Page 84 of Haunt Me

She doesn’t reply.

“Are you?” it nearly comes out as a scream.

No, this can’t be happening.

“What about me?” I say, trying to keep breathing. A fat tear splashes on my upper lip, quickly followed by another. I didn’t even notice the sobs interrupting my words. “Do you not trustme? Do you… do you not love me?”

She stays silent, sort of vacant. She doesn’t cry. Just stands there, emotionless, staring at a tree. The sun’s rays bathe the top of her head, giving her hair a strange, reddish tint.

“It’s his decision,” she says finally. “I’m so sorry.”

I know what’s happened. She has given up. She is not fighting. She is not eventrying. I recognize the look of someone who’s had the fight drained out of them—and that’s exactly how she looks.

I want to shake her by the shoulders until she wakes up.

Why is she standing there like that? So passive? Why isn’t she raging, crying, fighting for us? For me?

“Hisdecision?” I sputter. “What about yours?” Shock and grief are quickly giving way to pain and fury.

Maybe this is a nightmare.

Maybe I died in my sleep and this is hell.

This is unreal. It simply can’t be happening, not in any universe. Eden wouldn’t do this to me.MyEden would never do a thing like that.

It can’t be happening,I think fiercely, not out of the blue, like this. Not to us. Not to a girl like her, not to a boy like me. Not to two kids like us, who have been through hell and back, who have made each other what we are.

But it is happening. Eden is already walking away, saying quietly, in a subdued, robotic voice:

“I… I have to go.”

“No!” I shout, panicking so much that I nearly lose my footing as I run after her. “Eden, please, please, Eden. Ede—” suddenly, there is not enough air in me to finish speaking her name.

The terror I hear in my own voice scares me.

I fall to my knees, then quickly pick myself up and go after her again.

My legs are shaking so hard I feel like I’m about to fall again.

“Let’s talk about this, ok?” I shout after her. “Tell me what you want, and I’ll do it. We’ll work it out. Just say you want me, in spite of everything. That’s all that matters. Eden!”

I am grasping at straws now, hardly knowing what I am saying. She starts running away in earnest now, getting lost among the trees in the blink of an eye, and I scramble to catch up with her. My whole body is shaking so much it’s hard to stay upright, let alone run.

But I finally reach her and take her arm, force her to stop and look at me. Her face… oh God, her face. It is drained of blood. Not a hint of color on her lips. That’s when I get really, truly scared. Those big brown eyes of hers, huge pools of honey, stand out on her colorless face. They are glassy, empty of feeling.

“Eden,” I say in a broken voice. My chest constricts and everything goes black for a second. I almost fall right there, on the leaves at her feet. I brace an arm against a tree. The harsh edges of the bark dig into my skin. My knuckles are white. “Eden. Tell me what to do to make this better. Don’t hurt, please. Please.”

“He says,” she says robotically, as if it has been rehearsed beforehand, “that I have to think about my future. I’m destined to take over his company, and I can’t… I can’t be with someone like you.”

Like me? Is she talking about wealth? That I’m not a millionaire like her dad?Wait, that makes no sense; I have already gotten into several colleges.

“What doyouwant?” I ask.

Say you wantme, I beg her silently.Say that’s all you want and we’ll figure the rest out.

“My dad doesn’t think… He doesn’t want me to be with you. He doesn’t think we should…” She is having a hard time forming the words, and I am so angry and panicked I want nothing more than to hold her until the truth comes out.

But she doesn’t want that, does she? That’s what she has been saying.

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