Page 224 of Haunt Me

She thinks a little. Then she says:

“Sinful.”

I close my eyes.

“Ashamed,” she adds.

“No, Eden, please, no.”

“Wrong.”

I think that is the moment the real fear sets in. The fear that we are not going to make it.

The Elliot sisters chat room

Eden:

I’m not going to send this to you anyway, so here goes:

I am falling behind in school. A lot. I can’t study, I can’t keep my grades up, I just… can’t. They are all so kind here.

They’ve offered me a year off, but that’s not the point. I wanted to prove myself, this was my chance. Instead, I failed. I failed Isaiah too. A fan recognized him the other day and asked for an autograph or something completely innocent like that, and I almost had a heart attack. I thought this was it, that they would discover who I was and my story would be all over the news again.

That’s where my brain went.

And my heart, which is ruined, went bonkers.

What if I’m messed up for life? What if it turns out I’m not safe?

One night, I saw the silhouette of a random person down the hallway. It was dark, and instinctively I thought it was Solomon, coming to get me. I forget that he’s dead sometimes.

My mind went directly to a weapon. Anything to defend myself with.

The minute I realized it couldn’t possibly be him, I got so scared. Why did I think of defending myself like that? Why did my brain go there? What if, deep down, I am capable of doing the things he did? What if he made me like himself? He raised me, all by himself. For years.For years.What if it’s too late to save me?

What if Isaiah is bringing back these memories? What if his very presence is triggering them? What then?

*message deleted*

forty-one

“Don’t do this, Eden.” I am shaking.

The world’s bottom is dropping out from underneath me and I’m falling and falling. And falling.

“Why are you here, Zay?” Eden asks me.

“Because I can’t breathe without you,” I reply.

She smiles, but it’s the wrong kind of smile.

“You flew here from Europe in the middle of work, a new release, a tour… It’s like you need to make up for lost time.”

“I do need to make up for a lot of things, I told you this.”

“It’s not your job, Isaiah. My life was stolen from me, but the responsibility of giving it back to me is not yours to shoulder, do you understand? I have to deal with that on my own.”

“What if I want to shoulder it?” I say quietly. I want to shout it.

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