Chapter 16

Pre-read note: There is only one section to this chapter. I personally like the last line but I'm not sure if it's clear what I mean. Please let me know what you think :) So here is 1,060 words of my 35,045. :D

Chapter sixteen (pg. 49 for my reference):

It took all my energy to pull myself out of bed. I looked at the calendar, with the numbers printed ever so neatly. It had been a week since I’d come to this school, a bit longer since I’d come to this place. I looked at it, wondering if it would ever end. On earth, you could value the day, since you knew it could be your last. Could you value the day here the same way; could you die here?

When I finally looked at the time, I noticed I was late. I threw on the first clothes I saw, grabbed my bag while stuffing homework into it, snatched a hairbrush and was out the door in fifteen.

I brushed my hair on the way to class. Then I brushed it again during lunch, to kill time. During Biology I braided it, so I wouldn’t look up and see Amy and Beth, sitting in a circle with the other girls whose names I used to know, whispering.

I couldn’t help but think they were talking about me.

My hair was perfect by the time the last bell rang. It probably never wanted to see a hairbrush again in its life, or afterlife, whatever this was.

While I was walking back to the residence, pulling my hood up against the darkening skies, I noticed I had texts on my phone.

Message 11:37am

Fr: Jake

Can i call u? I think we should talk.

Message 11:56am

Fr: Jake

Maybe u could call me?

Message 1:13pm

Fr: Jake

I will be by to pick u up at 4.

Message 2:44pm

Message 3:04

Fr: Jake

Please txt me back.

I flipped my phone open, speed dialling his number.

When he answered, I jumped, “Jake? Is something wrong?”

“Oh, no,” he said, although his voice sounded nervous, “I just need to make something clear.”

“What?”

“I’ll tell you in person. Is four ok?”

“Yes, I’ll be waiting in the parking lot.”

I hung up and ran all the way to my room. The stress I’d felt all day had disappeared, but it had been replaced with something much worse.

I waited in the cold, sitting on the curb of the parking lot. The temperature kept dropping by the minute. Soon I wasn’t wondering if it would rain, rather I thought it might snow.

Jake finally pulled up beside me in his sleek car. I jumped right in and put my hands right on the radiators.

“Cold?”

I never understood how men never seemed to get cold. They would go around in shorts while I shivered in a sweater. Jake smiled at me, turning the heat up and pulling out into traffic.

“What was it that you wanted to tell me?”

His smile disappeared. “I think we should wait ‘til we get to the beach.”

“We’re going to the beach? In this weather?”

“Yeah,” he glanced over at me, pressed up against the radiator in front of me, “I have blankets in the back.”

The ride there seemed longer than usual. He steered with no expression, hands rigid on the wheel. When the ocean finally came into view as we pulled up to the dunes, it didn’t have its usual beauty. The dark skies had eaten the water up, so it was one wall of angry gray eating away at the rest of the world.

As soon as we sat in the dull sand, the rain started. First a mist, it grew into a steady pour.

Normally, I could see this being comical. We could run a back to the car, laughing. Instead, Jake got up, looked over the ocean and said, “Let’s go.”

We sat in the car. He turned the heat back on for me. I wanted to turn the radio on to break the silence, but didn’t want to shatter anything by moving.

Finally he made eye contact. The soft gaze I remember from only yesterday was now much deeper, colder.

“I don’t want to say this, but I’ve though it through and I, I hope you understand.” He rushed through words.

“What?”

“We can’t be together, not in the way we were yesterday. There are strict rules in this world, rules we have to follow, and one of them prohibits relationships between Guiders and New Wings.” Now he was speaking faster, adding hand gestures. “I want to say yes; I want us to take things further. I wish we could; I really wish we could. But the punishment, I don’t even know what it would be, but I’m sure it would be terrible. We probably could never see each other again. I can’t stand that idea.”

He paused, his hand freezing in mid-air. Slowly, he reached over, tucking a strand of hair that had escaped my ponytail behind my ear. “I’m sorry.”

Of course, he knew nothing of anything that was happening back at school. He didn’t know he was cutting the one thing I was holding on to for dear life.

“Oh” was all I could manage.

“We are still Guider and New Wings. We’ll still see each other, hang out. We’ll just pretend the other day didn’t happen.”

We sat in silence. When he eventually realized I had nothing else to say, he started the engine.

The air in the car seemed to grow thicker and thicker as we started back towards school. I wanted to stick my head out the window, like one of those dogs whose tongues are too long. I wanted the cold and rain on my face – so maybe I could feel something.

Something, anything, anything at all. Jake was so composed, and to him, so was I. But I was composed because I felt that if I were to allow the smallest, thinnest crack in my shell of composition, it would only begin the crumbling of everything. Me, Jake, the car, the road, this world. Even if I breathed the suffocating air too fast, shed a tear, cracked the window – something would break.

When he pulled up in front of the school and attempted a cheerful, normal goodbye, I mimed everything back. But as soon as I was out of that car and I could breathe again, the tears started to stream and the cracks started to fracture my shell.

Thank God for the rain, thank God for the hell He’d put me in.