32. Sunflowers

32

Sunflowers

Teal

Three Years Earlier

Headlights.

I stare into them like a sunflower watches the sun move across the sky. Absorbing every ray and drinking them down until night makes the petals curl and wither in on themselves.

I stare into the headlights, and I’m wide awake.

Eyes open.

Heart ripped at the seam.

My skin prickles, and blood thunders through my veins. It floods my body with every beat until I’m floating.

Floating away.

Is this what it’s like to die ?

I stare into the end of the tunnel, expecting to see my life flash before my eyes. I expect to feel all the good things slipping.

But all I see are fingers. Hands gripping so tight I can’t escape them. They leave their prints on my skin while I sit in this fog, and they think I won’t remember.

Sometimes I don’t remember.

Sometimes I pretend I’m asleep so I don’t feel them manipulating me.

How many years has it been that I still can’t scrub myself clean?

A new therapist. Another dose. The doctors always say that one more hit and I’ll be okay. One more day to survive, and then everything will be okay.

Everything is going to be okay.

Everything is not okay.

No matter how deep I bury the memories of him, he always creeps back in and threatens whatever stability I’ve found. He turns from a shadow in the corner of the room to a figure looming over me. And I’m too weak to stop him.

I can’t stop this no matter how many years pass.

The headlights are so bright I can almost feel them. A bristling against my skin. Wind rushes as the air parts in two, like the Red Sea. Slicing through the darkness the same way tiny pebbles cut into the soles of my feet.

Where are my shoes?

Where am I?

All I know for sure is that I ran.

I saw him, and I ran .

He crawled out of my nightmares and clawed his way back into my life.

Again.

Dad promised he was gone, but he lied.

Now I’m here.

A sunflower staring at the sun and wishing this time it will take me with it. Hoping the stars pluck me from the Earth and let me live among them.

If I hold my arms out, maybe I can meet them halfway.

I close my eyes and tip my head back, stretching my arms out to either side. The car is so close I can taste gasoline evaporating. I can hear the engine humming. I can feel the pavement rumbling. I can see the end of the tunnel.

The hands of the moon reaching out to take me away.

But something yanks me back. Fingers grip my arm and brutally pull me from taking the final step, and I’m tugged out of the road.

My eyes fly open, and the car rushes past, missing me. It hurts to watch—to miss such a moment.

I spin until I’m wound against someone’s body.

Maybe the car did hit me, and this is what it feels like to die. First, I’m wrapped in a cocoon, then I claw my way out. I escape and become something better.

Something beautiful.

“Teal?” A voice drags me out of the webbing, and I pull back to see the eyes of an angel.

Or God?

If God exists, would they be there for me?

But it’s not God, and it’s no angel staring back .

“Declan?” I pull out of his grasp.

“You’re standing in the road. What the fuck are you doing?” He steps toward me, and I retreat with every step he advances.

“What did you do?” I shake my head, digging my fingers into my hair.

“What did I do?” His voice is colder than the night air licking my bare legs. “You almost got hit by a car. I pulled you out of the fucking road.”

I laugh, but there’s no amusement. Tears soak my cheeks as I tip my head back.

Declan Pierce saving me is ironic. He spends most of his time making my life hell. Maybe I did die. Either that, or I’ve truly lost my mind.

Turning, I walk away from him, wandering down the road past where his car is pulled over.

“Teal.”

“Stop following me,” I yell over my shoulder. “Aren’t you supposed to be in your fancy new frat house by now, anyway? What are you doing here?”

Sigma House is on the other end of town, but he’s here. Finding new ways to ruin my life when all I want to do is end it.

The only car is gone.

My chance is gone .

“I don’t start at Briar until the fall.” He catches me when I stumble.

“Fall…?” I lift my hands, and they feel like they’re floating. “It’s still summer? ”

It’s not cold at all, so why does my skin feel like ice, and why am I shivering?

“What are you on right now, Teal?” Declan grabs my hand, turning me to face him. “Yes, it’s summer. School just got out last week.”

“For you.” I feel myself smiling, but I’m not happy. Everything hurts, from my toes to my cheeks. “I still have summer school. And then another year.”

“You know what I’m talking about. What’s going on with you? You almost got yourself killed just now. Have you been drinking?”

“No.” I smile, but it burns my cheeks, and I’m not happy, so I can’t figure out why that keeps happening. “I don’t drink, remember?”

He jokes about it whenever he sees me at a party. He’ll hand me a water bottle and poke fun at the fact that I’m a pathetic sophomore who doesn’t drink or date.

I blink, and Declan splits in two before melting back into one.

“Are you floating?” I ask him. “I think I might be floating. The air is so…”

Waving my arms out, I spin. Or maybe I’m standing still, and it just feels like I’m spinning. Air tickles my legs.

My legs?

I’m not wearing any pants, just a long T-shirt that barely covers my ass. Reaching down, I touch my thighs, and memories flood back to me.

Waking up in the middle of the night.

Wandering downstairs for a glass of water.

Seeing him .

I ran.

“Teal, what happened?” Declan steps closer in the darkness. “What are you doing out here?”

I look to the road for light, but without the headlights, the stars and moon are all I have left. Darkness isn’t enough for a sunflower to bloom, and it’s all I have.

“Nothing happened,” I lie, searching the road for another car.

There are cleaner ways to do this, but now this is my only option. I keep telling them I don’t want to be here anymore, but they never listen. They make me stay. Pump me full of pills and lock me away.

Declan grabs my arms, and my vision blurs as I try to make out his face. “What did you take?”

“I—” My eyebrows pinch, and I drop my gaze to the dirt, where the little white bottle sits like a blinking beacon on the side of the road.

Declan follows my gaze and walks over to it. “Lithium? I thought the doctors said you weren’t bipolar. That was a misdiagnosis.”

“What?” A laugh bursts out of me, but I don’t know where it came from. “How do you even know that?”

He doesn’t answer, tucking the empty bottle in his pocket and walking back over to me.

“How many?”

“One.” I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Two… three… I don’t know. Enough to take the pain away.”

Not that it worked.

“We need to get you to the hospital.” His tone almost makes him sound worried .

That doesn’t make sense.

This is Declan Pierce.

Am I dead?

“Don’t act like you care.” I try to push him off me, but he won’t let me go.

He holds me here, and I can’t be here anymore.

“Teal, you need a doctor.”

“I just needed to forget.” I brush my hair back, and everything itches. “He said I was being erratic.”

“Who? Your father?”

“He said I’d calm down.”

I didn’t.

I went to my room to grab enough meds to end it and my slippers, only to lose them halfway across the yard.

“Your father did this to you?”

A twig snaps.

Tires crunch pavement as another car rushes by, kicking up the hair on the back of my neck. Reality clears for a split second, and I realize I missed the car.

I missed my chance.

“Teal.” Declan pulls me closer, and something in his eyes terrifies me.

Worry?

Pain?

Declan doesn’t show emotion.

Am I that far gone? Am I already the monster I always knew I’d become?

“I just wanted to forget,” I admit, shaking my head as my memories start trying to rattle around. “My dad said he was gone, but he lied. He’s been here all along. ”

I clutch my stomach.

“Forget who?” Declan’s fingers dig into my arms. “Who hurt you?”

Tears swell in my eyes, and panic takes hold. It burrows into me.

“Who, Teal?”

“No one.” I can’t say his name out loud; it hurts too much.

“Tell me—”

“I had a thought about you and me once,” I cut him off.

Declan’s eyebrows pinch, and I can tell he doesn’t want me to change the subject, but he allows it. “What about us?”

“I thought maybe we were meant to be together. That all this hate was just a mask for whatever was actually buried underneath. I thought maybe you had good in you after that night in the garden. Funny, right?”

He doesn’t answer, standing in front of me, watching me sway back and forth.

“Maybe I just wanted to wake up from my nightmare so bad that I thought you were the answer.” I dig my nails into my palms. “It was something to cling to. You were nice then. Do you remember?”

Declan nods.

“I’m not a romantic, just so you know.” I point at him. “My doctors say that my mind seeks out what’s bad for me, so that’s all this is. You’re bad for me, and so my mind seeks you out.”

“Teal—”

“Don’t worry, I’m not in love with you, Declan. I’m just making peace with my flaws. Confessing my sins. Whatever you want to call it. I’m coming clean. This is my baptism.”

“Why would you need that?”

Another pair of headlights breaks through the darkness, and I watch the car’s approach.

“No.” Declan grabs my hand when he sees what I’m staring at, but he can’t keep me here.

No one can. I’m already gone.

“Just let me go, Declan.” I try to fight him, but it only makes him hold tighter. “Please just let me go. I can’t think about what he did to me anymore.”

“Who?” Declan’s eyebrows pinch. “And what did he do?”

A tear slips from my lashes, and inside, I’m flooded. My smile falls, and my fear swims through my veins.

“No one.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I know.” I plant my hand on his chest and feel his heart beating.

Thump.

Thump.

“No one understands me.”

“I didn’t say that.” He frowns. “We need to get you out of here, Teal. You need a doctor. It’s going to be okay—”

“Okay.” I laugh, taking a step back. “Do you want to know what’s wrong with this world, Declan?”

“What?”

My temples throb, and my words nearly choke in my throat .

“When things are okay. That’s what’s wrong.”

“What’s wrong with being okay?”

“It’s a lie.” I laugh. “Okay exists in blips between things being good and things being bad, but in the end, the bad always wins. Have you ever wondered why good things are always so easy to lose, but bad things stick with us? Suns and stars burn out, but darkness is eternal.” I swallow hard, clutching my stomach. “Whatever hurts in me is eternal.”

“Sounds serious.”

“It is.” I close my eyes. “But I’m crazy, so you shouldn’t listen to me.”

“You’re not crazy.”

“You’re the first person to think that then because if you ask anyone else, I’ve lost my mind.”

“There’s a difference between being sad and losing your mind, Teal. Let me—”

“Don’t.” He tries to reach for me, and I pull away.

Another car is coming. Another chance.

One second.

Two.

I stare into Declan’s gray eyes and wish that was enough. I wish I was enough.

But I’m not.

So I run.