The Rift

Chapter 16

When I finally found my way back home, I didn’t go inside the house. Instead, I pulled open the gate to our backyard, ditched my bike on the grass, and walked back out into the alley, shutting the gate quietly behind me. I wasn’t ready to go home quite yet. I started walking. I turned a corner and found myself at the garden.

The garden that I had laughed in when I was seven. The garden that I had dreamed about not too long ago. The garden that held so many memories for me, not all of them pleasant.  It looked the same that it had when I had visited before, not that it should look very different. Same funny archway to represent the entrance. The same winding path through the flowers, and the same, little bench in the middle. The last time I was here, I had walked slowly through, examining each flower, and considering death.  I walked in, through the gate, and onto the winding path, my footsteps echoing in the silence of night time. Almost Immediately, I saw a flower that I liked, springing happily from the ground, about the height of my shoulders.

Delphinium. Dark blue. Quite beautiful. I leaned my face in and inhaled the scent, loving the smell of the flower.  I pulled one little blossom from its stem, and tucked it in my hair, just like I had done when I was young, carefully winding the flower around a strand and securing it behind my ear. Looked to the other side of the path, I saw another flower that I liked. And another. I plucked them both, low on the stem, and began a bouquet.

It was easy to see the flowers in the bright moonlight, and I found the prettiest and most colourful easily. Laughing, I ran from one place to another, picking this flower and that one, tucking my favourites in my hair, and through the buttons of my shirt. I’m sure I looked totally insane, but it was really fun, just skipping through the garden, looking at flowers, and laughing at myself, and adding to the bouquet that was swiftly growing in size.  Almost the exact opposite of what I had done the last time I was here. The last time, I had sat on the bench, unwilling to move, with eyes only for faith’s flowers, ignoring the rest of the beauty that filled the garden. Last time, I thought only about death, Faith, and The Rift.

This time, I couldn’t sit still. I didn’t even go near the bench, and the purple flowers. I ran back and forth, here and there, leaping over flowers to get to the ones behind. I laughed and grinned. I skipped and jumped and twirled and collected the biggest bouquet that I had ever seen. A mismatched collection of beautiful colors. In my opinion, it was the most attractive bouquet in the world. And it was mine.

This time that I came to the garden, the Rift didn’t even cross my mind. The purple flowers couldn’t even faze me; I even added some to my bouquet. The Rift wasn‘t with me here at all. And this time, I didn’t think about death. I didn’t think about death in the Rift, or death here. Instead, I simply loved life, and loved myself, and all of the flowers. I loved the moonlight, and the bright colors. And the birds, and the bugs, and the soft grass beneath my feet. I loved the glow of the stars. I loved the constellations. I simply loved it all.

After I couldn’t find any more flowers to add, I wrapped the elastic that was around my wrist around my huge group of flowers instead. I stood at the gate, panting. The delphinium, along with the other flowers, was still in my hair. My face was flushed from all the running and my jaw ached from all the smiling. My hands and arms were covered in scratched from some thorns, and the knees of my jeans were totally covered in dirt. One of them was ripped, because I tripped on the path. My knee was scraped and bloody. My clothes were a mess. My hair was tangled, with several partly dead flowers stuck in it. And yet, I was still grinning like mad. 

I felt like I had when I was seven years old. The dirtier I was, the more fun I had had. And that had definitely been fun. I left the garden blissfully happy, remembering what I had done when I was a little kid, and feeling like a little kid myself.

                When I was young, I had been so tired my dad had been forced to carry me home. I had slept like a rock that night, and the next morning, I had woken up excited and spent the entire day working on stories about magical gardens and the girls that lived in them. When I was little, I had a crazy imagination. I was always making stories. I was incredibly happy the next day because I finally had a new plotline to work with.

One little adventure was all it took to make my day. Then, I would be off, writing about it. I stopped doing that after a while. I haven’t tried writing a story in a very long time.

Back at the house, I put my bike away properly and snuck through the back door. A quick glance at our kitchen clock told me it was 2:00 in the morning. My parents wouldn’t wake up. I quickly tip-toed over to the cupboard and pulled out our biggest glass vase, and waited while it filled up with water. I pulled off the elastic around the flowers, and put them in the water, arranging them the best I could, and placing the huge collection on our kitchen table.

It looked kind of ridicules, with no pattern or point to any of my choices, so the bouquet had ended up as a sort of mismatched collection of colors. There wasn’t two of any kind of flowers, but one of many, many different kinds, including faith’s purple ones and some delphinium. My mother would find it in the morning; she was always the first one awake. I hoped she would know that it was from me. My father would never have done it by hand, like I did.

I managed to untangle the wilting flower from my mess of wavy hair. It was a nasty brown color now, and it was drooping and floppy, so I tossed it in the garbage. I still had lots of other flowers on my person. I pulled off the other flowers that were hiding in my clothes, along with the others in my hair. There was a pink one in my pocket and a yellow one in between the buttons on my shirt, and I threw them out too. Then, I walked over to the drawers on the corner of the kitchen, and grabbed a sticky note and a pen. I scrawled on the note, in a messy handwriting that I knew my mother would recognize to be mine, I wrote,

For you.

Then I stuck the note to the vase and put away the pen. I crept quietly upstairs, making sure not to wake my parents, and into my bedroom, carefully closing my door so that it didn’t make a sound. I carefully unbuttoned my shirt, sitting on the edge of my bed, and slipped out of my jeans, admiring the gaping hole I had managed to rip in the knee. I put on my light pyjama top, and walked to the bathroom, to clean the dirt out of the cut on my knee. After applying a bandage, I put on my shorts and climbed into bed. I didn’t go to sleep for a long time, my thoughts keeping me awake.

I knew my parents would be mad at me for leaving school halfway through the day, and coming back in the middle of the night, but I think they’ll be feeling to guilty to yell at me.  They didn’t want to make me upset. I wondered what my mom would think about the flowers. I hope she didn’t take them as an apology, because that’s not what they were for. More of a peace offering, I guess.

I looked at my bedside clock, it read 2:31. I knew I should be in bed by now, that I would need to go to school the next day, but for some reason I just didn’t feel tired. I had too many thoughts running through my head. About my parents, and about the graveyard. About the garden, and about Faith. To my surprise, I even thought about Nick, but not in an annoyed way.

Although, the fact that I thought about him at all did annoy me somewhat. I’m not usually the kind of girl that sits in bed and thinks about boys.

The one thing I didn’t think about was the Rift, for the first time in a long time; it didn’t cross my mind once. And I was relieved.

But even when I didn’t think about it, I was still sent to the Rift, when I fell asleep. And I found Faith almost immediately.

And she was in a state of ecstasy.

2 more chapters until the end of part two!! Yay!!

Anyways, I just put up my new story, Black and Yellow (the name might be temporary.)It’s a fan fiction. You should read it.  J anyways,

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