Page 1 of Haunt Me

I see myself from above.

It’s as if I’m floating above the stage, looking down at my wet, twisted body.

On the stage, I look small. The silver chains around my neck reflect the sparkling spotlights, and the purple highlights on my hair look cheap and ridiculous, even though it took two hours and a team of professionals to put them there.

Rain is pouring on me, and I am on my knees in front of thousands of my fans.

I look pathetic, broken.

Maybe for the first time, I see myself for what I really am. What I have become. This broken person.

That is the moment I make a promise to myself: Never again. I will never find myself in this position again. I will do whatever it takes to make my life worth something. To make it a life worth living. To be able to stand tall, to endure.

I’ll never again fall to my knees except in gratitude and victory.

I’ll change everything that needs changing in order never to be the person I was tonight. I know I will leave this stage a changed man. I can already feel the shift; it is enormous.

The old Issy Woo needs to go. And good riddance.

now

Athens

one

“Isaiah, you’re up!” someone screams—it’s Skye. I didn’t recognize his voice at first because it’s so high-pitched and panicky.

“Leave me alone,” I murmur, but Eden is already pushing me towards the steps.

“You need to get back up there,” she tells me and without a second thought, I obey.

I take her hand and hold it so tightly she has to follow me up on the stage, but she stops and tries to let go as we are about to leave the shadows and step into the lights. Jude’s guitar solo is ending, the rain is still going strong, and every single phone in the audience is angled to capture me on a livestream as I emerge.

“Go on,” Eden tells me urgently. “Isaiah, go.”

I turn around. If going on stage means I have to let go of her hand, I’m not going. She will leave the minute I let her go. She will leave me again.

I won’t survive this time, I just know it.

“Hit me,” I tell her suddenly. “Right now, in front of everybody. I need them to see that I deserve it.”

A sound that resembles the echo of a giggle bubbles out of her lips. It takes me back years ago, to the woods. Back then, I thought her laughter had been real. Maybe it had been. I just didn’t know how many tears it had to make up for.

“I’m not the hitting type,” she says. “Although my therapist says I might have turned out completely differently, considering how I grew up. But I didn’t. I grew into this,” she points to herself, “because of you.” She points to me.

I shudder so violently I get dizzy.

“Sorry,” she says, “for reminding you.”

“If you apologize to me again, I’ll lose it.”

“You know,” Eden says, “when it got really bad and your life got destroyed, I used to I wish I had never met you in the first place. These past weeks I wished I had never met youagain. It was just… so wrong. On every level.”

I just stare at her. I don’t think I heard her right.

She can’t have just said what I think she did.

I open my mouth to say her name, but nothing comes out.

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