stop. His face is the picture of pain.
His hand is still inside his pocket, still balled in a fist. He pulls it out and holds it up in the light. I squint, noticing a silver chain peeking out. "This is all I have left of her now."
He opens his hand, and I take a few steps forward the get a better look. Resting in the palm of his hand is a silver-chained necklace. A single pendant dangles from the chain. The pendant is a tree, it's completely silver branches stretching out to wrap around a single ring. The roots of the tree touch the ring as well, and a single stone that looks like white jade is shaped into a perfect circle to represent a moon.
It is beautiful, and it is protected. I glance up at Joe.
He is gazing at the necklace, his thumb caressing the chain lightly. "It's beautiful."
Joe tears his gaze away and instead focuses on me. It is then I realize how close we are standing. "I don't remember what her voice sounds like." He mutters, furrowing his eyebrows, "I just remember that she smiled a lot. But that was before my dad disappeared."
I don't want to tell him that I'm sorry, because I know that it won't make a difference. I find myself scrounging for the right words to say, the words that would console him. But I somehow know that words won't work. Not on a person like Joe.
I pull the hair on my scalp back, pushing it as far away as possible. I touch my finger to the scar on my hairline, barely noticeable unless standing only a few inches away. "I got this in the same car accident that my parents died in. I had a major concussion and had to undergo surgery. I woke up a few days later in the hospital. My mom was induced into a coma and my dad was killed upon impact." I swallow, slightly taken aback as to why I am telling him this. "My mom died after nine days. They couldn't save her."
Joe's eyebrows raise. He gently places his hands on my temples and holds the hair back from my face. It is a new sensation, his touch, one that I am not sure is welcome or not. But I don't relent when he makes contact with me. He doesn't ask for permission either.
He focuses on my forehead, examining the scar. It has faded over time, but it is always there. Always a reminder. His thumb traces the thin white line, running back and forth. I count him doing it five times before he stops at the corner, suddenly self-conscious of what he is doing. He shakes his head. "You would never know it's there." he whispers. "It barely exists."
"It's the exact opposite for me," I say, "I can't get through one day without looking at it and feeling guilty. I'm alive and they're not. It isn't fair."
"The world is unfair, Princess." He says. "I think we both can say we learned that the hard way."
He pulls his hands away finally, letting them drop to his sides. I find my hands twitching at my sides, almost as if I want to reach out to him. "What were you dreaming about?" he asks quietly, gazing at his shoes. I take a self-conscious step back, chewing the inside of my lip.
"It's not important."
Joe shakes his head. "No, you can't do that. You were screaming on the floor, Princess."
I hesitate, feeling my heart tighten inside my chest. I don't understand why I feel so compelled to tell him everything. I want to let it out, to lift the thousand pound weights off my chest. "Everything was on fire," I say quietly, "And there were people I cared about... Kate and Seth. They were angry at me for leaving. They just caught on fire, and then disintegrated." I pause. "You were there too. I mean, I couldn't see you, but I heard your voice."
I hear Joe's sharp intake of breath. "What--"
"You said that... it doesn't matter."
There is silence. "Celeste," he says quietly, "What did I say?" he is still standing dangerously close to me, and he takes a step forward, so that I can almost hear his hammering heart. Or that might be my own, but I'm not sure.
"Love gets you killed."
It is quiet. "That's all?"
"All."
There is hesitancy in his voice as he says his next words, almost as if he's afraid to say them. "You know that you've made me question that? I don't know what to think anymore. You... all my motives, everything I believed in. You make me question them. Because you feel so differently about all of it." He inhales a deep breath, "You have essentially destroyed me."
I swallow the huge lump in my throat. "I never intended to--" My words are cut short as his fingers touch my hair lightly. He stares at it for what seems like hours; all the while my heart feels like it is going to explode and my bones are going to collapse. But I stay completely still, completely human. I catch myself wanting to be closer to him, wanting to close the space completely. I push this from my mind, but I don't push him away. I shouldn't want this. But I do.
It isn't me that pulls away. Joe's hand drops and for a moment I think he stops breathing. But no, it is the blood pumping through my ears that drowns out all other noise that could possibly exist. "Don't let him break you, Princess. Don't let him win," he whispers.
Then he is gone, and I am left alone.