Chapter 13.

"Come on it's time to get out of bed."

No.

"Come on." Kelsea insists. "You've got to get out of bed and we need to go get your car."

Still no.

The warmth is slowly pulled away and I grip at the comforter, trying it pull it back but I'm so weak.

"Come on." She says again. "I've got the shower running for you."

No more cold water.

"Missy, you've got to get up." She chides, pulling the blanket fully off of me now and I roll onto my stomach, squeezing the pillow into my face. It's weird that it still smells like home.

I don't want to.

I want to go back to sleep. I haven't had enough yet. My nightmares keep me up, tossing and turning all night. I just want to sleep. I want to feel rest.

"If you don't get your ass out of this bed in the next four seconds I'm throwing your sweaty ass back in that shower and I'll turn it all the way to cold again."

I lift my head and glare at her.

The colors in the room look right again. The walls a light green that Dallas and I had agreed upon when we were little.

Sun is beaming in through the uncurtained window, casting little steaks of light that I can watch the dust in the air twirl and dance in.

I wonder what it's like to feel that free. Just living in the air, floating and glimmering in the midday sun.

I roll onto my back, the exertion that simple movement takes reminding me just how fragile I am.

I stare ahead of me. The curtain that separates the room is pulled back and I can see Dallas's bed still made up for him like he will soon be home from his friend's house and he will fall onto it and tell me all about his day while I hang on every word.

His blue and black comforter stares back at me, empty. No body to hold and keep away the chill of the air. No body to tuck away safely from the world while the body it belongs to drifts into dreamland.

His posters of his favorite bands still hang taped crookedly on the walls on his side of the room while my side remains blank. Just a Cork board leaving against one wall waiting for me to tack all of the things that are important to me to it.

I'd never really gotten a chance to use it. To discover what I like. There is a picture of me and Rebecca, both smiling in our large coats, hoods pulled tightly around our faces. Beside it, a picture of Aries I'd taken one day after school as I had walked out to meet him. The Polaroid capturing the way he'd lean against the wall and wait for me, that bright smile I always earned for showing up.

Other than that, there is a piece of pink cloth. Something I thought would be a good inspiration for the dress I wanted to find for the homecoming dance I'd never get to attend.

Below the pink fabric, a word is cut out of a magazine and tacked right into the center. It read simply, "you", written in a curling calligraphy. I don't even know what that word had meant to me at the time. Why I'd chosen it out of so many other options.

That board summed up my life here. I was my friends, the boy I cared for, and a whisper of a dream to be more.

I never really got the chance to discover who I am. Not when my innocence had long since been taken from me, and the worlds cruelty never let up.

"Please, Missy." Kelsea sighs. "Please say something at least."

Had I not already said something?

My mouth is so dry it feels like it's been stuffed with cotton balls while I slept. I touch my throat, my voice too hoarse to make words come out.

"Here." Her long dark fingers hold out a bottle of water to me and I take it from her, my hands shaking with the effort to bring it to my lips. I start to chug it, needing to rinse my body of all of the bad tastes and thick feeling. "Go slow, you don't want to get sick again."

Again?

"Thank you." I manage to get out, handing her the bottle back half empty and she places it on the bedside table beside a stack of books.

"Shower." She reminds me and I nod, allowing her to get a hand under my arm to lift my feeble body from the bed and I limp across the hall with her into the bathroom full of blissful steam.

It fills my nose, opening my sinuses once more. It envelopes me with a comforting warmness.

I undress, not caring that she is here with me and I still hold her hand for guidance into the tub so that I don't trip.

She releases me and pulls the curtain around the tub and I step slowly into the stream of water coming down from the shower head.

I let out a deep sigh as it rushes over my body.

"Is it too hot?" Kelsea asks from the other side of the curtain. "I can turn it down."

"No." I say, letting the water run down my neck. "It feels...it feels...good."

I stand under the spray for a long time, until the heat is starting to lose its sting, then I wash myself. I shutter at the thought that I don't remember the last time I bathed. Maybe in the motel I stopped at on my way down from Vancouver. I can't be sure though. It, like so much of my life recently, is foggy in my recollection.

I run my fingers through my long hair and hold in a groan at how good it feels. It doesn't hurt. When I think about it, nothing but my lower back and the side of my neck hurts right now.

I can't remember the last time something just felt good.

When I'm done and the bathroom and my body is tinged with the scent of lavender, I turn off the water and pull down the thick towel from the shower rod and I wrap myself up in it.

The lavender doesn't sting my nose the way it did last time. It's not abrasive and cruel to my senses. Instead it feels calm. I feel calm, if only in this short moment that I cannot even be sure is real life.

My dreams have been so vivid, so haunting. This one, if it is a dream, is one I kind of like.

Kelsea helps me out of the tub again and I lock eyes on her. She's not wearing any makeup today. Her skin is clear and free of blemishes, but her skin under her eyes is darker. Like she hasn't slept.

"Why are you here?" I finally ask her.

She purses her lips and sighs. "We all need help sometimes, Missy. We all do."

Help.

Something I've never known how to ask for. It made me feel weak and powerless, and I already felt that so much all on my own. I needed to figure out how to live on my own. I needed to stand on my own two feet, but I'd stumbled. I'd stumbled so much. I had gotten lost out there on my own, never finding whatever it was I was looking for in the first place.

I dress slowly. My body seeming unsure of how to process being up. Supporting itself. It wants to go back to bed, to lay down, just for a little while longer. I can get stronger if I do that.

But I know with one glance at Kelsea that she isn't going to let me.

With a soft sweater and jeans with thick wool socks, I follow her from the bathroom and carefully down the stairs.

Shame twists in my guts at the memory of being carried up these stairs before. Of being so lost I no longer had control over my own body, the one thing that should be mine. The one thing I've fought to protect but never been able to.

Not even as a small child.

The smell of food keeps me moving though. My stomach tightening and growling in its unrest.

"Go sit in there, I'll bring it to you." She tells me, pointing through the archway into the living room.

I go to the loveseat and notice the blankets and pillows lying there. Had she slept on the couch?

Within seconds she comes into the room with a tray. My nose mislead me. I'd expected eggs and French toast and fruit and waffles drenched in butter and syrup.

Instead on the plate she sets in my lap there is two pieces of wheat bread toast and a sliced avocado with a side of dry cereal in a bowl.

My disappointment must show on my face because she smiles apologetically. "You've got to take it easy on your stomach." She says, sitting beside me and putting a glass of orange juice on the table in front of us.

I greedily grab the toast, shoving one whole half into my mouth and chewing before my stomach that moments ago prayed for a feast, now roils at the bread in my mouth.

"I don't feel good." I say, pushing the tray towards her.

"Drink some water." She says, sliding it back. Then she goes to grab the water bottle from before. "Small sips, small bites. Take it nice and easy. We just need to get a little something in you other than broth."

It takes painstakingly long, but I eventually eat most of what was given to me.

I keep the bowl of cereal as she returns the tray to the kitchen. She comes back and sits beside me while I still snack on the cereal in my lap, one tiny piece at a time.

"You look a lot better." She tells me and I smile softly.

"I don't feel better."

"You smell better too." She winks.

"Thanks." I mutter, but I know it's true. I'd gotten immune to the scent of my own body and sweat, but I'm embarrassed now smelling what I should have smelled like all along. We sit in silence for a second before I look over at her again. "Seriously, thanks."

"Don't mention it." She says, standing. "We need to go get your car. I tried to pick it up for you but they wouldn't release it to anyone but you."

"Can't I wait until tomorrow?"

She shakes her head, her braids bouncing between her shoulders. "If we leave it any longer, you're gonna have a hell of a fine to get it back."

She waves me forward and I stand gingerly. I place the bowl on the table and walk towards the hallway.

"Let's get it over with then." I sigh. "I'm exhausted."

And it's true. I've only gotten up and showered and eaten just a little but those tiny minuscule things have left me feeling ragged.

"Uh," she says, coming behind me. "It's a lot cold out there, ya know? You need your coat and shoes."

Shit.

I look down at my socked feet and remember. I try my best not to picture that dumpster or what I had seen below it. I'm desperate to keep this meal inside of me.

"I don't have any." I finally say.

"What happened to yours?" She replies.

"I don't..." I can't tell her. "I don't know where they are. I've looked but I can't find them anywhere."

I fix my eyes on the floor so I don't look at that bedroom door. I can practically feel my fingers pulling back the carpet.

"Ok, shit." I go and sit back down while I hear her rummaging through the house. "You're sure you don't remember where you took them off?" She yells down the stairs.

"No." I call back, guilt sliding up my spine.

"Did the police keep them?"

"I don't know." I call again. "Maybe."

She comes back down the stairs and my blood stills in my body as I hear her walk into my parents room.

I imagine she will zero right in on the spot. That there is a glowing beacon leading her straight to it.

But she returns without mentioning it.

Instead she passes me a large flannel coat. My father's.

And a pair of worn out brown leather boots. My mother's.

I'd rather go out into the freezing winds bare to the world than to have to wear their things, but I don't want to explain why. I don't want to talk about it. Not to Kelsea. She's been so good to me and I've been nothing but difficult.

I take the coat and put my arms inside of it, the sleeves encapsulate my hands, but it's warm. It was his favorite coat. A Christmas gift from Dallas and I a year before it all went to hell.

He wore it all the time.

I wince at the thought that hits me next.

How many times did he wear this when he left our home and went to hunt a young girl to kill?

He was wearing this exact coat when he got arrested.

I push those thoughts away, as far away as I can while being wrapped inside of the memory itself.

I lace up the boots and look to Kelsea.

"We should go." She says and I follow her out of the house. Wishing it was that easy to do with the thoughts inside of my head. Just walk away.

I sit in the passenger seat of Kelsea's Ford pick up and we shiver and rub our hands up and down our arms while we wait for the heat to warm up.

"You really shouldn't stay here." I tell her after a moment. "I know you think I'm crazy, but everything I told you was true."

"And I know you believe that, but it's been three days and I'm still here."

I turn my head and stare at her in shock. Surely she'd misspoken.

"Three days?" I gape at her and she smiles a little.

"You've been really out of it, Missy." She explains. She tells me about force feeding me broth multiple times a day and how many times I'd thrown it back up.

How I peed in my own bed like a child.

How she had to wake me every hour because she was afraid I wasn't breathing.

Three whole days I've lost with no recollection of any of it.

I thought it had been a day at the most.

"I'm losing my shit." I hold myself tightly around my center, trying to come to terms with how what she's saying could be true.

"What you went through, Missy, it's a lot." She pats my knee once. "Let's just go get your car and figure out what else you need to do so that you can get out of here, ok?"

Maybe she's right.

Maybe I'm making connections in places where there really isn't any. Maybe this is all just my head freaking out because of what happened here when I was a teen.

I want to believe it could really all be some sick twisted drug induced déjà vu.

I'm about to apologize for my own insanity when Kelsea turns on the radio.

"Scary news coming out of Faulkner Montana today as another young girl, seventeen year old Jasmine Vines has been missing from her home now for twenty four hours."

Kelsea looks slowly to me and I feel the blood draining from my face.

So I'd been wrong about the next victim being Kelsea...but I hadn't been wrong all together.

"Missy." She says, trying to turn off the radio but it's too late.

I look into her eyes as a single tear rolls down my cheek.

"They'll find her in a field." I say, haunted. "She'll be in the field down passed the Montclair place." I take a deep breath and stare blankly straight ahead. Right at my house. "Hers is the last body they'll find."