Author's Note:
This is the chapter I've been building up to. It's not the end, don't worry.
Thank you to all those who have been voting and commenting! It is truly humbling and does a great deal in motivating me to deliver these chapters as promptly as I can manage. This chapter alone took hours and hours to write, rewrite, and edit before I was finally satisfied.
Please forgive me if some minor grammatical errors affect the flow of the story. I try to catch them all but occasionally a few still manage to slip through the cracks.
The fragmented and run-on sentences, however, are intentional. It's just the writing style I've developed to get into the mind of a teenager (which hasn't really been that hard considering that I was one just 6 years ago).
If you see any areas where I can improve then your constructive criticism is not only welcome, but greatly appreciated. I'm still a newbie in almost every way possible and I will own that without any argument.
More to come soon!
Cheers,
Nora :}
P.S. Holy hell, I promise to never use an obscure word as a title ever again! To those of you that have felt the need to correct me, I know how to spell renaissance, thank you lol.
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Renascence
Noun:
The revival of something that has been dormant
-
I could see my hands shake.
I held them out in front of me, watching my spindly fingers twitch as if the tremors of an earthquake had started beneath the surface, shaking until even my blood sloshed. I thought of all the cells and muscles and tissue that my body was made up of, all clung to my bones, holding on even when my bones were trying to say
let go.
When something brings you down you are supposed to let go.
Emma's ribcage had never looked like mine. Beneath the surface maybe, but never above it, never like this. I could feel the bones with my hands, count them like I was in elementary school,
one, two, three
... I counted and recounted them when I was nervous, and somehow knowing that they were always there was comforting to me. My bones were real, something tangible that I could count and know that
yes, I'm still here.
The sleep made me feel groggy, my tongue like cotton in my mouth. My eyes felt too heavy to be mine, like they had been switched in my sleep for eyes that weighed twice as much. I rubbed them, yawning as I shifted in the car —
his
car. There are few times in a person's life where one could say they woke
into
a dream, rather than from one, and this was one of those times.
The interior of the car was as dark as the exterior, like black licorice had been melted and molded to every seat and surface. I was the little girl in the candy shop, and for just this one instance I had it all, every last sweet right at my fingertips. My hands roamed over the steering wheel, my fingers closing around where I knew
his
would, those slender, musician's hands. It was like holding the ghost of his hand.
It was five minutes to eleven in the morning. I'd slept almost two hours right there in his car, dozing off, pretending that the seat warmers were his body heat. I thought of how he had carried me, of how he'd confirmed that I really had become nothing but bones, picking me up with such ease that I wondered if a strong wind could just sweep me away if I didn't have something to anchor me.
He'd done that. He'd anchored me.
I fumbled for my phone, finding it on the passenger seat where I'd left it before falling asleep. Knowing his phone number was in there made me feel like I was having an out of body experience. I had to open my texts just to be sure that they were real, that we'd actually talked like friends — that I actually
had
a friend at all.
There were two new texts from him.
Gabe:
Text me when you wake up.
Gabe:
Sweet dreams.
Despite my truck being parked in the lot, I doubted anyone but Miranda would even notice my absence. I'd been invisible for so long that I'd probably become like wallpaper to them, like I'd spent so much time in the background that they forgot I existed.
Me:
When's break?
I struggled with the lever to bring the seat back up while I waited for his reply. I didn't want to walk in right in the middle of class. I could just sneak in with all of them after break and no one would even notice that I hadn't been there the whole time.
Gabe:
11. Now
I got out of the car as fast as I could just in case anyone else came out to the parking lot for their break. I locked the car, pocketed his keys and made my walk to the dumpsters behind the school. My hands were still shaking from withdrawal. If I didn't have a cigarette soon I would probably lose my goddamn mind.
Unlike my car keys, my cigarettes I always had on me. They were in the inner pocket of my insulated jacket, always pressing up against my ribcage as if they wanted to count how many bones I had too.
The first intake felt so good that it made me dizzy. Nicotine was such a heartless bitch, taking over my body and making me miss it, making me crave it until my hands shook, but we were using each other, nicotine and I. We each took something from the other, like it was some kind of fucked up 21st century symbiotic relationship.
I leaned back against the brick wall of the school, closing my eyes as cold mists of air and warm wisps of smoke trailed out of my mouth, intertwined. I tried to give life to everything in my mind, making the inanimate animate, making things alive because I honestly didn't have the courage to talk to people. I made friends with nicotine and my bones, knowing that right now they were the only things supporting me.
"I didn't know you were a smoker."
My eyes snapped open. It was Gabe, hands in his pockets, standing just a few feet away. I thought about the scars on his palms, healed but damaged, like they were something strangely beautiful that Frankenstein had put together.
I shrugged, my heart-rate spiking.
He walked over and leaned against the wall beside me. I had to crane my neck to look up into his eyes. I don't know what I was searching for — disgust, maybe? But his expression was unreadable.
"Are you, um, disappointed?" I asked. I felt embarrassed even though I had no real reason to be. I was old enough to be making bad choices.
"Should I be?" His tone was even harder to read. His voice was still deep, velvety and low, but there was nothing that could tell me if he was disappointed or angry or even indifferent. It felt like a trick question.
"I don't smoke for attention or to look edgy or cool. I'm just—I have anxiety. It helps."
"Then no, I'm not disappointed," he said, looking up into the sky. I followed his gaze. Dark clouds were traveling towards us, threatening a storm that could snow us all in at the school.
"I'm letting class out early," he said. "That doesn't look good, does it?"
I was still looking up at the sky, my heart beating fast. It rained a lot in northern California, more than people would expect from such a sunny state, so I was used to clouds, but these were different. They had that unique angry, unforgiving look of clouds that promised more destruction than mere inconvenience.
When I tore my gaze from the sky I saw that Gabe was looking down at me, observing me in an innocent sort of way, like he wasn't sure what to make of me. The wind swept a lock of hair into his eyes, and without thinking, without using my fucking brain,
I reached up and brushed it away.
"I'm so sorry," I gasped, reeling back. My elbows hit the brick wall, scraping and hitting the bones so hard that I stumbled in pain and lost my footing.
Gabe swore, catching me around the middle before I fell into the snow. He hoisted me up like I was a child, steadying me for what felt like the millionth time that day. Only this time, I didn't feel warm and happy — this time I felt the burn of humiliation.
My back was pressed against his hard chest. I felt his breaths; heavy, like I'd knocked the wind out of him. He released me and I stepped away, putting some distance between us because I'd touched him when I shouldn't have. I couldn't even imagine how uncomfortable he must feel. What the fuck was wrong with me?
"You okay?" he asked.
"Mm, nope," I said, wincing. My elbows hurt like a fucking bitch, but the shame and embarrassment — yeah, that was a hundred times worse.
He ran a hand through his hair, letting out a sigh like it had been stuck in his lungs.
I knew I was fucking this all up so I moved my arm to get his keys out of my pocket, biting back the pain because it hurt so fucking bad to bend my elbow.
"Here," I said, handing him the car keys. My fingertips brushed the scars on his palms, and I lingered there for maybe a moment too long, mesmerized. I couldn't believe that he was so self-conscious of them, that he was always hiding them away; they were beautiful, like intricate lines of linked constellations. I could look at them all day.
His hand closed around the keys—and my fingers.
"Don't run," he said, reading my shock. "Let me see your elbow. Are you hurt?"
Are you hurt?
The first words he'd ever said to me, echoing in my ears, taking me back to that night, to the darkness and his hands all over my body, making my toes curl, making me wet, making me fall apart in that earth-shattering orgasm. The image was so vivid that it felt real, like it had actually happened. My stomach dropped as a wave of pleasure hit me, starting right from the fingertips still trapped in his hand.
"Let me go," I whispered shakily.
