Back for Good

Chapter 19

When Jennie woke up, the first thing she did after making sure that her daughter was still safely tucked in bed, was to look for Lisa in her room. 

She blindly dragged her feet outside her room, across the small living room and towards Lisa's door. Drowsiness was keeping her mind from functioning properly and she felt like she didn't really get to sleep last night, but the dried tears on her cheeks were evidence enough that she had indeed cried herself to slumber. 

Jennie raised her knuckle but stopped mid-air. It was only proper to knock; it was courtesy, but the simple gesture made her so nervous that a part of her just wanted to barge in just so she could get it over with fast. 

She breathed out and clenched her fist before knocking. 

Nothing. 

Not even a sound of a shuffle. 

"Lili?" She called out softly. "Can I come in?"

Silence.

Jennie swallowed the growing lump in her throat and tried to hold in the tears that were threatening to spill from her eyes. 

She made another mistake, that much she knew, but the gravity of the situation hasn't hit her yet and it scared her greatly, because somehow she had this dreadful feeling that this one was her biggest mistake yet. 

She sighed for the second time that morning, and though her mind was protesting for what she was about to do, her body willed her to do otherwise. So she reached for the doorknob and twisted it ever so slowly, the coldness of the metal burning her palm. 

"Lisa?" 

Tiffany opened the door wider and was immediately greeted by an empty room. The bed was flawlessly kept like it was never slept on, and moreover, the other girl's things weren't there anymore. 

The tears she was holding in finally trickled down her cheeks and it finally dawned on her that Lisa had already left.

-------

She found herself, yet again, on the same shore, bearing the same feeling. 

Pain. 

Sadness. 

Unworthiness. 

Lisa gripped her camera tight, her knuckles turning white and her heart turning numb. Lisa thought, before, that tears weren't enough to express loneliness anymore, yet she was crying now, baring her heart once again, at least what's left of it, to the sea that had first witnessed its breakdown. 

She was thankful though, that after four long years, she had the chance to know what it feels like to be alive again, how it feels like to be whole again, even if it was for a few hours. Barely whole, she told herself, but better than being empty and useless. 

Lisa knew that it was too good to be true but still she couldn't deprive herself of real happiness, even if it's temporary. 

She had once been a hopeful soul and she had never seen the bad in anything. She believed that everything has a reason, that everything happens for a reason. 

But believing can only take you so far, especially when experiencing the real thing had overpowered everything. Reality, same with the truth, hurts. It kills, it breaks, it abandons.

'Abandoned...'

Lisa shook her head. Pathetic, she thought. 

Tears started to stream from her eyes quietly, soundlessly, like her heart that had started to beat slowly and weakly, only enough for her to live.