Page 26 of Haunt Me

That stare of hers… I swear it cracks my soul wide open. How does she do it?

“No matter how much you’re hurting,” she goes on, as I lower my head in utter shame, “it doesn’t excuse being a jerk.”

No, it doesn’t. She’s right.

Lately, everyone has been treating me as if I’m made of porcelain, about to break into a thousand pieces. But I’ve taken this as permission to act like a jerk, saying whatever hurtful thing will ease the pain inside me for a split second, without considering the consequences.

And this girl, that I’ve known for all of two seconds, did not hesitate to call me out on my bullshit.

“Look, I get it,” she says, “I understand more than you think. I never got to know my mom. My dad says she died giving birth to me.”

What?I feel like dirt right now.

“But no matter how much pain we’re in,” Eden goes on, “we can’t allow ourselves to turn into something we wouldn’t recognize. Or want to.”

“I don’t…” My breath catches. “I don’t recognize myself right now.”

“I know,” she replies. “It’s up to you to turn into someone you someday will.”

“I nearly lost you,” I say, “just now. I nearly lost you, didn’t I?”

“No,” she replies, surprising me yet again. “You didn’t nearly lose me, Isaiah.” I shiver. “If you think a small thing like your pain will scare me away then you just don’t know me well enough. Yet.”

At the ‘yet’, I exhale.

“I don’t deserve you,” I murmur and she scoffs.

“Look, let’s just sit down, ok?” she says, and we do.

I keep my mouth shut after that, the only sure-fire way of not saying something I’ll be ashamed of forever. But even though I don’t speak, I think.

If my pain didn’t scare you,then what did?Because something did scare her, scared her nearly out of her mind.

And she was running away.

And I nearly did lose her.

But if it wasn’t me she was scared of, then what was it?

…

The next evening, I sprint to the woods scared she might not be here. But she is.

I freeze on my tracks and try not to gawk at the way her long braid curls around her pale, long neck. Good thing she already has her nose buried in a book—a different from yesterday—and she doesn’t see me make an absolute fool of myself.

Then again, I’m sure she does notice I’m here, because she shifts a little without lifting her eyes from the page. She rearranges her crossed legs, and her scuffed boots rustle on the dead leaves. She sits up straighter. Focuses on the book harder.

Ok, I’m making that last part up, but I swear that she feels this electricity between us too. Or I hope she does.

“Hi,” I say, and feel like an idiot.

She just grunts lightly in reply, distracted. I know what that grunt means: she doesn’t want to talk today. That’s actually a good thing, because I seem to have lost all ability to function around her.

I pop my earbuds in and scroll through my phone for some Sibelius. Time gets away from us, and it’s completely dark by the time she reluctantly gets up to leave. We’ve barely spoken two words to each other, but she ended up resting her head on my knee while I held up my phone’s light to her book’s pages so she could see well enough to read. And that’s why neither of us have moved for the past three hours.

She is shivering when she gets up, her face’s sharp angles outlined by what’s left of the sun’s last light.

“Will you be ok?” I ask her.

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