She has no trouble sleeping anymore, no more dreams of that poor, dead girl with her open, welcoming arms. Most of the time. But every now and then, she gets that same chill up her spine and it feels like she can't breathe. She sits straight up, as if that will get her blood pumping, but she suddenly feels helplessly restrained by the blankets clumped around her legs. In these moments, where peace is such a distant possibility, she is reminded that she can never forget. Not that she would. Not that she could.
Her chest still feels tight and she desperately opens her blinds; the moonlight dancing on her bedspread makes her eyes flutter closed. She thinks back to that burning inferno and his shining knife and that goddamned coyote, and her fingers clutch into her cottony bed sheets, crushing the fabric beneath her nails. Suddenly, she can't hold it in any longer, and air comes rushing back into her lungs and she's heaving the oxygen in as if it will never be enough.
Dropping her head into her waiting palms, she bites down a festering scream. Every time she veers toward unaffected, nightmares plague her nights and guilt afflicts her day. "I should have saved her, should have helped her, should have known her." And that's it. All Lucy wanted was to have known her name, some facts, anything. It seemed so wrong to have solved the mystery of the ending of her life, but to have known so little about the actual living of it.
After all, didn't Lucy save dozens of potential girls from such a horrendous fight; shouldn't she deserve some sense of reward rather than this punishment?
She reaches over to her nightstand to grab her sketchbook, to draw some picture with the moonlight dancing on the page when she hears steps outside. For a moment her heart stops in fear, and she reflexively squeezes the life out her pad before she gets a hold of herself.
She steps out of her barrier of blankets and tiptoes through the organized chaos that is her room. A shiny trinket catches her eye and she reminds herself it's her charms, nobody else's. With a deep breath she creaks open the door and sees Jaime looking through the spindles to the door downstairs. As if someone will come walking through and suck him out of this depression. As if Beth will come back and admit she loves him, too.
Lucy does not want to intrude on his moment, content with just watching his dark hair fall over his face and his strong arms grabbing his shoulder, and she briefly, impulsively, wishes she could sketch him just like this, bathed in moonlight and sadness and want. But she suddenly sees how he seems to be holding himself together as if he will start coming apart at the seams. And maybe he already is. Ever since they got back, he's changed. He's still that charming flirt, still Kit's best friend, still her brother, but not really Jaime. Sometimes, it's like he retracts into that shell of his and just…nothing seems to matter but everything seems to hurt.
She knows that this must be heartbreak and it's such a painful thing to watch, she can't begin to imagine what it must be like to experience. She can't stop her legs as they quietly step past her room and she ends up simply sitting cross-legged beside him. He watches her but doesn't say anything. What is there to say?
She simply puts her hand out, expecting him to take it, but he remains frozen. She wonders if maybe he's embarrassed that his baby sister caught him in a bout of weakness, but one look in her eyes tells her he just doesn't care. And it hurts.
"Go to bed, Luce."
"No. Not until you snap out of this."
He snorted a chuckle, "Yeah…go to bed. You have no idea what the hell you are talking about..."
"Yes, I do."
"Luce, just…"
"No! I know you. I'm your sister and I'm not blind. I know you fell in love with her, but god, Jaime, you're 18. You'll find someone else." His silence kind of broke her down, and she desperately wished he would let her wrap her arms around him. "She knew."
He turns and looks at me at that. "She knew you loved her, and I am pretty sure she felt the same way about you, too."
"She told me it was nothing. She said she cared about me, but that I was destined for so much more. And that she was just an old woman with her art and her desert and her dogs, but god Luce she's so much fucking more than that…She's wonderful and…I miss her."
This time I moved to kneel in front of him, blocking out the moonlight, and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust to his face. "I'm sorry" And before he could protest I threw my arms around him and hoped to convey every bit of commiseration I could into that hug. And suddenly, we were shaking. Or he was shaking and my shoulder was wet with tears and I wished that I could kill Beth and bring her here at the same time. Jaime didn't deserve this pain, he was too young. Abruptly, he let go of me and reached around to unlock my arms from his neck. He held on to my hands and looked at them for a while before letting me go.