Page 61 of Pierce Me

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I don’t fall to my death: I jump.

There are these defying moments in everyone’s lives, those intense few seconds, or even less, when you have to make a decision with your heart, because there’s no time for your brain to process things.

And in those milliseconds, your heart makes up your mind for you.

Your heart knows.

Well, it always has known, it’s just that now you know too.

Your stupid, stupid brain catches up.

The day my father died, I was sixteen years old. My little brother found him. My mom was on stage, leading the philharmonic orchestra with her cello. I was in the audience, waiting for my dad to come on stage and sing. He never did.

That was the day that my heart stopped believing in God.

Two years later, when I was almost eighteen, the girl I had given my heart to left me without a word of warning or explanation.

That was the day that my heart stopped beating.

It continued to beat, biologically, but it was dead in my chest.

And now, four years after that, this is what my heart does: It tells me to jump.

I am standing on the edge of a cliff, in one of the most beautiful places in the world. But my heart is racing, my stomach is churning and cold sweat drenches the back of my neck. I look down. Ten meters or more of solid, jagged-sharp rocks and then a glittering emerald pool of water at the bottom.

And also,she. She is at the bottom, in the water. In danger.

She.

The girl whose name I can’t even mention in my own private thoughts, or it will destroy me, the girl who ripped out my heart and ruined my life.

That girl.

In the water.

Twenty feet below the cliffs.

And that’s when I know it: Before I have even time to blink, let alone think, I’ve jumped. Why? Because I’m an idiot, someone would reply. Well, I knew that already, no need for a death-jump to make me aware of the fact.

No.

The answer is an entirely new, different creature. A truth I never suspected for four years, but now I discover that it’s been there all along.

My God, I think, as my body plummets through the air in free-fall.How I have hated that girl. How many hours I have spent thinking bitter, horrible thoughts about her, hating her hating her hating her, cursing the day I met—

And then my feet hit the cold, freezing water. It’s hard and solid like cement, and pain shoots up my entire body as the breath catches in my throat.

And then there’s nothing.

The Elliot sisters chat room

Eden: I lied to you guys.

Eden: Thereissomething else.

*messages deleted*

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