not edited or revised // only about an hour of work so lemme breathe !
Chapter Thirty Nine
Day 97
I wonder how many times I'm going to wake up expecting to be dead.
I opened my eyes and lemon light filled my room, tangling rosy fingers in the glass jars holding candles on my ceiling. Tree branches delicately scraped my window, leaves crinkling and crunching against the woodwork.
Death tried to take me once again, first from dreamshade, next from Oliver's clammy hands squeezing my last breath out of me. I was becoming a neighbor to the afterlife, a regular to the repose. Demise brushed ghastly hands across the overlay of my soul. And yet, I remain. Here, in my bed, back in that Neverland golden light I've become so familiar to.
I noticed Gale asleep on my floor, chest rising and falling, eyelids twitching, sighs leaving his parted mouth.
"Gale," I said, my voice hoarse. I was suddenly aware of the dull ache ache that panged through my throat. I rubbed my neck and then reached down with my other hand to tap Gale's shoulder.
"Gale," I repeated. He opened his eyes hastily and smiled at the sight of me.
"Andria," he said happily, sitting up, "how are you feeling?"
I propped myself up against the wall. "I'm okay," I said. "What even happened?"
He turned his head to the side and scratched the top of the brunette mop on his head, creased from lying on the floor. "What do you last remember?"
"I passed out while he was strangling me," I said.
"Well," Gale got up and crawled into my bed, shifting his legs as he spoke. "Chester told Pan. And Pan revived you and put you to bed."
"Pan did?" I asked, a growing anxious pull manifesting itself in my chest. I moved uncomfortably. I remembered his face hovering over mine as I came to. I remember the gray of his eyes. I remember the rain drizzling in his soul. I remember the feeling of my first breath back--so suddenly, as if it were my first, as if death was the ocean and he was the surface.
"Gale, I should have died," I said.
His face fell. "What the hell are you talking about?" he asked.
"This is the second time," I said, picking at the dried blood under my fingernails. "Second time I should have died here."
"Please stop," he said, plopping his body next to mine and wrapping his arms around my legs. I felt the sigh leave his mouth and hit my knees. "if you were meant to die you would have."
I smiled and ran my hand through his hair. "You're kinda right."
"Pshh. I'm always right," he laughed.
"But... where's Oliver now?"
Gale shrugged. "I don't know. Nobody has seen him since. Maybe he's been condemned."
I felt that familiar clogging in my throat. "You think so? Don't you think we would all be there for that?"
He looked up at me. "Andria, I don't know. He might be condemned. Pan might have just killed him. Locked him in the cage. I have zero clue."
A wave of nausea, of anxiety, of crippling trepidation washed over me. "What if he did nothing?"
Gale laughed ironically. "No way Pan just let Oliver go. That boy cares about you more than anything in his life."
I scowled and took my fingers out of his hair. "Bro, no."
"Bro," he laughed out loud, "yes! And I wish you saw him that night. Pissed."
The clogging got worse. I felt like I was going to be sick. I wanted to know everything and nothing.
"Only because he had to deal with it," I said. But I didn't believe myself--even that sounded so stupid.
"Andria, you're never gonna get it," Gale said, "Pan can't get enough of you. In the weirdest way possible."
The tottering in my stomach persevered. "Gale, I need to go for a walk."
"Right now?" he asked, releasing my legs and sitting up straight again. "Do you want company?"
I shook my head. "I'd rather be alone."
*******
I began my trek toward the beach. I needed somewhere quiet, somewhere that didn't feel like Neverland. Somewhere nobody else goes. Just me, me and my roving brain....
I stared at the dark, wet trail, letting my eyes begin to gross and blur the brown and green. I couldn't even begin to organize my thoughts.
Part of me was devastated in how hated I felt. Oliver didn't just hate me enough to hurt me, he wanted me dead. He wanted it in the most intimate way possible. And that made it so much worse--worse than just an arrow through the chest. He wanted to be on top of me, he wanted that knife through my neck, he wanted to watch the life leave me, he wanted to feel the last breath leave my stomach. The last rise and fall. The last blink of my eyelids. And he was willing to deal with the repercussions, with the questions that would follow, with the guilt and the weight on his conscience that no time could erase. He hated me that much. I was prey. The sweetest kill. The ripest fruit from the tree. He wanted my blood in his hands, he wanted him to be the last thing I looked at. The reason for my last bout of fear.
And then the opposite, yet the same. Pan, who was the source of all my terror and heartache, yet he pulled me from the grim reaper's arms twice. Once my fault, once not. He could have let me go. He could have been left with his lost boys once again. And yet I am, I remain, he grappled me from cessation, from the grave at one point I wanted to lie in so bad.
Sometimes I swear he can hear my thoughts. Or maybe we're constantly on the same page.
Something about him lingers in my brain, wraps around it, dwells in it like a house. He is so ingrained into Neverland that I feel him all around me. I drink him up like cool water issuing through the stream. I feel him like the wind that flows through the clearing. Close, all the time, like the sweat on my skin. Like the blood in my veins.
Finally, I was standing in the still water of the ocean. Idling, waiting. The clouds moved in slow motion, lapsing into each other, caressing one anothers retrograde. I felt the sun like I felt any warmth at all. Unconditionally, ceaseless, streaming down my shoulders and snarling into the tangles of my hair. I stared at the navy line where the sky and sea meet. And for a moment, I felt nothing--just the water at my feet, wobbling gently.
And then, I was reminded of exactly where I was.
A body shifted out of the forest. I turned---and saw Oliver's shadow ballasting over the low riding bushes lining it.
A scream escaped my mouth and I began to back up. Initially, I felt fear, I felt cold and hot, wanting to run and being unable to move, all at once. Until I heard the gruesome shift of chains clanking against one another.
His entire body came into view. His face was soiled, gray streaks cupping his cheeks and forehead. Tears had staled into suspension, moisture slicked up his chest and neck, his bangs dripping with sweat.
"Andria!" he yelled, "I...I am so sorry."
I clasped a hand over my chest. I couldn't get a word out.
His lip quivered as he approached. His hands were cuffed together, dirty metal clinking. A chain was wrapped around his ankle, trailing back behind a tree. Thick clumps of dried blood crusted and dripped down the chain and over his foot.
"Oh my god," I said, "what did Pan do to you?"
"Nothing," he sniffled, wiping grease off his face with his shoulder, "just cuffed me and left me here. Two nights."
I dared to inch closer, careful not to slide in the sand. I stopped just out of his farthest arm's length, in case he tried to swing his arms at me. His blue eyes were bloodshot, tears wavered beneath the lid, lashes dark and wet.
"Why?" I asked, swallowing the painful lump in my throat, "Why did you try to kill me?"
"Because," he cried, "Pan has only put Felix before me."
I frowned. "What the hell are you talking about?"
He sniffled again. "I hated you since I met you," he said. "I knew you were going to change everything as soon as you arrived. And I can't take it."
He tried to step closer but the chain around his ankle tightened, and he cried out.
"Why is your ankle so bloody?" I asked.
He breathed heavily, trying to wipe the tears and dirt off his face with his shoulder. "Pan made it so tight, and I keep pulling."
"Oliver," I began, "why do you hate me so much? As if any of this is my fault?"
He began sobbing. Hard. Uncomfortably so.
I held my arms into me and just stared at him. He looked so vulnerable, and I hated the pang of sympathy I felt developing in my chest.
"Just..." I said, "just give the clarity."
He choked a cruel breath, fighting for air between his cries. "You're making Pan weaker, Andria," he said, "you're at the front of the lineup. Despite everything he's done to you, all the torture and confinement, all the games and bullshit. He's changing. He isn't a tyrant anymore. And all I wanted was to put you back where he had you before."
The overwhelming lump was back. I began rubbing my arms anxiously. The mention of Pan and I, of the obvious, of what I've wanted all along...
I couldn't take it.
I turned around and began walking back to the clearing.
"Andria!" Oliver cried after me.
I didn't turn around.
"I'm sorry!" he yelled. "I'm sorry!"
i love u , sorry for the not so good update, but I updated within a week :) proud
quick quick update -- I'm 19. I started this bad boy when I was 15. I plan on changing up the beginning before I finish the book, and I'll be sure to give you updates :)
song suggestions:
walk thru // dc the don
drugs you should try it // travis scott (slowed down + reverb)