SECRETS AND SCARS

CHAPTER 1

I can hear them talking but it sounds a long way off – as if I'm trying to listen to a conversation through a glass pressed against a door. I open my eyes but everything looks blurry and out of focus. Where am I? I try to think back, to remember, but it all seems so dim as if it is a life belonging to someone else. The only thing vivid I recall is Dr. Cullen's face as he leaned over me, brushed back my hair, and whispered "everything will be alright. I promise."

I lick my cracked lips and try to call out. My voice comes out raspy. It will be a wonder if I'm heard at all. "Dr. Cullen?"

"Miss Platt?" He is at my side instantly. "How are you feeling?"

I try to sit up, but he pushes me gently back onto the bed I'm laying on.

"Please, conserve your strength, Miss Platt."

"Mrs... Mrs Evenson," I correct, though Charles seems a part of that dim former existence more than anything else I can hazily recall. "I got married. I didn't...I didn't want to but it... the idea of it made my parents so happy but I... I...I --"

I stop myself from saying but I wanted to wait for you. Though it is the truth, someone as successful and beautiful as Dr. Cullen doesn't need to be made aware of a school girl crush that turned into a young woman's one hope and fantasy. I say "beautiful" instead of "handsome" because Dr. Cullen's face is too perfect to be called handsome. He is beautiful. I have always thought so.

"Ten years and you haven't changed a bit," I croak out through my cracked, dry lips. "How can that.. How can that be?"

"A vegetarian lifestyle," he says. "It's all the rage in Europe." He touches my cheek briefly with his cold, pale hand, as if he doesn't want to but can't help himself in the end. "Tell me, Miss Platt, what do you remember from the past week or more?"

I like that he doesn't use my married name. I'd prefer to forget Charles existence myself. "I..." I shake my head, confused, trying to remember. "It is hazy but what I do remember is pain. White, hot, searing pain as if my body was revolting against some toxin."

"And before that?"

"William. My dear, sweet little William sick with the whooping cough." I close my eyes tight and attempt to pull up a memory of his sweet, little, innocent face. I refuse to lose him to the dim half-life memories. "The doctors said there was nothing they could do so I brought him home. He died in my arms and I... I wanted to die too." A memory of the cliff over looking Milwaukee Bay comes to mind. I narrow my eyes at Dr. Cullen. "I could never have survived the fall."

"You did," he assures me, "but only just. They had already placed you in the morgue when I found you."

"Then why aren't I in the ground with William?"

"Because I recognized you as that brave school girl in braids from ten years ago that didn't even flinch when I reset her broken leg and I...Forgive me, I was weak, and I...I did not want to see the brave, vibrant girl I knew suffer any longer so I --"

"He turned you," a new voice says as a boy comes into view. He possesses the same pale, statue-like beauty of Dr. Cullen but his hair is tawny compared to the doctor's pale blond. The boy watches me hostilely before I look to Dr. Cullen to clarify.

"What does he mean 'turned' me?" I ask.

"We're not dead, we're undead," the boy says before he can answer.

"Dr. Cullen?" I open my eyes wide and silently beg for an answer.

He turns away, unwilling to look at me as he confirms the boys harsh words. "Forgive me, Miss Platt, but Edward is right. We are vampires and now... now you are one too."