THE INVISIBLE:
Chapter 1:
Cereal, waffles, bagels, ah, here we are, bread. She thinks to herself as she spots the loaf of bread she was looking for and sets if from the shelf and into her shopping cart. She then checks 'bread' off of her shopping list that she had been carrying with her. That's what she did every week since she arrived in San Francisco. Every Sunday she'd help out her mom and go out shopping for her. After all, that's who Sara had been staying with for the past five months. Sara proceeded to the checkout as she paid for her items, walked out through the automatic doors of the mini-mart, and walked to her car to begin the short drive to what she had been calling home for five months now. But that night, she would say her final goodbye to San Francisco and return to her real home, back in Las Vegas. Sara was finally ready to leave. When she arrived in San Fran back in November she had no place to go except to Laura Sidle's house. A woman she had hated for years. A woman she had avoided for even longer. But this woman was her mother, and she couldn't be avoided forever. When Sara showed up, they didn't reach the subject of her father's death for almost two weeks afterwards. Which followed with an even longer period of silence between the two until they were actually able to 'talk' to each other. Visiting her father's grave was the next step; and one of the hardest to do. She had gone on a chilly January day. It reminded her of the day she had been there last; back when she was a scared little girl. She wasn't a little girl anymore; yet she was still scared. Visiting her father's grave finally helped her to realize that what was done, was done. The past; it's done; it's unchangeable. Move on. That's what she had to say to herself for three days after the visit to the cemetery. Three days and she could finally forgive her mother. It had taken her a total of one month, two weeks, and three days after her arrival, until she could do it. While crying for the first time since she left Las Vegas, the team, and most importantly, Gil Grissom.
Sara had never felt guiltier in her life than the day she had left him with nothing but a letter and a broken heart. But sadly, she had to do it that way. If she would have talked to him about it, Grissom would have tried to talk her out of it; and she wouldn't have been able to handle that. She could feel herself slowly slipping away, and before she let anyone see her fall, she needed to catch herself. And as far as she was currently concerned, she had done that, and now it was time for her to go back to her real home. She missed everything. She missed Grissom, and Catherine, and Nick, and Warrick, and Greg, and even the blistering hot Las Vegas days!
Sara turned left onto her old street where she had spent the first twelve years of her life. They were filled with memories; most of them unpleasant. And through all of the people that had came and gone in Sara Sidle's life, there was always that person or two that she could never catch a break from. Jason Hughes was one of those people. He and Sara had been neighbors while she was growing up and she could probably give you a book full of words to describe him, but decided to keep it simple. He was a bully; in every sense of the word. Jason Hughes gave her physical and emotional abuse throughout her childhood and contributed to her suffering as a young girl. When she was eight and he was twelve, he knocked her down and slammed her head into the concrete; his reason to his own mother being, "The little b!tch looked at me funny!" On her tenth birthday, Jason payed a visit to Sara's father, telling him that he caught Sara stealing from the local candy store. That night ended in a broken arm and a trip to the hospital. At her father's funeral, twelve year old Sara was reminded by sixteen year old Jason, that it was her fault that she was all alone now; no one had loved her and no one ever would. But he was wrong, and Sara had proved him wrong, twenty-three years later. She had her own family that loved her, flaws and all. Though it took her a while to realize that. Sara finally pulled into her mother's driveway., and as if on cue, a window next door shatters, with none other than Jason Hughes's voice echoing through.
He still lived there, and behaved no different than he was younger. But this time, instead of Sara receiving the abuse, it was the man's new girlfriend. Twenty-eight year old Emma Wilson, a fragile, beautiful girl, who now fell victim to this terrible man's anger. Sara had tried numerous times throughout her stay to convince the girl to leave him; but fear overpowered her need for her own safety and she was trapped. Abandoning the groceries in the safety of her car, Sara approached Jason's house. She would reach out to this woman one last time before she leaves, whispering to herself what her mother used to tell her when she was younger,
"Keep your head high honey; cause there are people who would kill to see you fall."