Page 18 of Haunt Me

“I thought I was going to hell,” she replies and my eyes bulge.She what? Is she kidding?She shrugs. “It’s true, I genuinely did,” she says, as if she can read my mind.

How does she do that?

“Oh.”

I don’t quite know what to say.

“Yeah.” She pushes a large leaf around with the tip of her boot. “I thought it would be instant, you know? The minute I did the thing I wasn’t supposed to do… Whoosh!” She makes a gesture, pointing to the earth. “I’d be in hell. But it turns out I was wrong.” Her eyes meet mine and my breath catches. They are big and brown, and as the sun’s rays reflect off them, they seem to be made of dark gold. “I wasn’t going to hell. I was just running away from it.”

I take a step closer. “I know exactly how that feels.”

“You do?” she doesn’t get up. I am standing so close, I could reach out and grab the end of her braid. I could go on one knee in front of her and pull her close to me by it. And once our faces were on the same level, I could…

“Who knew hell would be in Amherst, of all places,” she murmurs. Again, it’s not a question. Just a really cool observation. Not to mention a pretty accurate one.

“Emily Dickinson lived here,” I blurt out.James would be so proud.“Did you know—of course you knew that,” I interrupt my own sentence, stumbling over my words in one of my smoothest moves yet, if I do say so myself. “Every kid within a fifty mile radius has been taught her poems to death. School trips—forced to memorize…”

“Hope is the thing with feathers,” she starts.

“…that nestles in the soul,” I finish, and then I turn red.

“Hey, you know it!” Her eyes light up and I swear, I forget how to exist.

Her entire face is transformed.

“Yeah,” I look down, too embarrassed by the fact that one, I am quoting Emily freaking Dickinson to this random girl I only just met, and two, she absolutely loved it. “Doesn’t everyone?”

She snorts and I relax a little. “I would not be the right person to ask that.”

“You… what?” Do I sound as stupid as I feel? Probably worse. My brain has turned to mush.

“She lived her whole life in a room,” Eden says, her eyes taking on a far-off look. “Imagine that… A whole life in a single room.”

She looks at her watch. It’s too big for her wrist, and it looks like a man’s watch. It’s probably her dad’s. A wave of grief hits me so hard it nearly knocks me off my feet. It’s not the first time this has happened to me, but it’s the first time that I forgot. I forgot he’s gone. It was just for a few seconds, while we were quoting Emily Dickinson, but it happened.

Am I allowed to forget, even for a second? I can’t make up my mind, but it doesn’t matter, because suddenly there is not enough air to breathe. I am drowning.

I am drowning in guilt far more than I am drowning in pain. But it doesn’t matter; it’s still drowning.

“Hey, where did you go?” her voice brings me back.

I stumble, and her arm flashes out to catch me. She only touches my sleeve, but it’s enough for the same shot of electricity to zap through me. The same thing that happened yesterday. What is up with that?

I tug my sleeve free, and I think it’s a smooth and imperceptive little gesture, but she notices. The transformation is instant, and it is complete. She makes herself smally at once, shoulders hunched, that haunted look back on her face.

I swallow a curse and kneel down on the leaves next to her.

“Just thinking of all the studying I have to do,” I say casually as if an entire war isn’t happening inside me. Erupting between us. “And I don’t want to do it.”

“I know exactly how you feel,” she says, voice back to her sarcastic monotone.

“Which school do you go to?” I ask her.

She shrugs. “Homeschooled,” she replies. “You’d think it would be fun, but…”

“Hell?” I ask, hoping for that smile again.

It does not come. She just looks at me, her gaze serious and examining. I can’t look away from those eyes.

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