Crossing Worlds

Chapter 7

"Jodie! Hey, Jodie! Are you okay?" Kenna asked, getting all up in my face. The freckles splattered across her nose looked more prominent up close. Wait, Kenna?

     "Jodie?" A soft voice, my younger brother Coop asked worriedly. His doe eyes looked up at me with a gentle shine.

     My head was down as if my neck had stopped working, hands pressed against my chest to shield my heart. I was back in the green polo shirt and white shorts I had worn to school the day time stopped.

     "Jodie, answer me, are you okay?" Kenna repeated while putting the back of her hand on my head. She found nothing wrong, so she pushed my head back up while I was still in frozen shock. I looked around, barely moving my eyes, and saw everything that had been missing for a very long time. There were still streams of children going around, cars that functioned and had people, the usual flowing stream that wasn't black anymore and was plain murky again, and there were people. No reapers, scythes, or anything else.

     I could also breathe, I noticed when I choked and gasped from having held my breath.

     "Seriously, is something wrong?! Jodie, you've got to answer me, or I'm leaving you here."

     "Then leave her be," Darian sighed. "If she comes home, she comes home. If she doesn't we'll check the hospital tomorrow to see if she somehow got a heart attack at fourteen years of age. Let's go," he said while turning around. He looked displeased again to hide his fretting as he looked me all over and tried to see what was wrong. Finding nothing out of the ordinary, he decided to move on and indirectly told me to go to the hospital if something was hurting.

     Acting like he didn't care...somehow, I missed that. I didn't care if it was the usual, I wanted the usual.

     After closing my eyes and taking a breath, I erased everything I had done in the space of a few seconds for them what was a dozen weeks for me. I tried to recall what I had been doing so long ago to make it seem like I hadn't seen them for a long time.

     I released my heart and thought back to that day while saying to them, "I'm good, we can go," and remembered that my locker had been tagged. I had managed to scrub it all off throughout the day, but there still wasn't evidence as to who did it.

     I had been searching around for any eyes on me, but found nothing. Now that I thought about it, it had started the same time as the lengthening mornings, so that was probably not done by a human...also, there was the voice that said, "found you" to worry about, but for now I didn't care. I was just glad to be around people. I wasn't religious anyway, so whatever shinigami, wraith, or angel that came to reap my soul again should be repelled by my realism. Deny it, and maybe it might just go away, you know? It's my greatest weapon against things I didn't want to hear.

     My life was just so suddenly back that it felt unreal. I forced myself to convert to "sister" mode again.

     We started walking over the bridge from the middle where we stopped, and I finally left the murky waters behind. I had a bright smile on my face which didn't make sense to them and they wondered if I was okay again, but I just waved them off while walking behind Cooper, whom I wrapped my arms around and rubbed my face again while making a satisfied face.

     By the time we were halfway to the house, Kenna was looking at me funnily as if she thought I left some part of my common sense on the bridge. Cooper, a good champ, didn't try to pull away from me and just let me rub his head and keep him close. I couldn't help it after being stranded by myself for so long, and his cuteness was justice. He was usually calm and quiet, so I was thankful for his obedience.