''I get it,'' he said, ''the sun so loved the moon...''
His voice trailed off. We both knew the story. We knew it all too well. He was looking at me thoughtfully. I, however, turned away.
''What if,'' I began, ''the sun didn't want to die for the m...
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The scream that left my throat sounded foreign to me, like it wasn't a sound that could've possibly come from me.
I couldn't have stopped the vision even if I'd tried. The sight of Elias' lifeless body on the forest floor seemed to wash over me, wracking me with a mixture of grief and anger.
The vision ripped through me with a force like a hurricane and washed the darkness throughout my body. It forced me in to the abyss, throwing me down what seemed like a well with only a small sliver of light at the top. I was falling for what felt like hours till I hit a dirty ground with a loud, bone crunching thump. When I looked up, I could see a small glow of light but only barely. The surrounding walls were pitch black with only one object visible against it. Fizzling out like a dying ember against the wall, was Elias' torn line.
It sat before my feet looking limp and pathetic, each of the two lines hung over the sides of the hole reaching up toward the light where it belonged.
I could see nothing. I could feel nothing except the bone chilling cold and the sense that I'd never been more alone.
All I knew was that in this moment, I had to reach the top. I had to reach the top, and I had to bring the line with me. Elias' line didn't deserve to be in this darkness with me. He didn't deserve to be alone. Even if I did.
"NO."
The voice was loud in my head, resounding and all too familiar. I couldn't place the owner of the voice. Somehow, all at once, it sounded like Ben or Tilly or Gray. And it sounded like my mother or Harry. It sounded like Noah or Lucas or Tommy. Or maybe Tucker.
I didn't know, but it was loud.
"Not alone. Never alone."
I swallowed, hearing the words echo in my head. Their source was unknown, sure, but somehow the comfort was familiar- and the light at the top of the whole was getting brighter.
Elias' broken line in my hands and tears welling in my eyes, I looked up toward the top. Was it possible to climb up from this darkness? Could I pull myself out of it? Did I deserve to?
"Yes," the voices whispered, "climb."
And so we climbed.
Using the limp line as an anchor, I drug myself forward inch by inch up toward the growing sliver of light. The words of my father, of Tommy Joy, of Tucker, of my brother filled my head.
"In order to survive, you have to forgive yourself."
"I can teach you to control it. To use it."
"I've looked too long into the sun."
"Only you. Only you can pull yourself up."
Tommy's words- his promise- in the school hallway rang through my ears the loudest. And he'd been right. As I neared the light at the top, I felt all the pain I'd taken from people wash over me at once. My hands shook as I gripped onto Elias' line and the sides of the well wall. Every dark feeling I'd sensed, every terrifying nightmare, and every inkling that Tucker had helped to push away tore through my body trying to force me back down. Trying to push me to the bottom.
