Thanks so much to everyone who gave feedback on the first chapter. Hopefully, this follow up will answer some more questions and create some new ones.
Time it took us
To where the water was
That's what the water gave me
And time goes quicker
Between the two of us
Oh, my love, don't forsake me
Take what the water gave me
-Florence and the Machine
June 18th, 2009
Dear Diary,
So if I thought ignoring him and hoping he would go away would do anything to deter my hallucinatory stalker, I was disappointingly mistaken. Damon appearances have almost increased to a rate of one a day since seeing him over a week ago in Caroline's bedroom. If this doesn't let up soon, I figure having a log of my hallucinations (at least the ones I know I'm having—scary thought) will probably come in hand for those interested—like my therapist. And my roommate—the one I'll have for the padded cell.
Two nights after Caroline's bedroom and coming home with Jenna, he showed up in my bedroom after I had that dream again. He seemed kind of annoyed, but I didn't stick around. I sneaked into bed with Aunt Jenna.
Sunday, two nights after that, he showed up again at my parents' wake. The whole town showed up at the house to pay their respects. I got in some good practice at the sober 'thank you's and 'I appreciate that's. I spotted him in the crowd making obscene gestures to guests who of course couldn't see him in plain sight. Carol Lockwood caught me giggling and had to ask if 'I was quite alright'. I slipped out the back and spent the rest of the wake in the cemetery.
That night, he appeared again in my bedroom. I was crying over my parents. He sat on the bed next to me with his arms crossed and his boot-clad feet propped up on my duvet. I glared at them for a while, but I checked the next morning, and there were no marks left behind. Because his boots can't be any more real than he is.
Monday, I left him humming a Taylor Swift song over and over on my way to meet Bonnie at the Grille. Now, I can't get the damn thing out of my head.
Tuesday, he was making funny faces at my teddy bear from his perch on my window seat, the one he pretty much occupied all day. At least he was quiet. I got some reading done.
Yesterday, when he appeared at my window seat, I tried to pass the day in the same fashion, but when I pulled out Wuthering Heights again, he took to reading it over my shoulder. He criticized all my favorite bits, and I ended up throwing the book down and stomping out.
Today, however; he has been unusually absent.
I'm not supposed to miss a hallucination, right?
I'm supposed to be packing. Jenna wants to spend my birthday and the 4th at the lake house. But it won't be the same without them.
Nothing is.
XXX
A long car ride with an invisible fifth passenger only I can see—and am trying to ignore—is not what I had in mind when I thought I might be missing my insanity. Trying to talk to your best friend when there's a 5'10'' leather-clad hallucination singing his way through the radio between you is not easy. Nor does it make you look any saner when you lean all the way forward in your seat every time you want to say something to the other corporeal member of the back seat.
I've spent most of this torturous trip staring out the window and blaming it on car sickness. Which isn't a complete untruth. Car rides, in general, have been much less comfortable for me since the accident. Still—I hope Bonnie doesn't think it's her fault. Stupid Damon.
I sneak a glare and a glance at him. He's only humming now, which is an improvement compared to what he was belting out earlier. There's a big ugly signet ring with some sort of crest and a dark blue stone on the middle finger of his left hand. It almost reminds me of the horrendous thing my dad used to wear. I can't tell, though, because he keeps twirling it around.
I catch Jenna looking at me with the rear-view mirror again. I turn back to the window before she can get too concerned at my staring so intently at nothing.
"Ugh. This is taking forever," my unwanted passenger complains. I watch him out of the corner of my eye, still facing the window. He's leaning forward onto his knees. His eyes are narrowed at my aunt in annoyance. "Ever heard of an accelerator, Ginger? Cars have had them since the last time I could drive."
I'm not sure what he means by that, but I blush a little because I know Jenna's been driving five miles under the limit since we left—for my sake. Even though I feel nauseous, I have to agree with Damon at this point.
But Jenna can't hear his complaints. I look at her and then at my brother in the front seat. Jeremy wouldn't respond to Damon even if he were real. He's wearing giant headphones so he can drown out Aunt Jenna's radio station and avoid the conversation none of us are having.
"Elena? Did you hear me?" Jenna's watching me in the mirror again.
"Huh?" I manage.
"Is it too warm in here? You look flushed." Damon falls back against the seat with a huff and his arms crossed over his chest.
"No, it's just a little cramped is all. I'm ready for some fresh air." I try to ignore the reason. Jenna nods and increases the speed a bit.
"We're almost there."
"Thank God!" Damon reminds me that he's not going anywhere fast. I sigh and lay my forehead on the cool glass.
Everyone's so worried. It's exhausting. I'm not sure if I wish they would stop or that they would realize it's so much worse than they think.
XXX
"I came downstairs and they were having coffee," I can hear Caroline tell Bonnie from the hallway outside the room Bonnie and I are sharing for the weekend. Caroline was waiting when we arrived at the lake house. Her family has a lake house, too, not far from us that her dad got in the divorce. She's spending the rest of the summer there with her dad and his boyfriend.
"I mean c'mon," Caroline continues, "she decides to act like a parent because Elena and Jeremy are there? It's not like she was even home half the time before, and now she's coming home early and cooking." I jerk my hand back from where I reached for the doorknob.
"Their parents died, Caroline," is Bonnie's soft-spoken response. Hearing that aloud makes my eyes burn. "She was just trying to be there for them until Jenna could get moved back."
I can't bring myself to go in now. If Caroline needs to vent, she should get the chance without my glassy eyes making her feel guilty.
I turn away and disappear down the stairs. Jenna and Jeremy are already outside, Jenna by the lake with a glass of wine waiting for a pizza delivery and Jeremy floating on an inter-tube tied to the dock under a pair of shades. I slip into the only bedroom on the first floor, at the foot of the staircase. Even if someone realizes I'm gone and comes looking, they won't bother me if I'm in here. I forget, though, the rules of social nuance don't apply to the dark, handsome, and imaginary.
Damon is here, in the one place I thought I might have a reprieve. He hasn't noticed yet which seems weird in itself. Isn't he supposed to be some grief-twisted part of my brain? Or maybe I've always been this way. The two explanations I have for the memory of that day in the basement are neither one comforting.
Either way, Damon is uninterested in my struggle. He's leaning over and glaring at framed family photos on my parents' dresser. He looks pissed.
I'm not sure if I should care what his problem is. Thinking about the implications of a person my mind may or may not have invented when I was six having independent thoughts and feelings is giving me a headache. I close my eyes and lean back against the door with a sigh.
I regret opening my eyes again. Not only is Damon still there, he's turned his intense blue gaze on me. The rage and hurt there is startling and freezes me. There's an accusation in his eyes that makes my skin flush with a guilt I can't explain. The moment sense returns to me, I look down.
Damon cries out with low and animalistic ferocity. He lashes out at the photo frames. Though I brace myself for the crash, none comes. I trace the floorboards to his boots—I dare not look up at him. He's kicking at air. For the first time since losing grasp on reality, I feel like I'm the one intruding on something private.
Voices outside on the stairs block means of retreat in that direction. My eyes fall on the closet. The door is open. The plaid jacket my dad used to wear to drink coffee on the deck on cold mornings is hanging on one of the hooks.
I must be responsible for Damon's tantrum in some way. Something in me must be angry. At my parents? At myself? I'm not sure.
I step across the room and bury my face in the fleece of the coat. It smells like woodsmoke, but the comfort I seek is more illusive than a sense memory. I step into the closet where a large rack of my father's casual wardrobe hangs. I wrap my arms around a large cluster of pullovers. The smell of my father more successfully lingers here but the lack of warmth and a satisfying heartbeat has an effect opposite of what I was desperate to feel.
"Aghh!" I cry as I rip the clothes to the floor. My eyes brim with tears. "What is the point, Dad!?" I yell at nothing. "What is the point of surviving if nothing matters anymore? Why survive if all I want to do is turn everything I feel off!?" I punctuate my outburst by slamming my hand against the wall that partitions my father's recessed half of the closet from my mother's. The wood paneling provides little resistance and answers the assault with a hollow echo. My body stills. I wipe tears from my eyes in order to examine the paneling closer.
My curiosity has quelled my anger but not my heartbeat. It feels as if it's been injected with rocket fuel that at any moment might propel the organ out of my throat and free of my body. I dig blunt nails and shaky fingertips in between two panels. Interlocking grooves are the only thing holding them together. With some pressure the two slats come apart. Once I pull the panel away, the rest follow with relative ease.
"Custom skeleton storage," a sarcastic voice drawls, "Must've been quite the selling point for the Doc on this place." I can feel Damon watching me. His bitter sarcasm is both frustrating and welcome. He can't be wrong. If my parents were the honest people I worshiped, I wouldn't be staring at a padlocked door hidden in the walls of their closet.
I strangle the sound crawling out of my throat with my hands. I stumble backwards until I hit the opposite wall and sink against it to the floor. Pulling my knees to my chest and wrapping my arms around them, I rest my left temple there so I can stare at Damon's shins. A tear crawls over the bridge of my nose and falls into the other eye.
Everything I thought I knew is a lie.
The people who could give me the truth are dead.
The only thing that feels real to me is impossible.
Isn't he?
XXX
Today, I turn seventeen, but I feel a lot older than I did this time last year. I haven't been back in my parents' room since our first night here. The secret padlocked door remains unbreached, but the damage to who I thought my parents were is already done.
I want to know what's behind the door. I want to look behind it and discover something silly or harmless—something far less shattering than I'm imagining. Only, I know this is a box I can't unopen, and whatever I find may very well be worse. I may find more questions than answers.
I don't know that I can deal with any more uncertainty in my life right now. Whatever questions the hidden room presents will go unanswered. My parents won't offer any insights, any explanations or defense. My parents are dead.
The existence of the door is proof of some secret—of lies. Lies are far more certain than unanswered questions.
"Here, I won't tell." I look up at Jenna. She's eclipsing the sun and handing me a sweaty bottle of margarita flavored wine cooler. I chuckle and take it from her as she sits on the dock next to me. I've had harder stuff at school sponsored events.
I wrap my swimsuit cover-up around the lid, twist it open and take a drink.
"Thanks," I smile before setting it down next to my thigh.
"Your brother's doing alright with the grill—better than I would be." She takes a drink from a bottle of her own.
"Dad taught him." Jenna nods and looks out at my two best friends. Caroline has taken up residence in Jeremy's inter-tube wearing a pink, ruffled two-piece. Bonnie takes turns swimming between the two of us. Right now, she's torturing Care with little spouts of water she produces with a skilled squeeze of the fist.
"You don't want to get into the water?" Jenna asks over Caroline's unamused squeals and shrieks.
"I am." I lift my feet up to the surface of the lake and wiggle my toes.
"You know what I mean." I do, but I'm about as keen on fully submerging myself in a large body of water as I am on car rides.
"It's okay. This is nice," I indicate by wiggling my toes again. She smiles and wraps an arm around my shoulders. I lean in and rest my head. She gives me a firm squeeze.
I glance at Damon from Jenna's embrace. He's stretched out on his back, staring up at a sky as blue as the eyes that observe it. One of his arms is hooked under his head like a pillow at the corner of the dock. The other hangs off the side, swinging back and forth in the water but never producing any ripples. If anything, his presence has increased since coming to the lake house. I can't help wondering if my subconscious disapproves of my denial.
I sit up to look back at Aunt Jenna.
"Jenna?" I hedge.
"Hmm?" she hums in response.
"I know I'm still a kid and that Mom and Dad probably didn't tell me everything. But if there were something important—I mean they wouldn't have kept something like that from us forever?"
"Yeah, like whatever is inside the Russian nesting closets," Damon scoffs. He's been making similar comments since Friday. What's more distressing is Jenna's reaction. While a level of surprise and confusion are expected, the guilt is not.
"Elena—" she gapes.
"Eeeeee. Ew. Ew. Ew." Bonnie's screeches interrupt whatever it was Jenna couldn't figure out to say. She's jumped onto the dock from the side where Damon's arm hangs off. She flings both hands around in front of her and shudders. "Something touched me—in the water. Ew. Ew."
Damon is staring up at her with something like startled disgust and discomfort on his face. I don't blame him. Bonnie's grossed-out dance is happening in the middle of his abdomen.
"It was probably just a fish, Bon," I smile as I stand and take her hand. "It is a lake." I laugh and pull her toward me.
"I'm gonna go check on Jer," Jenna dismisses herself. I don't look back at her. I can't right now.
"Ugh. Whatever it was gave me the willies." Bonnie shudders again. I reclaim my spot on the dock and pull Bonnie down next to me. I dip my legs back into the water; she just crosses hers Indian style on the edge.
"What was that about? Jenna looked upset." Bonnie takes up the rest of my wine cooler and finishes it off before setting it back down. She's trying not to look too concerned, so I don't feel uncomfortable. She has a lot more tact in these situations than Caroline.
"Jenna's been great. There are just some things I realized I need to talk to my parents about. And now I can't. I shouldn't have said anything to Jenna. It just makes her feel worse." Bonnie takes my hand.
"I know what you mean. I can't really get any answers about my mom from Dad or Grams. The things I need to know they can't tell me." I squeeze her hand.
"I'm sorry I haven't been much fun. I keep wishing this could be sixteen again. In love with Matt again. Happy and carefree again. Oblivious to the possibility that anything could hurt like this." I let out a long sigh. Damon is sitting up on his elbows, watching our exchange.
"Oh, Elena," Bonnie wraps her arms around me, "you'll be happy and in love again, someday, but nobody expects you to be if you're not."
"Maybe not yet. Eventually, though, people are gonna expect me to move on," I glance at Damon over her shoulder," They're gonna expect me to get better."
Keep letting me know what you think. Elena's denial won't last forever. A Delena confrontation is coming.