[ - ]
Table of Contents [Report This]
Printer Chapter or Story Microsoft Word Chapter or Story
- Text Size +
You're here, aren't you?

It's like I can feel you. I keep forgetting that I can't just reach out and touch you.

Between that bird at the Canyon and Bree asking me about ghosts and stuff earlier tonight - it's like you're right here, travelling with us. I know that's impossible, though. You wouldn't have waited this long to come back. You would've come the moment you died.

I can still feel that moment in my heart when I think about it. The worst moment of my life, when I opened the door to help you get out and instead of cracking a joke or smiling at me, your body just slumped forward, the seatbelt the only thing holding you in. Leighanne's scream made my hair stand on end all up and down my arm and the goose bumps felt like carpet fiber was pressing up from inside my skin, trying to escape my body. It was like being burned in Hell fire from the inside out. And Kevin was there - I don't even know where he came from - and my hands couldn't seem to stop trying to shake you, to wake you up, and then there was Amanda and... Well, it's really a blur of color and images, like a flash bulp going on and off in the middle of a pitch black darkness.

I remember feeling the gravel under my knees and this crawling, creeping, nauseating emotion that originated somewhere around my small intestine. It seemed to draw upward, pull every organ of my body towards my mouth like vomit, and clench in a knot - a giant cramp - right behind my throat. I remember the sensation of choking and forgetting how to breathe and Amanda's fingernails clamping to my scalp, holding me still, trying to tether me, to comfort me.

What I wouldn't give to feel that now - her hands on my head, comforting me.

What I wouldn't give to rewind every part of that night, to get back to the moments when breath was still entering and exiting your body in a rhythm. What I wouldn't give to turn back time and tell you not to stop inhaling and exhaling, to tell you to just keep on breathing.

Just keep breathing.

Maybe that's why you came back - to remind me the same thing?

That is, if you're here at all.