❝ be careful, lest in casting out your demon you exorcise the best thing in you.❞
➼ friedrich nietzsche
Charlie's hair was soaked. Water streamed off the ruffles of her skirt and onto the asphalt. Lightning flashed in the empty courtyard. Palm trees swayed to one side, so fierce she feared something would emerge from the blur of the downpour.
She ran for cover against the side of the building and dialed the number she'd memorized before Peter had even learned her name.
Several rings later, he answered—"Charlie?"
His voice did nothing to calm her racing pulse, the fear she was dying or already dead. "Peter, we need to leave right now—" she clutched her stomach, doubling over in the icy cold rain "—I'm in the courtyard; there's no one here; it's storming and—"
"What are you talking about? Aren't you in class? I have an exam in ten minutes. Coach's been saying I'll lose my scholarship if I let my grades drop."
"I-I t-think someone's following me."
"You've been thinking someone's following you this whole week."
"Please."
He sighed. "Listen, you're safe here. I'll drive you home later. Gotta go."
He hung up. Charlie stared at her phone, dotted with raindrops, her scream lost in another thunderous, ear-splitting crack.
A ten-story fall was enough to kill anyone. Knuckles flexing as he grasped those crutches, his limp as he walked into class alive. She slumped against the side of the building, her posture faltering at the impossibility of the fact.
He lived. By some miracle, he lived.
And she couldn't fight the relief threatening to drown her then, overlapping with anxiety in a cataclysmic mess. It tore her in two until she no longer knew the difference between past or present, dreams or memory, terror or joy.
She once had enough photos of him to cover every wall of her room. Many of him glaring at the camera when he noticed what she was doing, his frowns even in sleep. Even more had been from the time they snuck into her parents' study. Charlie had rummaged through the collection of old cigars and lit one for Jonah, and click went her camera as he slumped into the leather chair, dirty sneakers on the table, grinning and pretending to be a mafia boss—"You make a deal with me and don't pay? You realize this is asking me to make you die?"—before choking on smoke. They burst into laughter, and she wedged herself into the same chair as him, his arms around her waist, her heart beating so fast she hadn't noticed she'd burned herself on the tip of the cigar.
Now, she thought of her gutted teddy bear. The blood on the door. The fact she should've known it was him the moment she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.
If he'd come back from the dead, it was not to listen to her apologies.
Her phone buzzed in her hand. The caller ID across the screen read: Mother.
Charlie pressed it tight to her ear, holding back a sob. "Mom?"
"Oh, hi Charlotte! What time is it over there? Sorry, I forgot you were at school."
"I am," she breathed. "Necesito hablar contigo."
"¿Que pasa? I'm so sorry we didn't call back—we didn't have service. Oh, it's so beautiful here—would you like to come next summer? What do you think of Italy?"
Italy. Italian. Cavalcanti. C-a-v-a-l-c-a-n-t-i. Every drop of rain hit her skin like a dagger. "Someone broke into our house."
"What? Broke in? Who? A thief?"
A wriggling, rotten thing inside her wanted to say: Remember the boy I ran away with once because you were never there?
"No, nothing was stolen," was what Charlie said instead. "I don't know who it was."
"Did you call the police?"
She didn't answer. Peter hadn't wanted her to. Even then, the police wouldn't do anything if she didn't tell them everything. And if she did?
The headlines:
Authorities arrest local student for compliance in teen's suicide attempt
Tampa community outraged at shocking betrayal
Florida man makes history as the first person to come back from the dead
"Charlotte?"
Her voice broke. "Can you come home?"
"They won't give us a refund if we cancel," her mother said. "Are you sure you're not overreacting? How do you know someone broke in if they didn't steal anything?"
Overreacting. When Charlie was little, alone in their large, empty house, she used to call with similar stories—I'm scared; please come back; I miss you—but she was almost nineteen now.
"I found my teddy bear torn up," she admitted.
"Are you sure that wasn't your cat?"
"Lilith would never do that," Charlie snapped, then recoiled, her voice becoming nothing but a peep again. There were knives, she wanted to say. Her knives. Twenty knives her parents didn't know she owned—explaining that would take longer than the teddy bear incident.
"Can we get the security system fixed, at the very least?" Charlie begged. "Please."
Lightning flashed down the road. Too close, the beam sent her spiraling: wind in her hair, the jerk of her hand a second too late, the word wait on her lips and the emptiness that still lingered, that still woke her up in the middle of the night, reaching for Jonah in the dark only to grasp cold sheets.
"Charlotte! Are you outside right now? Is there a storm? Shouldn't you be in class?"
"The alarm," Charlie gasped, "the alarm; fix the alarm."
"Don't worry; it's only a few days. Stay with Peter. Or how about Raquel, would that be okay? She's a lovely girl. I'm sure she won't mind until we get back. I'll call someone today about the alarm, alright? Stop worrying and go to class, rosita."
Rosita. Little rose. Spanish-born world traveler with an American husband and adopted Cuban daughter, her mother was a citizen of the world itself, and if it weren't for Peter, Charlie would book the nearest flight to Spain and never step foot into Dr. Ortega's class again.
"Please come back soon," Charlie whispered, but the line had already gone silent.
If she braced the storm and ran the four miles home, safety was no guarantee. Lightning could strike her on the way there—a one in a million chance. Better odds than a corpse rising from the grave.
She stared up at the lifeless architecture of Sabre College. It morphed into an abandoned, run-down house of horrors towering over her frame.
She pressed her knuckles to her eyes, needing not to cry, and forced herself to walk back inside.
● ● ●
a/n: finishing final edits for this book has been a complete whirlwind. it feels like everything else is slowly falling away so that i can devote my full focus to this. i've relived this story through so many drafts, and it still manages to give me an adrenaline rush at times. i'm finally at the point where i can say i feel like i've done almost everything i can to make this the best it can be. it's taken a while. i've had to go through a lotttt in the last few years that's made this story incredibly more personal.
if you're liking the melodrama, gratuitous thunderstorm scenes, and looming terror so far, do leave a vote, add to your reading lists, and let me know what you think ^-^
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WALKING DISASTERS
HorrorFour years ago, Charlie Reyes and Jonah Cavalcanti promised to die together. Four years ago, they promised to jump. He did; she hesitated, and she watched him fall to his death, too afraid to do the same herself. But little does she know, Jonah surv...
