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xxiii. Like The Cat, I Have Nine Lives
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Here's the funny thing about fate; it likes to chew you up and spit you right back out again.
Destruction was in the water where her body was floating like a hollow doll, just barely latched onto the boat by mere coincidence. The clasp of her jacket got stuck; she never did get to put it around her torso in time.
When John B Routledge caught ahold of her limp body, he could've sworn someone had ripped his heart right out his chest. He'd love to say whatever then, but he couldn't. For a split-second, he thought Sarah Cameron had been the one to scream, bloodcurdling, guttural, only to realize that he was the one yelling, then spat out mouthfuls of water and cried out in panic.
He brought her back quickly but delicately to the boat and tried to listen for a pulse over her sister's screams, scaring birds in the perfectly clear, blue sky above them. He searched for so long, what felt like hours, really, then realized she wasn't breathing and reached out for her sister who had practically lost it by then. Sarah was shrieking her name, shaking her so abruptly John B was scared she'd break, breathing or not. Not. He choked on a sob and shook his head in disbelief, crying out for help.
For a split second, they took a look at her face, though their eyes were blurred by tears and saltwater. Blossom lips parted slightly, nose and cheeks collecting droplets of sea, lashes wet. She had eyebrows a shade just imperceptibly darker than her hair, and they were collecting sweat and water.
Blair Cameron had never looked so peaceful. Dead.
She never had wings, only premature feathers; and she internally cried when people touched her because she bled easily, the glass-carved girl. She liked to imagine herself sitting on a church bench, illuminated by the colorful glass shapes in the windows that created fairy-dust of missed teenage opportunities. She wasn't religious, not even the slightest, but she always wanted to get married in the little chapel down the street from her house. Or . . . what once upon a time was her house.
Whatever. "We all get swallowed anyway," she told her sister once while they were sitting on the edge of dock, legs dipped in the cool water.
Sarah put a hand on her cheek, she had been icy. The girl doesn't believe she ever stopped crying over the stillness of her sister. Her girl, her soulmate, her soul flame. They weren't twins, but they always pretended to be with wide, matching grins. Who was she now that she was alone? The sole survivor.
How long the Cameron girl had been dead, they didn't know. It could be hours just as it could be minutes, seconds. Either one felt like an eternity. Nevertheless, they refused to let go of the body because it wasn't just a body, it was Blair Cameron.
