I don't understand how one can feel so secluded, so alone, when there is so much going on around me. I have a good life, I know that I do, but I just can't stop this constant feeling of unhappiness. I go to work every day and am surrounded by those I love, the people that I know will always be there for me, but I still feel sad.

"Lindsay, honey, are you ok?" Danny asked me early one morning when we were still in bed.

"Yeah," I told him distractedly, "I'm just tired."

"Babe, you've been 'tired' a lot lately," he said gently.

"Well forgive me," I snapped, "I'm sorry I'm not good enough for you." With that I swung my legs over the side of the bed, stood up and stormed to the bathroom, making a point of locking the door so that he couldn't come in after me.

"Lindsay!" Danny was at the door now, pounding on it as he yelled my name. "Honey, please, just talk to me!"

His voice sounded so concerned, so vulnerable that I almost caved and unlocked the door. However, my stubborn side won out in the end. I quickly undressed and stepped into the shower. I stood there under the scalding hot spray of water, wishing I knew what was wrong with me. I didn't understand myself, which was another reason I didn't want to talk to anybody about it. How was I supposed to explain something I didn't understand? How was I supposed to ask for help for something that I can't describe?

My father always said that my stubbornness and tendency to shut others out and keep to myself was my worst quality. I suppose he was right. Still, I didn't want to do anything about it.

I recalled those months after I'd witnessed the murder of my best friends. I'd shut myself in my room and literally didn't come out, except to use the restroom. I lost so much weight that I ended up in the hospital. Still, I refused to speak to anybody, to let anyone in. Finally, Isabelle came along.

A tall, willowy blonde walked gracefully into my room. She wore a crisp suit, and I thought she was perhaps the most beautiful person I'd ever seen. When she sat down in the plastic chair next to my bed and introduced herself as Dr. Mason, I thought she was kidding. She certainly didn't look like a doctor.

"Are you sure you're a doctor?" I asked her.

She laughed, a pleasant, tinkling sound. "I'm sure, Lindsay."

"What kind of doctor are you, Dr. Mason?" I asked her. In my weeklong stay in the hospital, I'd met so many kinds of doctors that I couldn't even remember them all.

"I'm a psychologist," she told me, "but please, call me Isabelle."

Ok. That was a new one. I'd never been asked to call a doctor by her first name before. In order to hide my surprise, I rolled my eyes and adopted a sarcastic tone. "Tell me, Isabelle, what miracle are you going to work for me?

Isabelle laughed again. "I'm not a miracle worker, Lindsay, I just want to try and help you."

"Yeah," I said in the same tone, "and so did all the other therapists I've seen."

"Well, I'm going to try my best." She assured me. She hesitated a moment, stalling by glancing down at her clipboard, which I assumed had notes about me written on it. "Tell me about you're three friends who died," she asked.

"I don't want to," I said stubbornly.

"It'll help you," she told me.

I sighed. "Do I have to?"

"You don't have to do anything," Isabelle replied.

I thought about it for a moment. Nothing any therapist I'd already had prompted me to talk about it. There was something about Isabelle that made me want to trust her, made me want to open up to her. "Carrie was sort of the ringleader of the four of us," I began. "She was also my best friend. She just had that confidence that we were all jealous of. She was so sure of who she was and what she wanted to do with her life. Nothing anybody said to her could changer her mind. But she wasn't stubborn. It's weird, I can't really explain it."

"That's alright," Isabelle assured me. "You're doing a great job."

Encouraged, I moved on to my next friend. "Lorraine was the drama queen, the popular one. She was gorgeous, and even at 14, a boy magnet. Everybody liked her," I stopped, biting my lip, trying to figure out what to say next. "Everybody except Lorraine," I finally decided on. "She had practically no self esteem. No matter what she did, she was never happy with herself. It was the most irritating thing about her. Even if she had all the cutest boys at school fawning over her, she still thought she was fat and ugly. The rest of us tried to reassure her, but she never would listen."

"That must have been tough on you," Isabelle said sympathetically.

"It was. It bothered Carrie the most, though. I think it was because she had so much confidence that she couldn't understand why anybody, especially someone who had it all, could have no confidence at all." I felt a pang of guilt all of a sudden. I was bashing my dead friends. That wasn't right. I shouldn't be talking about the things that irritated me about my best friends.

"It's ok to talk about their faults," Isabelle said.

"Are you psychic?" I blurted out. "I was just feeling guilty for talking about them like that."

Isabelle laughed. "No, I'm not psychic," she told me, "but I understand how you feel and what you're thinking." I waited, thinking she'd offer an explanation of some sort. She didn't. "Go on," she urged.

"Melissa was the shy one. She was quiet, except when she was around us. She was really smart and was an amazing singer. We all said that if she'd ever overcome her stage fright, she'd be a big star one day. She was very dependable. If you had a bad day you knew you could go to her and she'd help you get through it all. You kind of remind you of her, in that way. She was very trustworthy."

"Well, I'll take that as a compliment," Isabelle said.

Suddenly, tears began to flow down my cheeks. "Why did they die?" I asked her desperately, "Why did they die and I lived? I'm not any better than they are! I don't deserve to be alive any more than Carrie or Melissa or Lorraine did! Why me? Why was I the only one?" By now I was hysterical. I was taking out all the feelings of anger and guilt on Isabelle.

She sat quietly throughout my outburst, not saying a word, not flinching when my voice rose to unhealthy volumes. When she saw that I was done, she handed me a tissue. "I don't have those answers for you, Lindsay. I wish that I did, but I can't answer your questions."

"Then who can?" I screamed at her. "I know that I can't!"

"Nobody can, Lindsay. Sometimes things happen that nobody can explain. Sometimes we can't have all the answers."

I sniffed and mopped up my tears with a second tissue that Isabelle handed me. "Then what do I do?"

"You live your life to the fullest," Isabelle told me, patting one of my hands. "You do whatever you can to throw the fact that you are alive back in the face of the scumbag who killed your friends. You shouldn't feel guilty of your friends' deaths, but he should. Make him guilty, Lindsay, make him regret it."

I nodded, finally understanding something that a therapist was telling me. It wasn't my fault. I suppose that I'd known that all along, but Isabelle was the one who made me believe it. "Thank you, Isabelle," I said quietly.

"You're welcome, Lindsay," she said. She stood up and walked from the room without another word.

I never saw Isabelle again after that. She didn't come back. I asked all the doctors and nurses who came in to check on me if they'd seen Isabelle, but nobody seemed to know who she was.

"Isabelle Mason?" Connie, the night shift nurse asked. "I know just about every doctor on staff, but I don't know an Isabelle Mason. She's a psychologist, you say?"

"Yeah," I told her, "she came to talk to me a few days ago."

"I'll look her up, if you want," she suggested.

"Could you?" I asked, smiling for the first time in a long time.

Connie left and came back a couple minutes later. "I checked the hospital's employment records," she told me, her eyebrow's knit together in confusion, "and there has never been an Isabelle Mason on staff. Are you sure that's her name?"

I nodded vigorously. "I'm sure!"

Connie shrugged. "I don't know what to tell you, kiddo."

Defeated, I slumped back against my pillows. Was I crazy? Was Isabelle a figment of my imagination? Or an angel. The thought came to me suddenly. Was Isabelle an angel? I shrugged, not wanting to worry about it. I knew that Isabelle was real, and that was all that mattered.

"Isabelle is real," I whispered to myself, jarred back to reality by Danny's pounding on the door. I smiled, suddenly. I might not have Isabelle this time, but I had Danny. He loved me and cared enough about me to bang on the bathroom door for twenty minutes straight.

I quickly finished washing up and stepped out of the shower. I didn't even bother getting dressed yet. Hastily, I wrapped a fluffy towel around my wet, slippery body and unlocked the door. I opened the door, nearly hitting Danny in the face and stepped out into the bedroom.

"Lindsay! I - "

I silenced Danny with a deep kiss to the lips. I wrapped my damp arms around his neck and pulled him close, completely soaking him in the process. I felt him smile against my lips, and I knew that everything was going to be alright. I broke the kiss briefly, and kissed him shortly twice more before pulling away.

"Man, Montana," Danny gasped, "Not that I'm complainin' or anythin', but what was that for?"

I smiled, kissing him one more time. "Have I ever told you about Isabelle?"

A/N Ok, so this definitely wins the award for the weirdest, most random story I've ever written. But it just popped into my head and wouldn't go away until I wrote it down. So here it is. Tell me the truth, did you completely hate it?

xoxo

Lia