Chapter 5: Revealing The Past

The stars were still out when I woke up. I held back a scream that had threatened to break out of my throat. Even my silent scream came up like puke. It was unstoppable as the image of the vehicles coming together at a speed that was not capable of stopping. I was in my own bed and I had no idea how I had gotten there. The last thing I remembered was driving away from the party, and I saw again the way the vehicle had been coming towards Amanda and me in the wrong lane.

It was a hallucination – it had to be.

I closed my eyes and tried to fall back asleep again but the urge to throw up overcame me and I hobbled unsteadily towards the bathroom. I didn’t make it that far before I heard two voices talking in the kitchen. Someone was down there and I didn’t know who it was. I had my guesses though.

My eyes closed quickly as I took a deep breath. I didn’t even know why I decided to go down the stairs but none the less, my feet carried me there. I was going downstairs and not even I could stop myself. As I looked at the steps I had scaled so many times, a fear overcame me and I realized that these thirty stairs looked like a million. For only a moment I glanced back towards my room; I wished for my warm bed to swallow me up and sleep to take me again. Fear crawled dawn my spine as I took one foot after another and went down the stairs anyways.

“I love you so much, Tom,” I heard a voice say. I needed no more than that sentence to know who it was and I couldn’t believe my own ears that she was here at our house. I strained to hear what else they were saying but didn’t catch anything except for the shuffling of feet.

I continued across the floor and looked around the corner into the kitchen. Suddenly, I wished I hadn’t.

Tom Logan and Ava Jay were tangled around each other like shoe laces that couldn’t be untied. They were lip-locked in the middle of the kitchen. Tom grabbed Ava, holding her close to him, as they leaned on the counter. While his mouth found hers, his arms stole around her waist and he pulled himself closer towards her.

I felt my mouth dropping further and further open. The longer I watched their make out session the more open my mouth got. I felt it dropping like a heavy stone in water. I couldn’t have shut it even if I had tried.

I wanted to storm in and curse them both for lying to me and Allison, but I didn’t. Once again I merely backed away and found my way back up the stairs. I crawled back into bed and slept as chills overcame me.

In and out of the consciousness, I faded back and forth, seeing little of what happened only knowing that I could barely breathe at some points.

When I awoke I vaguely remembered seeing something the night before but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. It felt like it had been lifetimes since I had last been truly awake. Though only one full night, it felt much longer.

I still felt sick when I stood. My head hurt terribly and I had lost a lot of energy. Before a warm shower, I looked like a dying vampire; my face was crusted with dried sweat that had probably come during the night. I remembered getting flashes of hot then even longer flashes of cold. Even after a warm shower I still looked unusually sick. My face was eerily pale and dark rings of deep bluish purple coated my eyes.

Spencer had already prepared a breakfast when I slowly came down the stairs. He had made fresh waffles with strawberries and syrup. He handed me a plate and laughed at the grateful look on my face. “You look terrible, Ash,” he told me honestly.

I nodded weakly. “I really feel terrible.” I answered with a forced smile. I felt sick even after I shoveled down the fresh food. I hoped I could keep it in throughout the day. I collapsed on a chair at the table and smiled stupidly. Every muscle in my body ached and I had no idea why. “Where is Dad?” I groaned.

Spencer shook his head before he answered. “I don’t know. He wasn’t here this morning when I woke up.” Spencer began cleaning up my dishes and his. The whole kitchen looked dirty even though most of the utensils were clean; they were just scattered.

My eyes took in the mess and I began wondering what had happened but stopped as an image of my own father and Ava lip-locked entered into my mind. My mouth closed as I stopped myself from questioning my half-brother. I suddenly remembered the whole previous night from when I left the party onwards. I remembered having the chills and just shaking. After, I would get all hot and sweaty.

Spencer was looking at me curiously when he spoke again. “What happened last night?” He asked me and I knew immediately that he had figured me out. He knew my real expressions too well apart from my fake and forced ones.

I looked at him and blinked only once before losing myself in the previous night’s events. “I just remember having a really good time and then suddenly I felt really sick. I got a ride home from a friend. I don’t remember anything else from there.” I lied flat-out. I wasn’t going to tell Spencer about Ava until I was sure of it myself, until I saw it without being sick.

“You’re lying,” he said to me. He knew my voice too well; he had heard it too many times when we had lived with Teresa. “I know it.” He smiled with an added laugh.

“Yes,” I said back to him, “I am, but I am not ready to tell you what about though.” I stood and walked slowly and unsteadily out of the kitchen and into my room. I crawled back into bed and was asleep before my head hit the pillow.

My sleep was ravaged with nightmares again. Over and over, I saw the pain in his eyes. Trevor was hurting and it broke my heart to see the pain.

Tom came home late in the evening that Saturday. He looked happy when he walked in and hung up his jacket on the rack by the door. “Hey kids,” he called out as soon as the door was closed behind him. He made his way into the kitchen and looked at the dishes piled up in the sink. “You’re going to clean these, right?” He looked at Spencer and I, who had been sitting at the kitchen table eating together.

We nodded and gave each other an inconspicuous glance. Something had majorly changed with Tom and it definitely had something to do with Ava Jay. I knew that it had to be something about that woman but I didn’t mention anything to Spencer. I just nodded and smiled. There wasn’t anything else I could do.

I once again asked my half-brother if he could cover for me that day. He nodded helpfully and let me go back to my room where I crashed and didn’t wake up for the rest of the night.

For the second night in a row I had awoken with sodden eyes and a tear-stained pillow. And again, for the third night, nightmares were coming to me in my sleep. They willed me to die of regret every time I closed my eyes. The dream was painted behind my lids even when I was awake. It refused to leave me at peace for at least one night of my life.

There were always the memories of Trevor and what I had done to him. I could never forget that even if I wanted. It was part of my life, part of my past, my present, my future. It was impossible to erase the facts, to make them disappear. I regretted everything.

The entire weekend passed and still every night was torn to shreds

I would wake up shivering and cold and lay awake for only minutes before my body would switch what it wanted. It would get all hot and the sheets would cling to me like glue. I would throw them back but would get cold all too soon.

The days passed and I eventually gave up on sleeping, deciding to work on the next day’s homework assignments.

The bed I lay in at my father’s house was small but comfortable none the less. I didn’t want to be woken once again like I had been the previous few nights by a futile dream that I wouldn’t remember in the morning. Why was it that all good things died? I wished I knew but they always did. In the end, every single good thing that had ever happened to me died.

Finally, after hours of waiting for sleep to claim me, it did and I fell into its grasp, beautiful and peaceful. It held me tightly, unwilling to let me rise and wake from the memories of Trevor that haunted me so relentlessly.

I once again dreamed of Trevor. I relived the torture of what I had done to him. I saw myself, and I saw that night. It played out before my eyes, painfully honest.

A drug deal gone badly is what some would call it. I called it murder, blaming myself for what happened to Trevor. I saw myself with the money, ready to give it to the man for the life-thieving drugs I craved. Trevor had followed me there, and even when I had begged him to go home, he didn’t leave. He said that he would never give up on me.

He got in the way when the man came after me. He fought back and all I could do was watch as Trevor was beaten into the ground. I didn’t try to stop him. I didn’t try to even get in his way when my best friend screamed for help. I left him and I ran away from the scene, leaving the one person who had promised to never leave me.

He had taken his own life not long after that, unwilling wanting to cope with the memory, to live with the memory of what had happened that night. He asked me to talk with him and I had ignored him, not wanting to talk to him. I was scared that he would hate me for leaving him and then he had disappeared from school. Hours later, I learned that he had commit suicide.

I blamed myself with a passion so fierce that it hurt to even remember that he had even existed but I made myself endure. Time and time again, I would remember it. It was the beginning of my sea of secrets. It was the first of many lies and the first of a thousand kinds of hurt. Every day I worked to change what had happened. Some days I craved drugs, wanting to fall back into the ease of the kaleidoscope of colors. I never would though.

I had promised.

I sat up in the darkness of my room and rubbed my eyes. I didn’t turn on my light that was by my bedside but sat and waited for my eyes to adjust to the pitch black night. I closed my eyes but couldn’t tell when they were open or closed because the difference between the night and behind my eyelids was so slim.

With my eyes closed, I threw back the covers of my bed and sat on the edge of it with my feet dangling. I knew that I would probably step onto something if I got of the bed so remained sitting on it. I sat waiting for the memory of the dream to fade but it was all too real and refused to go easily.

My head dropped into my heads and I held it up. I rubbed my eyes but they hadn’t adjusted to the darkness of my room. There were only the basic shapes and the knowledge of where things usually were.

I leaned towards where the lamp was and felt my hand hit it. The crash afterward was loud enough to wake up the whole house but hardly anyone stirred. I stood and took the two steps towards the room light was and felt my hand touch the switch. I flicked it on and closed my eyes and the light streamed from the bulb. The pain behind my lids was only momentary as my eyes adjusted.

I made my way unsteadily towards the bathroom. A sickening feeling had entered my stomach and I felt the urge to puke. Once again, I heard voices in the kitchen but this time I didn’t even bother stopping to hear what they were saying. The feeling in my stomach was too awful to ignore so I went directly to the bathroom. I barely made it in time before the taste of salty, metal, entered my mouth. I leaned over the sink and spat but the contents that came out brought a scream out of my throat.

A fountain of blood leaked down my lips and into the sink as I stood at the small counter. My hands held the edges of the sink as I once again leaned down to spit.

I couldn’t stop the upwards flow from inside my stomach and it continued coming with a power that I had no control over. I hated the feeling of loss, losing the pieces of my sanity as it was dragged from my system.

The image in the mirror looked like the demon I had feared from my nightmares. My own face had become an unseen monster that destroyed my nights. I didn’t want to be this creature. I didn’t want to know that it was me who was destroying so much. I was ruining so much though and I was a monster.

My head was spinning and I could barely understand what was going on. I knew that I was going to collapse soon and nothing was going save me then. I was going to fall. I would lose myself to the darkness and the emptiness and nothing could pull me back out.

I could taste death on my lips and suddenly I knew what I wanted. I wanted to be with Trevor and I wanted to tell him how sorry I was. I wanted to beg him to forgive me. I wanted to tell him that I would give my life a thousand times over just to give him back what I had taken him.

I felt another scream coming up but I locked my lips closed. It hardly worked as blood forced them open and I puked again. I screamed, this time unstoppable against the muscles in my jaw. It was murder to hear it, the way that it pierced the silent air.

Footsteps came running out of Spencer’s room and up the stairs. I saw Ava immediately, suspecting that she and Tom had been busy in the kitchen again. It didn’t seem to bother me for in the face of death, nothing could.

I felt another crushing pain coming up from my chest and it hurt to breath. “Help,” I screamed in barely more than a whisper as my legs collapsed beneath me, almost as if my weight was too much to bear. I groaned and began shaking uncontrollably as the fluid leaked from my system, drop by drop. There was no escaping the pain, the shaking, or the loss of control.

“I’m so sorry, Trevor,” I said, even though I knew that there were people who could hear. That counted as the first time that I had spoken of him since the incident. My words were honest, the pain even more murderous than before. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered again, knowing that this might as well be the end of my life.

Was this the final end, the final death when I learned that I would never wake up again? It was black and certain eeriness lurked nearby. It was cold, like an evil spell had been cast overtop and nothing had been capable of bringing it out of the shadow. This was it then.

Giving up, a cold dread filled me and yet so did a sense of peace that I hadn’t experienced in years. So, that really was what it felt like to die. I closed my eyes, letting the darkness swallow me.

Dreams claimed me, one after another and I was lost to their control. I had no way to escape, no way to pinch myself and wake up. There was only their grasp, ripping my wrists as I tried to escape.

Could loss bring more pain? He who held me back grasped at my wrists. The impossible grip seemed to never let go. Blood ran from my wrists where the hands seized me. The black nails dug deeper, my crimson blood already beginning to dry as it fell through the air. As I screamed in the night, I only felt the hands tighten their grip upon my wrists. I fought harder but to no avail. I knew it was pointless.

Memories slammed me almost harder than the nightmares of there being no way to escape. They hit with a force so strong that it made me want to fade back into Teresa’s overwhelmingly tempting shoes.

I missed him, I missed Trevor. And so the dreams continued, many memories and flashbacks of the times we had spent together, just talking about nothing. They came, hitting with a force stronger that the winds that knocked down worlds, more powerful than the temptation of my mother’s shoes. The memories were strong, like an avalanche of snow, crashing down upon me and I had no escape.

Hours had passed and I found my eyes opening, even though I had decided that that was my last day. I didn’t want to wake up or rise to see another sun shine.

“Ash,” he said and his voice whispered close to my ear. “Come back, Ash, you can’t leave me here.” His voice was lathered in a pain that I had never heard before. Drawn deeper into the empty blackness of the pool, I held onto his voice.

“Trevor,” I whispered, quiet and hopeful. “Trevor, I’m so sorry.” I wanted to see him, to tell him the truth and show him how I had changed, to show him how I had followed his advice and come clean. I lifted out of the blackness, seeing two eyes staring at me, feeling a hand in mine.

He dropped it suddenly, embarrassed to be caught holding my hand. His eyes lowered to the ground and he rose as if to leave.

I reached out, taking is hand again. “Don’t leave me,” I told him, almost begging. “I’m sorry, Trevor,” I told him over and over again, begging that he understand how honest I was being.

“It’s alright,” he told me, smiling. Kyle looked into my eyes. It felt like it had been years since I saw those eyes smiling, so beautiful and perfect. If I thought my dreams were amazing, next to his real smile, they were nothing. They were fickle.

“I’m sorry, Kyle,” I whispered, “I thought you were someone else.” I felt embarrassed, heat rising in my cheeks. I had called him Trevor, Trevor who I had killed. “Why are you here?” I questioned him. He shouldn’t have been the one I woke up to see.

He shook his head, his eyes becoming part of some distant memory. “My mom is the head doctor here and so I end up hanging out a lot, helping her. She wants me to follow in her footsteps.” His eyes sparkled, wildly undeniably beautiful. “My turn,” he said with a smile. “How are you?” He questioned, his eyes full of hope, hope that perhaps I had made it through the storm. He ran his hand through dark hair, nervously wondering what my answer might be. It was hard, seeing the underlying worry in his brown eyes.

Carefully, I chose my words with specific caution. I knew that to him I could not lie, could not tell him something that was not so. “It depends…” I replied, letting my voice trail off.

His eye brows pulled together into a line of frustration as he contemplated the answer he would give me in return. His hand dropped from his nearly black hair down to his side. “What does it depend on?”

I gave a small smile, knowing the answer I would give. I knew the words well, almost as if they had been rehearsed. “It depends on whether you want me to tell you the truth or not.” The smile faded, all remaining the words.

Hung carefully as my replies were, he said no more than one single word. “Truth,” he told me, his eye brows relaxing into their regular position above his eyes. He looked deep into my eyes, his expression unreadable.

Heart suddenly beating even faster, I looked directly into his eyes. There was no going back, no lying my way out. “No,” I whispered, my voice agonizingly weak, “I’m not okay, never can be okay. I feel useless, like I’ve failed.” I didn’t want to take back the truth.

“Promise me the truth; do you cut your wrists?” His expression changed to something more than worry; it became desperation for the truth, the need to know. His eyes were lit up, a fire that burned strong.

“I…” my voice faded and I could do nothing more that hold out my arm for him to pull up my sleeves and see. Taking my arms, he pulled them up. Eyes locking on the scars, I knew he was the fresh wounds, too. His fingers traced them, his touch surprisingly gently. “Don’t do this anymore,” he whispered, voice saddened by my actions. “You have to promise me this.” He looked down at the bloody red cuts on my wrists, fingers softly tracing the scars, kindly stoking the wounds. “Promise me, Ash, promise me. “It was not a question, not a request, but an order he wanted me to follow. His infinite brown eyes were sad, worried what I might say.

My eyes were full of tears as I replied, “I can’t promise that. I can’t say that I won’t, because I will. I have to, Kyle, need to. It’s not a matter of just stopping; it reminds me I’m still alive, it is understanding my escape and knowing how to get away from the pain. It’s more than just blood; it is poison, the words they say, the thoughts in my head, the tears I cannot cry, the dreams that always end to find reality in consciousness.” I wanted to quickly pull my arm out of his grasp but he wouldn’t let me go. There were things in my past that I was ashamed of, things that still seemed to drag on, like the scars from cutting and the power its temptation still had over me.

“Tell me something, Ash, you called me Trevor,” he continued, without pausing. It was almost as if he were attempting to stop from backing out of saying something. “Who is Trevor?”

Trevor! And then there was the pain again, hurting me on the inside, tearing me to shreds. It hurt and I was still alive to experience it. I was still alive with the cold feeling of loss melting over my soul. The tears had come, persistent with the pain that came from the days that passed without him. Loneliness was found in the shallow pool where his words were supposed to fit, perfect like the pieces of a puzzle. Fitting together in harmony, all that was left to do was put them into place, pieces interlocking ideally. Cold nights and hours went by, the clock ticking ever so steadily as they counted the moments that I had been without him by my side.

No matter how painful, I had to explain this. I needed to tell Kyle who Trevor was. I needed to tell him. He had been the one person who told me to be better than what I was.

“Trevor,” I began, “saved my life.” This would be one of the hardest tasks to complete for there was no way to do justice for what Trevor had done for me. I could never repay him, never give him back what I had taken, never love him the way he loved me. For that reason and that reason alone, tears pooled in my eyes and drizzled down my cheeks.

“Back when we were both younger, before we even knew each other, before I even moved to Easthunt, I used to do drugs. I hung out in the wrong crowd and did things that shamed me. When I began to follow in the footsteps of Teresa, my mother, Trevor came and took me away. He showed me that there could be love even in a word of hate. A small bit of happiness means more than a lifetime of hate and sadness, so much more. Trevor showed me how to be right when everything went wrong.”

I didn’t want to continue. It hurt, reliving who Trevor had been. It was painful to see the way he had looked at me and smiled. I didn’t want to go back to where he had been everything and I didn’t want to see how I had let him die.

“What happened to him?” I heard Kyle asking me questions but I didn’t want to listen. I didn’t want to have to answer. I didn’t want to Kyle to think of me differently because of my past actions.

I continued, regardless of his insistent questions. “I went to buy some more drugs from the dealer but I didn’t have enough money. He wouldn’t give me what I wanted for only a few dollars cheaper so he came after me. Trevor put himself in front of me and I let him pay the price for my addiction. He was beat so badly that he had to get major surgery. He lost his sports ability and commit suicide not to long after that. I lost the one and only person who ever cared about me that night.”

Tears filled my eyes and continued to come, even when I begged them to stop. They were relentless in their path. I was powerless against their strength. They welled in my eyes, finding a way through the guards that had been set in place the moment I lost Trevor.

Kyle stood and left the small room, leaving me to my tears and my pain. He didn’t even glance back, ashamed to be near to me. I couldn’t blame him for leaving me to die. I couldn’t blame anyone for hating me.

Could I have made is possible to win an impossible fight? I didn’t know if it could. Could loss have brought more pain or was that just the beginning of a new even harsher pain? To that, I already knew the answer. Would I ever go back to using drugs? Could I ever go back to the days when I had nothing but the colors and the emptiness? Would Kyle ever come back?

Trevor had lost his ability to play sports and he had been told that he would never be able to play with regular teens again. He had commit suicide only a few weeks after that, having nothing but the loneliness and emptiness of his inability. Without him I was nothing. I was just one lonelier girl searching for a soul, someone to love, somebody to hold on to. He was there when the rest of the world had walked out and when he had needed me, I had walked out on him.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered to more than just Kyle. It was to Trevor, to my father, my mother, Spencer, the family I had let down. I was sorry, completely totally sorry for the actions of my past. I apologized for more than just the hurt I had caused; I came clean, begging for the forgiveness of those who I had harmed.

I couldn’t stop the tears once they had begun to flow. It was impossible and they fell, freely and painfully. I couldn’t breathe and it hurt to even know that I was alive. It was impossible to forgive myself for what happened to Trevor.

He had commit suicide only days after the incident and I had ignored him when he tried to talk to me. I just didn’t want to face him, face the consequences of leaving him to pay. I could never be okay after that. It was one thing in my life that was completely unattainable.

There were tears that clung to my lashes in sad silence. It had dawned on me, in the quiet empty of loneliness, that I had no desire to remain alive and that I had no wish to see morning come. I didn’t want to stand and face another day when the comfort of my own room was enough. Why would I want to leave? There was nothing for me out there, nothing I loved or wanted to see.

As unreachable as my sense of peace was, forgiveness from Trevor was even farther. Soon enough, it would be just as far away with Kyle. Never again would I have a friend like Trevor or Kyle because of the terrible mistakes I had made in my past.

There was no way to forget what I had done, no way to escape to truth. I got tired of believing that everything would be okay. I gave up on hoping for love and joy to come knocking on my door.

People changed and forever became never. I lost people I never thought I would. Every once in a while, someone would see past my smile and knew that inside I was dying. There was no way to deny the truth and no way to pretend that it wasn’t so.

Deep down inside there was a broken heart that only I knew was there. I had felt its burden for too many times and once again experienced the pain. I remembered the way that it hurt and every movement seemed to make it ache in some way or another.

If I really loved him, I would have set him free. I wouldn’t have let him come after me. And he really loved me and so didn’t listen.

Trevor’s brown eyes sparked once. Just the way he smiled made him seem even more amazing. He was as amazing as he seemed, and even more so when I learned more about him.

Guilt pulled my insides apart and I found it hard to believe that I had even done something as foolish as letting my only friend take the blame and not listening to him when he tried to talk to me. There was no way to apologize, to take back what I did.

The way he could pull off the most amazing feat and make it look like it was nothing always made my heart race and suddenly he wasn’t there to do that anymore. He wasn’t around to win the crowd.

Somewhere inside, I had wondered how he felt but I knew he would hate me. I mutilated the one thing he was good at. I destroyed his very future and I couldn’t even bring myself to talk to him and tell him that I was sorry.

His fingers would run through his thick brown hair and he looked intense as he prepared for the moment when the game would begin and he was off doing what he loved. There was no denying that he had talent and that he was naturally able to know what to do.

I knew what broken heart felt like but I couldn’t imagine what he felt like; maybe shattered glass that someone he thought he trusted had gone and broken. There were no words to describe it.

There had been a knock at the door of Teresa’s little apartment and I closed my eyes, letting myself cry. I never thought that I would ever want to die but I guess that was suicide. Forgive sounded good but I didn’t think he could. I destroyed all he had. I took away his everything.

The knock had continued, relentless against my trying to block it out. Why couldn’t I just be left alone? I couldn’t run away from what I had done and I couldn’t make it better. When I destroyed him, some part of me was taken down with him. Some part of me broke off and fell with him.

I couldn’t get that piece back nor could I replace that glass I broke. Gone and shattered forever, they both evaporated like a small gust of wind that disappeared. Without a trace, they no longer existed. Dull and broken, those eyes had spoken. I couldn’t have apologized; he had hated me. There was nothing I could have done.

The knocking had stopped and footsteps walked away. I remembered opening the door a crack to see his back turned and him walking away from me. Trevor had taken his own life that night. They found him, tears warm in his eyes, his broken heart barely beating. He had lost too much blood to be saved and then he had just faded. It was almost as if he had given up on life.

They said that no one had ever cried that hard. They had never seen so much hurt in anyone’s eyes. His parents had called me, asking me to come and see him and when I had gotten there, he was already gone.

He had left a small note for me though, written in his scrawl. It had said very little but it remained my inspiration for life to continue. He was the main reason that I had found myself still alive when the tears had passed.

I had thought of him often since that day and there wasn’t a thing that I didn’t regret. I had come clean after that, leaving every trace of the drugs in the casket that Trevor was buried in. I had left it all behind and never even told Spencer about it. He was only a young child, barely able to walk.

I remembered the day well, when I had come back. Tears were streaming down my cheeks and I didn’t even bother to try and wipe them away. I just let them fall. Spencer had been crying in the other room and I had walked in, promising to myself that I would never ever let him turn out to be like me.

I would never let him fall into the darkness and the grasps of drugs or smoking. I would never let him know what it felt like to lose the whole world. And so, I had spent every waking minute since then protecting him. Sometimes, he needed to fight his own battles though and so I let him. He needed to get hurt in order to grow. I thought I had done a pretty good job with him, letting him turn into a respectable fourteen year old.

I smiled, remembering every moment I had ever spent with him, showing him how to move one foot after the next. I showed him how to do his math, taught him how to add and subtract.

I couldn’t have asked for anything more in a brother. He had become one of the best people I had ever known and I would not shame him by letting him know who I had been. I would not push him away like I had Kyle.

Inevitable as the time coming to pass, the doctors came to do their tests on me, giving me chest x-rays, blood tests, CT scans, and an MRI of my head. It was weird, the way the machines moved around my body and the way the doctor looked at everything with detail.

Fading like the lights, I fell into another dream, another nightmare from which there was no way to ever escape. I could not get away and I could not pinch myself awake for I was locked with handcuffs. They held so tight that it felt like my wrists would break under the pressure.

I did not want to think of the pain that held me down. I did not want to feel all of the loss that crashed over me, wave by wave, swallowing me up in its exhausting size. I could think of nothing else as the sea continued to smash me farther into the ground.

Could anyone forgive and forget if I told them I lived with regret? I could never forgive myself for the actions of my past and I could never forget what I had done. I despised the person inside me who had destroyed the little piece of love that remained.

What monster? So many times I had wanted to ask that question. So much more than anything I had ever experienced, the curiosity had a flame that burned with a wild power. I wanted to ask but I didn’t want the answer to be what it was.

I knew the answer. I knew the answer all too well but I kept asking in case the monster changed. I knew it wouldn’t though and no matter how many times I asked or how much I wanted it, things would never change.

I would always be the demon the destroyed so much. I would always be the one that stole so much from a person and gave nothing but anger and dark thoughts in return. I was the demon and I was the darkness and no matter how much effort was put into changing that, it would always be so.

I didn’t want to be who I was so I asked just one simple question: What demon?

Could anyone forgive me for hate if I told them that I tried to love? I could forgive myself for hate because I had learned to love. I had been shown by the person whose life I had taken. Kyle had been the one to teach me again.

Could Spencer forgive me for failure if I told him how hard I tried? I had done my best, showing how to live his life and be a good person. He was becoming more and more like me though and that was where I had failed.

Could Trevor forgive me for changing if I told him what had happened? He knew that I would change and he knew that inside me was a girl just trying to survive the day. He had showed me that I could live.

Could Teresa forgive my acting if I told her why I faked? Could she forgive my lies if I told her the truth? Would she understand my actions?

Could anyone forgive my life if I told them how sorry I was? I was sorry, for all the pain and all the hurt that I had caused. There was no way to take back what I had done to everyone who had ever cared about me and everyone who I had ever cared about.

Suddenly there was a knock outside of the door and Kyle appeared. His eyes sprinkled little bits of light into the room and suddenly it seemed really bright.

“Hey,” he whispered quietly. His tone apologized and I knew that he was sorry for leaving me alone. “I’m sorry,” he said, though it wasn’t necessary.

I nodded, knowing that he really was sorry. “It’s okay. I understand why.” I smiled, not even knowing the reason. It just came, easily as the lies I told Teresa and acting like it was all okay when nothing seemed to be going right.

“I’m sorry to hear about your friend, too,” He said, honest sadness in his voice. I could tell that it hurt him to know what I had done.

Even upon learning that I had not pushed Kyle away, I knew that inside I would always be a demon, ruining things. Trevor should never have had to see me out of the storm. He had taken his own life because of me.

“I’m sorry, Kyle. I’ve done so much in my life that I regret. There is so much more that not even you could dare to try and understand. There are things that are so far in my past that even I – I who has carried out those actions – can barely remember them. I would change my life if I could.” I told him, not a word of a lie.

“Ash,” he whispered, and for the first time I didn’t want to hear what he had to say. “You are an angel, an angel without her wings, an angel who has fallen from the sky, but an angel you are. There are things that you may have done and things that you may still do, but look at your family. Look at Spencer and Clayton. Without you, they wouldn’t have even been half the people they are now. You fear to take back those wings that you lost and you fear to fly again.” He smiled kindly, his entire face lighting up as if were amazing that he had just said those words. His eyes sparkled and the corners of his lips pulled up. He ran his hand through his dark hair, rising to a stand. “I need to go now, though. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

He left, giving a slight wave as he walked out the door. A sigh escaped my lips and for a moment I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t help but hurt. I felt the air leaving my lungs in a sigh. I felt my heart beat faster when I saw him and I knew that it wouldn’t slow until long after he had left. I died when I heard his voice but the silence afterwards was the worst. He was not there to fill the emptiness of the air. My hands still found a way of quivering long after he had left.

I felt the sting of tears in my eyes, thinking of the way he spoke to me. I didn’t want to cry but I could feel the water coming. I felt the way it hurt my heart, the way it ached. It was inevitable, forever there, forever hurting.

It was simple; I missed him.

Even when I hadn’t seen him in days, he found a way to come crawling back into my mind. I thought of him and wondered if he was thinking of me. Every once in a while, I would dream of him and it would hurt. It would break my heart again.

I shook, my body uncontrolled by the way he made me feel. I could not help but quiver. What might have happened? There was no way to explain how I felt. I couldn’t control my actions and my hands shook. I couldn’t stop the way he made me feel.

It was impossible.

He made my world go around, beautiful and perfect in ways that no one else could have ever made me feel. He was the one that could make my world spin with just a smile. He did more than that; he brought me to life by just existing and he made me feel again.

He was my life.

He was all that held me to that life and I found that if I let him go, I would fall into the darkness. He was the light and I had to cling to that or be pulled into the emptiness.

Upon his leaving, I thought back to what he had said. Maybe he was right, that I had lost my wings and feared to take to the sky. The dreams would come to pass and eventually reality would overtake the escape, dragging me back into the shadows from which there was no escape. Tortured, there had been no running from the loneliness that followed so closely at my heels. No matter what my speed, the hallow void in my chest remained. What good was it to run when forever would I be followed? I had accepted the feeling, had believed it to be eternal. There was no way through the torture of the lies that fogged the way.

Screaming for help, I had lost my grip and fell into the unknown, where there was no hope to get away, not chance of escape. The light above me faded and without my wings I couldn’t climb back to it. Without my wings I couldn’t fly. The last light had gone and all that remained was a lonely wingless angel.

I breathed deeply, knowing that even in the darkness that there was always light. There was light even in the darkness, there was a light that I hadn’t seen before and it made me smile, knowing that it was there for me.