It had been raining for the past few days. Not a heavy downpour. Just a steady fall, rhythmically beating the gutters and siding like some kind of desperately bored drummer.

I sat on the window seat in my room, back propped up by one of my dark blue pillows. Big raindrops slid down the window, the trails of water an intertwining spider's web. Some of the larger drops bumped up against smaller ones, engulfed them, and kept on going. I could imagine the little drops staring wide-eyed at the approaching big ones, unable to run away, unable to make a deal for their lives. Unable to scream.

I drew my knees up and hugged them tightly to my chest. I didn't like the direction my thoughts were turning. If I didn't curb them quickly…

The black bag.

My heart stopped briefly and then sped up so fast that I wasn't sure if it had ever even stopped in the first place. But I knew what I had seen. I knew what my brain had called up even though it knew I wanted nothing to do with it.

Pursing my lips tightly, I turned to look out the window again. There were ways to control one's thoughts. A good distraction was all I needed to suppress the memories, to push them as far away as they could go. But there wasn't anything special to see outside. Not when the world was dark and baffled with pouring rain.

The raindrops caught my attention again. I watched them race down the glass, chasing and dancing with each other. They didn't have a care in the world but their fun. Not until a large splatter of a drop came powering down, scattering the little ones and devouring those who couldn't get out of the way fast enough.

It made me feel cold inside for some reason. Like it wasn't right. I laid my fingertips on the pane and let my eyes follow the big bully until he had disappeared from sight.

"You don't care, do you?" I said quietly. Mom would have freaked out if she came in and heard me talking to rain like it could talk back. "You drop in, hurt smaller people, and keep on going. And for what?"

The black bag.

This time I felt my heart stop. I tore my hand away from the window and grabbed my knees tightly again.

You've got to stop this, I told myself as I stared at the bedroom wall in front of me. It's just images. It's just memories. It's your brain. You can control it.

The black bag.

I inhaled sharply and squeezed my eyes shut. But the bag just wouldn't leave. Instead it lit up with flashing red and blue lights. Somewhere off in the far distance of my mind a siren started its whooping scream. Another joined in, and then another, each getting progressively louder until it felt like blood was pouring out of my ears.

And the bag was always there. Just sitting on its wheeled cart. Completely clueless as to the infinite pain and terror it was causing me. I hated it. I hated it so much.

I forced my eyes open, banishing the sirens and the lights and the darkness from my sight. The bag even did me a favor and dropped away at least for a little while. My face ached from wildly grimacing through the daymare and it took conscious effort to breathe fairly regularly. But the bag was gone for a little while. That was enough to be thankful for.

Everyone had told me that the first year would be the hardest. Everyone had said that emotions and memories would become so vivid and raw and terrifying. Everyone told me it was ok.

Just grief, my psychiatrist told me for a long while. Post-traumatic stress disorder, she eventually started scribbling on her pad of paper. She said that was normal, too, after an ordeal like I'd been through.

I wanted to see my friend again. It had been almost a month since I'd even caught a glimpse of him from far away, much less talked to him face-to-face. He had been there for me not even twenty-four hours after the incident, letting me know that he was there if I needed him.

Mrs. Crane said I was making him up. She said he didn't exist, that I had made him up like an invisible friend to help me get through the trauma. I insisted she was wrong. I even brought a few of his notes to one of our sessions just so she could see that he was real. She claimed I forged them so my "pretend" friend would feel more real.

Delusional, she wrote on her pad that day. She didn't realize that I could read writing upside down.

I slid off of the window seat, walked over to my desk, and opened the top drawer. Hidden in the back behind all the markers and notebooks was a stack of folded sheets of paper tied up with a white ribbon. They were yellowing a bit now and smelled kind of like the pine drawer, but words were still far from faded. I'd always wanted to pin them on my walls. There were enough of them that I could face any direction and always see one. Jason made me promise not to. Technically I could do whatever I wanted to now since he was gone for good. A promise to a dead man and all that. But I didn't.

In remembrance of him, I told myself. And to keep White safe.

The black bag started to creep back into my thoughts, but I threw it back with a hard snap of my head. It had been almost five months since the incident. Why couldn't I think about Jason without the bag coming back, demanding my full attention and emotion?

The folded sheets crinkled as I flipped slowly through them with my thumb. I caught glimpses of his large capital letters and crudely scrawled stick figures as I flicked through them. Just looking at those notes again was comforting, like my friend was right beside me again. And then it hurt because he wasn't.

Mrs. Crane was so fixed on the faulty idea that White was completely imaginary that she told my parents that I couldn't go into our woods unattended anymore. I don't know why I told her he lived in there, that I loved to visit him, that he even existed to begin with. If he weren't stone cold, Jason would've killed me for revealing anything about White to anybody.

"We have to protect him, Allie," he used to tell me. "Anybody else in the world would treat him like a freak show, and we can't let that happen. Not a word to anybody. Not even Mom and Dad."

But Jason wasn't here anymore. He was torn away from me so suddenly and so violently that I needed a friend to run to for help. White was that person. At least until Mrs. Crane had taken him away from me.

If you can't trust a psychiatrist to spill your dirt to, then who can you? She said it was "for my good." Creating an imaginary friend for a little while to help with the pain was one thing. Believing unconditionally in the existence of that imaginary friend was something else entirely.

She didn't understand.

She never could understand.

Loathing is a strong word, but it accurately described my relationship with Crane.

I planted a light kiss on the topmost note, like maybe White could feel it transmitting through the paper. He had to know how badly I missed him. He had to know that I hadn't visited him because I had been forced to stay away from the woods by everyone who remotely knew me. He knew I wasn't crazy.

Oh, they all cared about me, I knew. They just wanted what was best for me. But they didn't see – couldn't fathom – that what I really needed was the man who understood me better than I understood myself. Not even my own parents, who enforced Mrs. Crane's no-woods rule like nightclub bouncers, comprehended me.

He had to know how much I needed him.

Resolve fired up in the furnace of my heart. I set the stack of notes on top of my desk and fumbled around in the drawer for my window pen. It was hot pink and a birthday present from White. He had found a whole box of them just left in the woods one day, long ago. My favorite color, too.

I was standing on my window seat in less than a moment. With pen uncapped, I wrote a message in huge letters on the inside of the window. It had to be backwards so White could read it from outside. I had practice in writing that way. I capped the pen, dropped it onto the floor, and surveyed my work.

"I Miss You!"

Even through the dark day and the pouring rain, I knew he could read that message clearly. And he would come. Sure, it had been a little over a month since we had seen each other, but he would come. He always did.

I reached out and pressed my fingertips lightly against the glass, right beside the double s's in "miss." A moment later – if even that long – a slender, pale white hand reached out of the darkness and touched the glass from the outside. My heart played hopscotch in my chest as I found myself staring into the expressionless face of my best friend. His jet black suit looked absolutely drenched from the rain, but I knew he didn't mind. I had called. That's all he cared about. It made me smile for the first time in months.

Hurriedly, my excitedly fumbling fingers flipped the latches away and pushed the double window outwards so there was nothing but empty space between me and White. That space wasn't empty for long, though. I leaned out over the sill, arms stretched hopefully towards him. If White could actually smile, I'm sure he would've. Instead he reached his long arms into my room and picked me up as though I weighed nothing. He held me close in one of the tightest hugs I've ever been in. And it was nothing short of wonderful.

My face was buried in his soaked, suited shoulder, arms clinging around his thin neck, heart begging he wouldn't ever let go. Tears started to well and trickle down my cheeks as I felt him play with the ends of my hair. The bag inched back into my view. I didn't even try to fight it anymore. Because now I could cry over Jason's body bag and know that there was someone who could really, truly help me move on.

"I-I missed you," I whimpered through the tears that wetted White's pale neck. "I missed you so much!"

White only squeezed me warmly and pressed his cheek next to mine. I'm here, and you'll be ok, he seemed to say. Still holding me close, he shut my window with his sharp elbow, turned, and carried me into the forbidden woods.

And that's when the sun finally broke through the cloud cover.