Take Me With You (25 page)

I know where she is.  The rest of this letter is scary and dark and I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to get to her in time before she does whatever it is she’s planning to do once she gets there, but I know where she is.

All I need now is an address.

“Where does her dad live?” I turn around and ask the stone woman resembling a human that’s still standing in the doorway.

“Why?”

“Because she’s there.”

“If she’s with her father, she’s safe.”

This woman really doesn’t have a clue at all about the hell Amelia’s been living with and I don’t have time right now to explain it to her.

“Tell me where he lives, right now!” I yell, done being nice to this woman and wasting my time. I need answers and I need them now.

Stepping into the room, she makes her way over to the desk and grabbing a pen from a cup sitting on the edge, she scribbles across the page quickly before placing the pen back down and turning to me, handing it over.

“There.”

“Thank you.”

Before she can respond to me, keep me here any longer with whatever it is she’s going to say next, I run from the room, flying down the stairs until I run straight into my mom who’s standing at the front door, her eyes wide and her face sagging, worried about me and probably worried for Amelia too.

Passing the paper to her, I motion with my hand toward the car.

“We need to get there now. Please.”

Amelia

It was supposed to work.

Take the blade, cut myself open on my arms, the ones that were already fragile because of the burns and let myself bleed out all over him until I passed out and my heart took its last beat.

That’s not what’s happening. I’m still aware. The cuts have taken away a lot of my strength, energy and will to keep my eyes open, but I’m still aware of everything going on around me and what I passed out hearing from my dad is not what’s happening now that I’m awake again.

He’s on top of me, his breath hot against my face and he’s moving back and forth, the same steady motion, rocking. I’ve been here before, I know what this is. He’s even sicker than I thought.

He waited for me to pass out and then he pushed himself inside me.

It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. I came here to end it, not make it happen again. I was supposed to show him what he caused and it was just supposed to end. Not this. Never this.

I open my mouth, attempt to cry out and it gets his attention. He stops moving long enough to look up at me, his cold vacant blue eyes staring straight into my heavily weighted but open ones. He smiles, that grin that turns my stomach every time he’s used it before and I can feel the waves of nausea slamming into me as I watch him.

“Amelia, my sweet angel, you ar
e like a fine wine. You’re always better than the last time.”

The nausea’s turning to bile now, the acid growing inside of me, rising more with each breath he takes, word he speaks. I need to end this. I need to get him off me and end this once an
d for all. Make this nightmare that is my life stop completely.

Picking up the pace, he moves again and I don’t even try to stop myself from crying out, louder with every move he makes until his lips crash down on mine violently. Forcing the cries to be muffled, vibrating off the inside of his mouth.

Closing my eyes, trying to focus my mind on anything but what’s happening to me now, another wave of nausea sets in, making my head spin and I close my eyes tightly until all I can see, all I can feel is the blackness. Gone are the spots that lingered when he looked at me. Everything is just devoid of color.

Just as it’s about to claim me, pull me back under,
I hear it. A loud bang in the distance, followed up by the sound of voices, muffled but not so much that I can’t make them out.

It’s only when the weight of his body is lifted off me, his lips pulled away from my mouth that I’m able to breathe again and I suck in as much air as possible, willing my eyes to open so I can see what’s going on around me before the darkness pulls me completely under.

I feel hands on me and I’m being pulled, but where I expect to be lifted or worse, for my father to come back and throw himself on top of me in order to finish what he started, that’s not what happens at all.

These arms are different, the ones holding me and the smell, clear as day is one I recognize. One I never thought I would ever get to smell ever again after everything that happened today.

Peanut butter and jam.

It’s not just any set of arms holding me. It’s him and if the smell alone wasn’t enough to tell me, what happens next is. His voice. He’s speaking. I can hear him.

“Stay with me Amelia. I’m here. You’re with me and you’re safe. I’ve got you, please stay with me.”

“E—Eric?”

“Oh God! She’s awake!” he calls out and I just know it’s not to me. He’s here with someone, calling out to them to let them know that I’m still here. That I’m broken, out of it but still here. My plan didn’t succeed.

“Amelia, hold on
to my hand okay? Keep squeezing it so I know you’re with me. Please don’t stop squeezing it. Help is coming.”

Trying to open my eyes hurts too much, so I just focus on his breathing, feeling bursts of it against my arm and I allow my breathing even though it’s weaker to even out to match it.

“Don’t leave me, Amelia. Even if you don’t want anything to do with me anymore, don’t ever leave. I don’t think I can do this without you.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Eric

Finally lifting the pencil from the sketchpad, I lay it down on the table to the right of me and lean forward, taking in the sleeping beauty in front of me. My scarred, burned and broken phoenix. Here. Alive. Breathing.

Completely owning my soul and not being aware of it.

Five days.

Fifteen hours.

That’s how much time I’ve spent here in this chair, watching her sleep, the rise and fall of her chest as the machines continue to beep with each breath she takes.

I wasn’t too late. I got there in time.
I didn’t lose her.

I’m not sure how to handle what I walked in on when the police barreled through the door of her dad’s house. It’s not an image I want to see but despite that, I can’t seem to let it go because of the way my mind works. I finally get why what happened haunts her so much because it haunts me now too.

He was doing things to her, things that no parent, no adult ever should do, no matter how old the person is. My dad might not understand my diagnosis, he might even believe that the way me and my mom are is totally wrong, but he would never do anything like that. Never be that sick.

After they hauled him out of there and they pried me away from holding on to her, they brought her here and while I didn’t stay at first, I’ve made sure to come back every night since.

I can’t be here during the day with her because I can’t promise that she won’t see pain and pity in my eyes. I feel them and they’re so strong that it’s impossible to hide. I want her to get better, connect with her mom again and in order to do that, she has to do it separate from me.

So, just like every other night this week, I sit here and pull out my sketch pad and I draw her while she sleeps. This is Amelia at her most peaceful and even if things never go back to the way they were before what happened at school, I want to have this memory of her forever.

The moment in time where the horror that her life became ended.

Her father is going away for a very long time. With everything Doctor Thompson told them and what I could talk about with what she told me, what I experienced when she had flashbacks around me, there’s no way he’ll see the light of day again and Tim is no better.

They might not be able to get him for everything he did to her when they were kids, but everything he’s been doing at school, especially now that he’s a legal adult in the eyes of the law, well he’s gonna pay and I want to be there when he does, but not for me.

For her. I need to see him pay for what he did to her.

Admitting that I’m in love with one of the people that went out of their way to torture me, turn my life upside down until I felt that ending it was the only relief, it’s not easy but it’s my reality. I love her and even if she wakes up and decides that everything she said that day is right, I’m always going to love her.

Amelia changed me. She made me believe in something again. She made me believe in her.

I’m also going to make sure that she gets these pictures I’m putting together. She needs to know the way I see her and there’s no better way than this. She is my Amelia now more than ever and it’s time she realizes it so she can heal and move on.

Amy Evans is dead and in her place is a phoenix reborn. Amelia. My storm.

Realizing the time, not wanting to be caught here by her knowing that it’s well after visiting hours, I slide up out of the chair, careful to make sure I don’t scrape it across the floor and just like every other night, I lean over, brushing a stray hair out of her face and place the softest kiss to her forehead.

It’s not much, but
it’s the only way I know to let her know that I’m here.

Whispering the familiar goodbye and sliding out of the room, I start to slump my way down the hall, same as always, but am stopped in my tracks as two people come around the corner. One I’m surprised to see, the other inevitable.

Cadence and Dillon.

“How’s the sketching coming?” Dillon asks, knowing exactly what I do here every night and I just shrug weakly. It’s hard for me to get up and walk away when I’m not entirely finished the picture, but what has been done is almost as beautiful as she is.

Almost being the key word.

“They’re okay, I guess.”

“Sketching?” Cadence asks, her head immediately lifting toward Dillon.

“Remember me signing to you that day at the ravine?” he whispers and she nods. “Well this is Carmen’s way of letting her hear him.”

Her eyes, they light up in acknowledgement and understanding.

“Eric,” she says, turning her body toward me and away from the guy with his arm still securely wrapped around her. “She’d hear you better if you were the one in there when she wakes up again.”

I know that’s true but I can’t do it. It’s too much for me and I just know that between the way I feel about what happened to her and what would inevitably fall out of my mouth, it’s the last thing that can happen. I’ve managed to screw this up once already, I’m not going to do a repeat performance.

She’s going to get better without me. She has too.

“Dillon,” I say, changing the subject and completely ignoring Cadence’s words. “Can you help me with something?”

This is a huge step for me. There’s no love lost between me and him. I’m still not sure I trust him completely even with all the changes he’s making, but right now, knowing how close him and Amelia seem to be again, he’s my last hope.

“Yeah, anything.”

“There’s something I need to do when she gets out and I don’t think I can do it alone.”

“Then you’re not doing it alone. Whatever you need, Eric. After what you did for me,” he admits, squeezing Cadence into him even more. “Anything you need, it’s yours.”

Amelia

Sometime between Eric holding me, telling me to hang on and stay with him and where I am now, I passed out. Considering what I went to my dad’s to do, it’s not surprising, but where I expected to wake up and see him sitting beside me, he was nowhere to be found.

He might not be
here, but I wasn’t alone.

Catching sight of my bandaged up arms first, some of the burns visible a
nd somehow brighter than before, and swallowing down the sadness that seeing it brings, I look up at the sound of shuffling feet and am shocked into silence by the two people I see. One standing, the other seated in the chair close to the door.

Isabelle and Cadence. Two people in the long list of girls that I’ve taken into the bathroom at school and attempted to beat and burn for my own sick and twisted purpose.

Two people that should want to be anywhere but where they’re standing now.

It didn’t take long for them to explain what they were doing
here, though neither of them could tell me for sure the one thing I really wanted to know.

Where Eric was.

~*~*~

“I don’t understand.” I admit as Isabelle backs her body off the wall and walks closer to the bed, sitting gently on the end, her pity evident in her eyes when they meet mine.

“What don’t you understand, Amelia?”

The way she says my name stuns me even more into silence. It means everything Eric told me before I ran out of the bathroom was true. He did tell her about us and even more, about me.

“Why are you here? Why are either of you here?”

Cadence’s hands start moving, signing but not directly at me. She’s facing toward Isabelle and from what I can tell, the other girl understands her clearly. Something I never knew.

Something that until now I never cared enough to want to know.

“I thought she could talk?” I ask quietly and Isabelle nods toward me as Cadence finally places her hands back in her lap.

“She can, but when she speaks, people aren’t usually kind, so she’s afraid of how you’re going to react.”

I earned that response. Taking her into the
girl’s bathroom that day and attempting to burn her the way I did with Belle, I don’t even deserve to have her signing to me the way she is.

“Can you tell her that I’m sorry? I know it doesn’t make up for what we all did to her, but I mean it. It wasn’t about her. It was me.”

My voice is hoarse and I can hear the hitch and cracks in between some of the words and I really hope that Isabelle can see that it’s not intentional. That I do mean what I’m saying. They weren’t the problem. It was always me.

I watch as she signs back to Cadence and that’s when I see it. The girl sitting in the chair, the one that when I hurt Hannah over a month ago, I wanted to put the blame on, she’s smiling at me. It’s weak, but it’s a smile nonetheless.

It’s like Hannah’s dad all over again. It’s her way of believing me.

“I still don’t understand why you’re here. After everything I did to you guys, this is the last place you should be.”

“You wanna know why we’re here? Well, at least why I’m here?” Isabelle asks and I nod slowly. “What you did to us, did to me; I wanted to hate you for it, but if I did that then it would make me no better than the girl that dragged me into the bathroom and burned me. It would make me no better than you and I’m better than that.”

I can’t argue with her because she’s telling the truth. She is better than me. Only someone truly twisted would do the things that I’ve done and justify them the way I did for so long.

“You’re right.”

“Do you wanna know what Cadence signed to me?”

“Sure.” Caught up in the moment, I completely forgot that she had been speaking before Isabelle. Even though I know it probably isn’t anything good, I do wanna hear what she’s got to say.

I can’t believe how different everything is. I feel like I’m dreaming right now.

“She wanted me to tell you that she forgives you, Amelia. We both do. It doesn’t make what you did right, and we won’t ever be able to forget that it happened, but you’re forgiven.”

“Why?”

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

“Why do you forgive me?”

“At first, I thought I was doing it for Eric, because whatever it is the two of you share, it makes him even better than he was, but it’s not him. I’m forgiving you because everyone, even someone who does the things that you do, deserves it.”

I’m not gonna argue with her, but I definitely don’t agree. It’s just another way that it’s obvious what kind of person she really is once you get past her diagnosis. She’s like Eric and Hannah. She’s a good person.

“When we were waiting for you to wake up, Cadence told me something. It’s another reason why I can forgive you.”

“What’s that?”

“If we can’t forgive you for what you did, how are you ever going to forgive yourself?”

I’m not sure how to answer that, so I just smile weakly and shrug in her direction. That feeling I had earlier of this being a dream, it’s feels like it even more now.

“Isabelle, where’s Eric?” I take the chance and ask. I know that I haven’t exactly earned her telling me anything about him, but waking up and not seeing him here, it’s eating at me and I won’t be able to focus on much else until I get answers.

She laughs and where before I could see myself getting annoyed with it, now I think I understand. She’s not laughing at me, she’s laughing because of who I’m asking about.

Me asking about her friend, it’s funny to her.

“Honestly, I don’t know. He was here when I got here earlier, but after I left him to talk to your mom, I lost track of him. I think he might have gone home with his mom. What happened was a lot for him.”

I know what she’s getting at. Eric found me, saw things that I’m pretty sure he’ll never be able to forget and with everything he told me about how easily he can visualize things in his mind, this is the last place he needs to be. I’m the last one he needs to be around.

It doesn’t make it hurt any less though. I wanted him to be the first person I saw when I opened my eyes.

“He’ll be back. I’m sure of it, but in the meantime, how do you feel about hanging out with me and Cadence for a while?”

Considering that I didn’t think I’d be breathing for much longer, let along lying here in a hospital room surrounded by these two, it sounds like the best thing I’ve heard all day.

“I’d like that.”

~*~*~