And here I thought work would help me keep my mind off it all.
Alli simply smiles a forgiving smile at me, something I know I don’t deserve, and then she changes the subject to something that I’m not sure is better or worse.
“I might have heard something that might help you take your mind off things,” she says quietly.
I close my eyes for a brief second to get a hold of myself before giving her my attention.
She reaches over to grab the glass out of my hand and sets it down gently as if to tell me that I need to prepare myself for what she's about to say; not wanting me to cause another scene. She pulls my hands into hers as she looks up at me, slow and intentional with her words.
"He's back."
Something in me tightens. Stretches and folds. Like someone is double tying a knot in my core, then looping and yanking it for a third time.
"How do you know?" I ask, not even bothering to pretend like I don't know exactly who she's talking about.
She lets go of my hands and snatches the receipt that was printed for the table she’s supposed to be tending to. She starts filling up a cup with ice as she continues her conversation with me.
"Last I heard, he was in prison, right?" I nod my head, having heard that same rumor but never really knowing if it was true or not. "Well, I guess he's out now, and supposedly he'll be in the Pines this weekend." I turn and brace myself against the bar, gripping the edges of the glossy top while Alli continues making drinks.
The threat of anxiety now strangles me.
The subject of my heart’s darkest desire.
"It's just gossip," I say. But I realize I'm only trying to convince myself more than I'm informing her of a fact.
He can't be . . . back.He can't be.
But also, why would she think I care? As far as I'm concerned, no one knew about us. We'd done our best to keep it a secret, and I certainly didn't tell Alli about it. But she's bringing it up to me as if she knows the news would shatter me, so she has to have some kind of inclination.
Maybe we weren’t as careful as we thought we were, but I guess none of it would have even mattered now.
"Might be gossip, but it might also be true." She shrugs her shoulders at me. "I also heard he's gotten, like, ten times hotter. I mean don't get me wrong, Jensen is gorgeous, but not climb-him-like-a-tree hot, you know?" I can tell she doesn't actually expect a response from me with her attempt at joking, only wanting to lighten the mood which truly doesn’t work.
If it’s true, and he is back, maybe that’s enough reason for me to stay off the mountain in itself. But maybe . . . it might make me want to go even more.
3
OLIVIA
“You can't see me, but I had to come back. Don't you know why?” — Curt Duncan, When a Stranger Calls (1979)
I'm trapped; my foot is jammed in . . . a bear trap? Or, at least, I think it’s a bear trap. All I know is that sharp pain radiates up my leg, slicing through my body with a fear I’m not used to feeling and in the dead of darkness, I can’t make out the cause.
But I know that I’m trapped, standing at the edge of the cliff with my arms spread out wide, plagued by something that is telling me that I need to stay here and wait for the inevitable death that I deserve. But I don’t want to die, do I? And I don’t really deserve it.
Maybe that’s why I came here in the first place. To decide whether or not I want to dance with the beauty of death or to test my fate with the constricting arms of life. Which one sounds more enticing?
The icy breeze from the wind clashes against the snowflakes glittering from the loured sky and I can feel the trickle of blood crawling down my ankle as I try to quiet my whimpered breathing, desperate to listen to my surroundings. Or maybe it’s a spider crawlingup my leg or loose vines that whisper against my skin. But the more concerning issue is that I feel my chest tightening; I can't breathe. It's like someone punched a hole straight through to my sternum and is forcefully clamping all of my organs, painfully fusing them together as one.
I'm going to die, I think to myself. But before I know it, the trap at my feet is loose. I look down to make sure I'm not too injured to run, but I gasp at the revelation. There's no trap. My feet are free of blood and there’s no sign of anything even capable of capturing me and rendering me frozen. But I know I felt the sting of sharp claws;somethingwas holding me here. And I wanted to let it take me, to end my life.
I shake my head, deciding that I can't spend too much time inspecting the hallucination I seem to be having, deciding to take off in a sprint but as soon as I gain any kind of traction from the slippery surface of the snow-covered rocks beneath me, a twig snaps right at the same time as a scream pierces through the sky. The sheer desperation of it reverberates off the trunks of the towering pine trees but I can't tell where it's coming from. Is it coming from around me? From inside me? I feel like the terrorizing sound of the scream alone is causing me to slip backward; falling. So I swing my arms around me to try to regain my balance but it feels like a force I’ve never known. I feel tears fall and anger spread while desperation clings to me.
It’s mere seconds before I sense the warmth of a shadow starting to tower over me and I can’t discern whether or not it’s forged with an eager will to save me from whatever is trying to kill me or if it’s the verything that is actually trying to kill me. But before I know it, I’m shoved violently causing my descent off the cliff’s edge.
I fall and tumble, the ground scraping my skin as I roll down the hill. I feel my head hit the ground every time I complete a new roll and then…
I wake up.
