Chapter 9
Who’s To Say That I Can’t Hide Out? Oh, That’s Right…
I didn’t know what time I woke up the next morning, but I knew it had to be late. I hadn’t been able to get to sleep the night before, no matter how tired I had been. It wasn’t like I was physically drained, more like mentally and emotionally – mentally from everything Kate had told me about what happened with her years before and what the Order had planned and emotionally because…well, how could I not be?
I must have fallen asleep for at least an hour, because the next time I opened my eyes, there was a try of food sitting on the table beside my bed. Even when I got myself to sit up and eat, I could barely taste anything, which made me just push it away and not eat anything.
No one appeared until later that night after the sun had set. They came in my room without waiting for an answer after they knocked. I didn’t, of course. My head was buried in the pillows, but I peeked out with one eye to see Ryan with another tray of food in hand.
“Is this what you’ve been doing all day?” I heard him ask since I’d already closed my eyes again.
I didn’t answer.
“You hungry?”
Silence.
“Are you even alive?”
That, I would answer. “Well, if you want to get technical in the legal sense…”
He laughed and I felt the bed dip beside me before the sound of the tray sliding onto the table. “I knew that would get me an answer.”
I was quiet again, but the sound of Aiden and Sterling screaming and laughing out in the hallway floated in through my open door. Their footsteps passed by before a loud thump, followed by more laughter.
“The boys wanted to come in and wake you this morning so you could play with them. I told them that you wanted to sleep,” Ryan went on. “I don’t know if that excuse will work tomorrow, though.”
I peeked out from my pillows again to glare at him. “Hey, Ryan?”
He raised an eyebrow since I was actually speaking to him. “Yeah?”
My eyes narrowed to slits. “You came to give me food, though I’m not hungry, so just get out. I don’t want you here.”
His smile made me want to punch him. “You know, barricading yourself in your room won’t do much for you. You need to get out. Juliet meant what she said about putting you through training…”
“And I’m not going to be put through training!” I yelled, pushing myself up. My head spun, though I tried to get a hold of it before Ryan offered to help steady me. I couldn’t bear to have him touch me. “What do I have to do to get you out of here? I just want to be alone!”
He held up his hands in surrender, shifting away. “Okay, okay, I’ll go,” he said, standing up. “But just know that you’ll have to get out of this room sometime soon. Juliet won’t stand much for you doing nothing all day but lying in bed.”
...
Even with Ryan’s warning, I still didn’t get out of bed the next day. I did the same thing, which was to not move from the cocoon I made in my covers and pillows. Not even when Ryan came back with more food and to take the tray from the night before, still sitting there untouched. Not when I could hear unfamiliar voices outside my bedroom door just after noon. Not when I heard the door opened for a second time that day and two sets of footsteps slowly making their way toward my bed after the door clicked shut.
But when I lifted my head to see who it was after the footsteps stopped, there was no one there…that I could see, of course. But when two little giggles floated up from beside the bed, I shifted so I could look over. Aiden and Sterling were crouched down beside the bed, whispering and giggling more, oblivious to the fact that I had spotted them.
“What are you two doing?” I asked.
Both of the boys looked up at me with identical surprised expressions. “Nothing,” they said together.
“We just wanted to come see you,” Sterling started as he pushed himself up from the floor and leaned against the bed.
Aiden did the same. “And we wanted to see if you’d come play with us.”
I started at the two of them. “I’m tired.”
“But you’ve been sleepin’ all day,” Sterling whined. “And Mummy said you could use a little fun. Why not play with us?”
“I’ve already told you…”
“Boys,” Ryan’s voice said from the doorway. “What are you two doing in here?”
Aiden and Sterling turned to him. “Tell Emmy to come play with us!”
“She won’t get out of bed!”
Ryan shook his head as he walked toward them. “Emmy’s not feeling up to playing right now. I thought I told you two that this morning when you asked.”
“But she’s not sick!” Aiden told him.
“She says she’s tired!” Sterling went on.
Ryan pointed toward the door. “Get going, you guys. If you want someone to play with, I’ll be downstairs in a minute. I’ll play with you. Just give Emmy a few more days and I’ll get her to play with you, okay?”
The boys turned to look back at me. “Will you play with us in a few more days?” they asked together.
“Sure,” I whispered, not knowing what else to say.
Ryan looked back at me with a small smile as Aiden and Sterling ran out the door, grins stretched across their faces, and didn’t say anything else as he followed behind them.
...
On day three of ‘barricading myself in my room’ as Ryan put it, I was visited by Tory, who I hadn’t seen since she and Jamie, the girl who seemingly hated me for no reason, had left New York. The tray of food Ryan had brought to me earlier that morning had gone uneaten – I didn’t know why he kept bringing them when I hadn’t eaten a thing – and I hadn’t moved since I’d woken up that morning either.
Unlike Ryan, Tory knocked and waited for some kind of answer from me. But when I didn’t answer, she knocked again, slowly opening the door at the same time to peek inside. When her eyes met mine, she gave me a slight smile.
“Is it all right if I come in?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.
It took me a moment to give her an answer, even if it was just a nod of my head against my pillow.
When Tory pushed the door open to step inside, she was carrying another tray of food. I heard her sigh when she saw the other on the bedside table before placing the one in her hands on the bed beside where my legs were under the covers. My body still didn’t move, but my eyes were following her as she took the other and set it outside my bedroom door before coming back inside, closing the door behind her.
“All right, Emmy. This is the third day you locked yourself in this room. By what Ryan’s told us, you haven’t eaten anything and haven’t changed clothes or taken a shower or even slept. You need to get up and do something, even if it’s only get yourself cleaned up and eat. Doing this to yourself will only hurt you more than you already are.”
I swallowed hard, closing my eyes as I hugged the pillow tighter. “I’m not hungry. I’m not tired. I don’t feel anything.”
And I didn’t. With the lack of food and sleep, my mind was working slower, which made me feel mostly numb. I was grateful for that – the numbness – because I was tired of hurting. I was tired of trying to act as if I was completely fine with everything that had happened. Because I wasn’t fine. Who would be, when you’d hurt the most important person in your life in the worst possible way? When you hurt your family and friends?
“Emmy?”
My eyes slowly went back to Tory, who was watching me with worried eyes.
“I know what you’re going through right now, but you need to eat. You need to eat and get cleaned up and try for a little normalcy.”
I swallowed, though it felt like I was trying to force a cotton ball down my throat. “Nothing’s normal anymore.”
She sighed just as another knock sounded at the door.
This time, it was Kate who appeared. My heart started hammering in my chest at the sight of her, mostly because I still wasn’t used to thinking of her as being alive. When she saw me, her lips turned down in a frown and her eyes were sympathetic.
Those eyes – those green eyes that were hard to look at – turned toward Tory. “Juliet wants to see you in the library.”
She paused before answering, seeming confused before realization hit her. “Is this about…?”
Kate nodded, glancing back at me for a moment. “Ryan, Jamie, and Jude are already there. She wants to plan out the training since she decided that you and Jude are going to be helping also.”
“But Emmy…”
“I’ll take care of her. Go on before Juliet gets mad.”
Tory snorted out a laugh, nodding. “And we all know we don’t want that to happen.”
Still hugging my pillow to the side of my face, I watched Tory stand and leave the room. Kate smiled at her as she passed before closing the door behind her. Her eyes went back to me as she walked toward the side of the bed, sitting down in the place where Tory had been.
“How are you doing, darling?” she asked, reaching forward to brush my tangled hair away from my forehead. “Ryan’s told us you haven’t eaten in the last few days and that he thinks you haven’t been sleeping either.”
I shrugged, slowly blinking up at her. “He’s right, I guess.” My voice came out no more than a whisper.
Her hand continued to smooth my hair back and I closed my eyes. For the first time in days, I felt so comfortable that I could fall asleep.
“I know what you’re going through, Emmy,” she said softly, making me look up at her again. “I know it’s hard, having the ones you love most believing that you’ve left them forever, but you don’t need to think that way. You need to get up, eat something, take a shower. You need to live. These feelings going through you…”
“All I feel is numb.”
My eyes found themselves closing and not opening for a few minutes until the bed moved as Kate shifted.
“Sit up.”
I didn’t make a move, didn’t open my eyes.
“Emmy, I want you to sit up and I’m not leaving this room until you do.”
I wouldn’t have minded if she stayed either way.
“Don’t make me start counting like I have to do with Sterling…because I will.”
For the first time in what felt like years, a slight smile curved at the edges of my lips. It was because counting was what my mom had done with me and Jason growing up. And when she got to three, it meant that we better have already done what she’d asked.
So before Kate even said ‘one,’ I slowly turned over and pushed myself up so that I was sitting, though still leaned back against the pillows. I could feel how weak I was by the shakiness in my muscles, the way the room spun when I was actually upright. But when my eyes finally focused on her, her smile was bright.
“Well, your stubbornness is easier to crack than Sterling’s is, that’s for sure,” she laughed, reaching for the tray on the bedside table. She turned slightly on the bed, setting it in between the two of us. She looked it over – the piece of bread, the bowl of what looked like tomato basil soup – and picked up the bread to hand to me. “Start with this. Since you haven’t eaten in a while, you’ll be queasy at first, but you’ll be fine once it settles in your stomach.”
My hand was shaking as I raised the piece of bread to my mouth, grimacing as I swallowed and it hit my hollow stomach. It would take a few bites to get over the feeling that it was all going to come back up in a second, but it finally did pass and I found myself scarfing it down like it was the last piece of bread in the world.
Kate was smiling as she watched me, reaching for the bowl of soup before spooning some up for me. “I don’t trust you just yet with holding the bowl, so I’m going to feed it to you.”
Again, my lips curved up into a slight smile. “And now you’re really acting like my mother. She still feeds me herself when I’m sick.”
That got a laugh out of her. “Well, I guess all mothers are like that in some way. When our babies aren’t feeling good, we want to do everything for them, even when their old enough to be out on their own.”
Kate made sure that I ate everything before she put the bowl on the tray, moving it back to the table. Slapping her hands on her legs, she stood up and headed for my bathroom. A few seconds later, the shower spurt to life and steam started to fog up the mirror. I hadn’t moved when she appeared again, coming over before pulling the covers off me and offering her hands.
“Now that you’ve got a full stomach, the next thing you need is a shower. I’m not going to force you to leave this room, but the least you can do for yourself is make sure you’re clean. A nice hot shower always makes a person feel better. And then afterward, you can get back into this bed if you want. It doesn’t matter to me.”
I was still a little shaky as she helped me up, but made sure I wouldn’t fall over before smiling at me again, putting her hand to my cheek.
“This is the first step, Emmy. It’s going to be hard, and you might fall a few times, but you’ll pick yourself back up. I’ve only known you a few days and I can already tell that’s the kind of person you are. You’ll get past this, even though you don’t think you can, and you’ll come out stronger than you ever thought yourself possible. Everything will be all right. Promise.”
I knew she wasn’t talking about getting in the shower either.
I nodded, swallowing hard. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Now,” she smiled, walking with me to the door of the bathroom. “You take a shower, put on some clean pajamas, and try to sleep. Even if Ryan hadn’t said so, I would have been able to tell that you haven’t.” Her smile turned apologetic then. “And sorry to say this, but this will probably be the last day that Juliet will let you lock yourself in here. I made her give you a few days, but this is all she seems to be able to do.”
I shrugged, knowing that it would have come sooner or later. “Like you said, it’s the first step.”
Kate nodded, smiling as she brushed my cheek again. “That’s my girl.”
...
And she was right.
Because the next morning, I was woken up by the sound of my door slamming back into the wall as it flew open. I had been sleeping – I was out the night before as soon as my head hit the pillow – but I was wide awake from the heart attack Juliet gave me as she stomped into my room. I sat up just as she was pulling open the wardrobe doors, digging out sweat pants, a sports bra, tank top, and a pair of tennis shoes and setting them on my bed.
“I know Kate told you that yesterday would be the last day you mope around here,” she said, looking at me. “Put these on, put your hair up, and meet us down in the kitchen for breakfast after you’re ready. And if you’re longer than half an hour, I’ll come back up here and drag you out, do you hear me?”
Before, the look she was giving me – that one warning she wouldn’t hesitate to get rid of me for good – would have sent me running in the opposite direction. But now, it didn’t faze me at all. If anything, it made me want to laugh. She’d put me through enough that nothing would ever really get that reaction out of me again.
“And what is it exact that I’ll be doing?” I asked, raising an eyebrow as I crossed my arms over my chest.
“Training,” she said, narrowing her eyes at me. It wasn’t in intimidation, but like she was sizing me up, wondering where this new Emmy – the one who seemed to be challenging her instead of moping around, as she said – had appeared from. “You start today after breakfast.”
***Slow updates...HA!
Yeah, it was short and a little boring and nothing was really going on, but that's what a filler chapter is meant for! The real fun starts in the next chapter! We get to meet the gang...well, meet them again. Of course, there's Ryan, but then we've got Tori and Jamie coming back and Jude is a new guy you'll be introduced to.
Again, no promises on the next upload. I'm going to try and make the next chapter longer, so it might be a few days. Of course, though, it'll be worth it!
100 votes and 30 comments before the next upload? Let's do it! :D
Comment and vote!!!1***