Validation Beta: Sunking

The First Virtue

Teeny Tiny Twilight

I was staring at the pump's nozzle in my car, listening to the constant gurgle of gas as it ch-gluged into my tank. I was also listening to Alice with a grin on my face.

She was watching for Jasper, seeing to each and every decision he made, right down to how he was going to sit when Alice first saw him when we pulled up the drive.

Oh, Jasper, I thought sympathetically, and maybe with a hint of amusement, if only you knew. I suppose that's what you get for marrying a psychic though, especially one with photographic memory. If Alice didn't love us all so much, I'd be more concerned about blackmail.

Jasper had shifted from where he sat on the large white wraparound porch to the edge of the stairs so one leg dangle off casually, trying to look at ease. As if he wasn't nearly quivering in excitement to see my silver Volvo crunch its way up into view with the most important thing in his world sitting beside me.

I could feel Alice's adoration as she watched Jasper, every fibre of her being concentrated on the way his hair fell into his face as he moved. How could something so simple as that be enough to satisfy her attention? The whole of her attention riveted on simply the way he sat. Simply the fact that he was waiting for her was still just as startling, remarkable even as it had seemed to her so many years ago.

I felt a complexity of emotion while watching her blind eyes stare past time. A large part of me was amused by this. By how love could seep and spill into years, decades, centuries and still taste as fresh as the very first sight, their very first touch ringing eternal in her finger tips. It was delightfully entertaining to watch Emmett chase Rosalie with gestures of love, already knowing he had the prize; or to come home to find Carlisle and Esme dancing blissfully across the living room to the gentle rise and fall of Carlisle's voice gathering old symphonies and humming them quietly to her anew.

Alice watched as Jasper switched positions so he was lying on his side at the foot of the stairs, his arm propping his head up like a supermodel. I laughed aloud, and, as if hearing this, he quickly reverted to sitting more conventionally, his fist propping his chin up as he watched the edge of the driveway expectantly.

The nozzle clicked, trying to push my fingers away. I encouraged a few more chugs before replacing it in its cradle. I touched my back pocket, searching for the tell-tale bulge of my wallet.

Nothing.

I checked my other pockets mechanically, not really here anymore at all. Instead I was imagining a girl in a dark alley riffling through my wallet, her unusually deep eyes gleeful as she took out all the bills and pocketed them. Watched her debate shortly over the credit cards before tossing the remains on the ground. Watched someone find my ID.

The ensuing identity theft.

And when the perpetrator was caught, the police would come to inform me. They would track my name to find that I was still seventeen, maybe even younger depending on how soon we had started high school. I had my driver's licence in there. A photo and a date together to create an incriminating combination of identity.

If anyone found that...if they happened upon me later and found no difference between the man they saw in the picture, and the man they saw standing before them with all that time between the two...

Alice had been distracted by my slow growing horror as it collected on my face. How could I have possibly been so irresponsible? I had put us all at risk!

Quickly, an image started to trickled into her consciousness, slowly soaking her mind until it enveloped her.

Alice could always think through her visions, of course, but they blinded her, replacing the present with the future. No matter how many times it happened to her, it was always disconcerting to lose a major sense. Depending on what she saw, it could be downright frightening.

This was completely different from calling visions onto herself. When she chased them down and pulled them over her eyes, it was like playing with an old blanket. You already knew before you pulled it over your face what you would find underneath.

It was times like these in the beginnings of her visions when the initial shock and then the distress began, just like the very first time she had experienced it. It was the initial fear as she lost sight, the sudden feeling of vulnerability that accompanied the blindness, and then the Images that followed. I felt suddenly grateful that though my gift ran all the time, it never took from me as Alice's took from her.

This time, I experienced horror as well.

I stared at Alice as she resurfaced into the present, me with eyes aghast with disbelief, Alice with a curious look. "Hmm," she murmured, contemplating my motives.

"I need to hunt." I muttered unhappily. Alice nodded, and I jogged across the road from the gas station, pushing through the first layer of thin trees with grabbing branches. Stay, I could feel the blood thirsty monster within me purr, you don't want this. You want her.

I narrowed my eyes and shoved through one unlucky grabbing tree, snapping its thin trunk with excessive force. Yes,I agreed, but I knew that for as much as I wanted her, there was only one thing I wanted more.

To be human again.

To never feel the thirst turn my mind to gruesome images. To never again feel my body prepare for an attack that I hadn't even considered yet. I never ever wanted to feel more animal than man ever again. The instant gratification of her blood on my tongue would only drag me further from the thing I wanted most.

With that, I ran. I ran until I caught the scent of deer and then as I got closer, the fresh earth they had turned up in their passing.

I knew even before my teeth sank into the deer's throat that this animal's blood would taste more terrible than usual, and yet more impossibly sweet with premeditated victory than I had ever tasted.

Knew it, because the last thing I saw before leaping at the startled animal was the questioning shape of her eyes.

For every yellow line that I passed, each one bringing me closer to home, I was struck with another thought of her. The girl was scattered across my mind like shards of a shattered mirror. One thought would shine like a beam of light through my attention, catching the glass, and throwing it into a million different directions.

Part of this was Alice's fault.

Most of it was mine.

I had come back to find that Alice had pulled into a parking space to free up the gas tank, sitting with her knees propped up on my dashboard and staring contemplatively out the windshield at the dirty gas station. It seemed what while I had been chasing down the unappetizing animals, and drinking their slightly more appetizing blood, Alice had come up with a few theories.

"I'm going so I can retrieve my wallet." I told her sternly before she could test any of her theories. Some of them quite ridiculous, while others seemed quite disconcertingly plausible.

One being curiosity.

It hadn't been something I could have afforded myself to concentrate much on then, but the mystery of her mind did admittedly pique me. I had never had to try to hear another's thoughts. They usually imposed themselves onto my mind with the force of a great gushing river, breaking past any barrier that I attempted to construct against them.

I could only partially ignore the thoughts, but the moment someone thought my name, or anything of even meagre interest, their voice would roar through my consciousness.

Not hers. How curious.

No. It was not curious. I wouldn't allow it to become curious. She was simply human, nothing more, and nothing less. Perhaps I couldn't read her mind because she had smelt so good. I was too distracted to find the roundabout way that I needed to use to infiltrate her mind. It had never happened before, but there was a first time for everything. And when I did break into her mind, I would be disappointed. There really was not point in trying to understand her at all. It was an absolute waste of my time.

"Oh," Alice said, and then she understood with a great amount of relief. "So it wasn't blood lust?"

Why do you care? I thought angrily, but of course she would care. A slip of that magnitude would put her in danger of exposure too.

I was being absolutely selfish. Maybe I did need to get my wallet back, but I also knew that a large part of it was pride. I had run from her once, so delicate and weak, now I wanted to return, to reclaim my security. She was merely a human with an appetizing scent. I would have the strength this time. I was prepared.

Alice decided that I had been suffering in my own mind long enough. She welcomed me into hers.

"He's waiting for me on the stairs," she said, smiling as she saw that she had indeed distracted me. "He's considering plans to welcome me home. As of now, it's a midnight stroll on the beach." Her smile brightened at the thought, the stars, the moon. The night was always a point of romance and nostalgia for both Alice and Jasper. They had spent so much time travelling to find us through the nights, hiding together during the day in between.

Alice could already see the way that the light of the moon would make the pale sand glow from her memories of similar nights with Jasper. She loved the ocean the most.

"Oh," I said thoughtlessly, looking up at the waning night. "It might have to be an early morning stroll, I doubt we'll make it home before midnight."

Alice looked at me and blinked once, and then disappeared into her vision. We both watched how the sun would stain the sky into brighter shades of blue, chasing away the stars just as they both walked out onto the beach, hand in hand.

"Oh." She said, disappointed. Visibly deflated, she turned away from me.

I was horrified with myself. I hadn't meant to hurt her, I was only being realistic. Thoughtlessly speaking without even considering that I might offend her. God, no wonder I was alone.

"But," I continued quickly, scanning the stars again, this time for something to brighten Alice again. "You will definitely make the sun rise. Which is so much more beautiful than the moon. More romantic."

I was grasping at straws, but Alice was bright again. "You're right. I mean, the moon sticks around all night, but the sunrise...it's so fleeting. If you don't grab onto it right, away it's gone."

I grinned at her, pleased that I had finally done something right.

I dropped Alice off at the house. Jasper was waiting in apparent leisure, hands behind him to support his torso as if he had been watching the sky. As if he hadn't been on guard all night at the foot of the driveway, waiting for the slightest sound on the highway to announce our approach, getting excited every time a car passed.

Emmett was bouncing around inside the house as if he'd drunk a whole pot of coffee to himself.

Rather than skip right to Jasper, as I saw that Alice had initially intended, she skipped off into the woods, towards the beach, knowing that Jasper would be right behind her.

Jasper followed after her with a grin. 'Should have known,' he thought with amusement. His happiness at her return was enough to outweigh the disappointment that his surprise had been ruined. After all these years, Jasper was the only one who continued to try and surprise Alice.

I pulled in a deep breath, not catching even a whiff of the girl anymore. The leather was almost fresh smelling, the carpeting and the fabric on the roof had finally relinquished her memory in favour of Alice's, whose scent was now as strong as mine, masking hers entirely.

I couldn't celebrate this as I turned around in the driveway.

I was off to revive the girl's slow smouldering fires.

I didn't know what I expected to find.

Did I honestly think that she would run out at me from one of the dark alleys between the crumbling buildings like a diseased, wild thing?

And then I laughed because I realized, on some level, I was scared of the slight girl who had nothing. No power or strength, no speed or even luck.

Definitely no luck.

I chuckled again, watching the sky carefully. No sun would break through the clouds today as Alice had assured me. Just the same, I couldn't help but want to find her in the dark, least I somehow drag her out into my daylight world where I was no more human than her.

As silly as it was, I was sure that if I only saw her in the night, she would never become real. Like monsters that hid in the dark corners of a child's room, disappearing with the morning light. She seemed to be my own personal demon. The monster that hid in my night.

If I escaped her before the morning, I was sure I could escape her for good.

The sky was choked with thick grey clouds that drank in the night's gloom. They seemed much less happy than I was with the turn this day had taken.

Actually, I realized with a start that I felt a slight degree of pleasant anticipation to see her again. Fear, also, but mostly just a giddy excitement.

What was wrong with me? I was acting like a child with a new toy. Was I really so inane as to be amused by such simple things? I hoped not, I imagined myself to carry at least some degree of depth to my character. Just flash something shiny and my attention was caught. How pathetic.

I had the feeling that this was all terribly off, as if I had struck a key wrong in the middle of a smooth composition...though my life had been anything but smooth. I had never spent much time considering the kind of woman I would fall for, but I had a general idea of what she would be. Intelligent, refined, well read with an easy humour and perhaps even a touch of expensive taste; enough to enjoy the merits of wealthy living.

And then I went and fucked a prostitute.

I believe my standards have lowered.

I wasn't sure exactly where I should go to find her, but if Alice had seen me finding her, then my searching must eventually be fruitful.

I wasn't paying much attention to where I was going, too lost in thought to be paying much attention to the roads. I was startled when I suddenly recognized my surroundings. The alarming Déja vu as I caught the underlying structure of home through the disease that plagued it with the 21st Century. It was like walking past home after the devastation of war.

I hated this place even before I saw the familiar night club/bar/hang out for whores. It was long closed by now, the lights turned off and the neon open sign hanging lifelessly in the barred windows. Just up the street though, there was a bus stop.

There was no cover, only a bench with a girl sitting there, a back-pack beside her.

If I'd had a heart to race, it would be slamming against my ribs. I could tell it was her even though she wore the casual attire that typical people wore: jeans, a sweater, practical running shoes with her hair up in a pony-tail rather than hanging down around her shoulders. There was also a large brown back pack resting beside her on the graffiti laden bench.

Was she running away, or did she actually go to school?

And then a more terrifying thought hit me. God, how old was she? She looked about my age, but she might just have matured early. What if she was sixteen? Fifteen? Jesus, I've seen thirteen-year-old's who could pass for seventeen. Maybe she did go to school. Oh god, I had sex with a thirteen-year-old.

The giddiness twisted sickly in my stomach and turned into nauseousness.

I groaned and rubbed my eyes. I wish I could drink and become inebriated, to simply drink until I forgot and passed out in an unconscious heap on the floor. I wanted to completely wipe this from my memory.

It wasn't helping at all that the girl—whose name I didn't even know—was kicking her feet and staring at my slow approaching car with curiosity. I suddenly saw it as a child's curiosity.

I pulled up against the curb beside the bench morosely and let the car idle. I wanted to slide right out of my seat and through the floor, through all the many layers of earth, then bedrock, and then finally disappear into the magma in the earth, finally meeting my fiery fate.

I settled for slouching.

The girl stood up off the bench and walked over to the car. Her eyes had sharpened to spear points, and her face was grim. I couldn't even celebrate in the fact that I had stopped searching. The relentless need to do so had dissipated in her presence.

She stopped outside my passenger side door and waited. I sighed—one last clean breath of air—and leaned across the seat to open the door for her.

"It's open." I said simply as the door swung ajar.

She opened it up wider. "I was actually waiting for you to roll the window down, but thanks." She reached into her hoodie pouch and produced—miracle of miracles—my wallet.

My whole day brightened immediately. There was to be no searching through dingy alleyways today for the remaining scraps of my ID. My good mood was also due to the fact that I hadn't taken a breath since she had opened the door. My throat felt fine and cool.

I smiled carefully at the girl, making sure that no deadly, too white, razor sharp teeth peeked through my lips at her. It felt like such an awkward expression with my lips plastered tightly against my teeth when all I wanted to do was beam at her.

"Thank you." I murmured in a kind, quiet voice that I used to ease humans.

It had the opposite affect on her though. She became suddenly guarded, as if I had bared my teeth at her like a hungry animal; which wasn't too far off the mark.

It was all so clear on her deceptively open face, though her mind remained shut to my prying. The way her expression changed to surprise and then the tightening of her shoulders as her guard rose. There was a small little wrinkle between her brows that suggested unease, worry at my perfectly rational response to her kindness.

It was all so clear, and yet, I didn't understand.

"No problem." She shot sideways as if my words had a second, more sinister meaning, tossing me my wallet with a casual flick of her wrist. It was—again—such an unusual response for my perfectly natural words. I reached up to touch my face self-consciously, wondering if there was something offensive there.

Beyond the confusion, I was a little hurt. I had been absolutely genuine in my gratitude. I wasn't sure where the insult came from, since I was the last person anyone should trust. I lied to humans all the time. I lied to humans by simply walking into a class room, let alone all the stories we told. Oh, my parents died when I was young. Yes, I was adopted at eight. Only Alice is my biological sister... so on so forth.

It took me a long moment to realize where my irrational pique stemmed from. This mistrustful sideways look she had thrown me was derived from a past of offences. She wasn't used to "thank you's". Considering her occupation, she probably wasn't used to kindness in any of its forms. Oddly, this really bothered me. It bothered me more than it should.

I had considered all this before the wallet struck the palm of my mechanically positioned hand and my fingers closed around the warm leather instinctively. Warm leather because she was very, very warm. Very much alive. I forced myself to remember this.

She was alive, and this was good.

I would make it my mantra if it was necessary.

A strange kind of protectiveness welled up in me for this troublesome girl. I hoped that after I had disappeared from her life, and I would disappear, her luck would change for the better. Maybe she would find a more ethically friendly occupation, or her parents would find her. I realized that my well wishing was the greatest kindness I could offer, and that bothered me more than the look.

And what was worse, her silence was both entirely, imperceptibly weightless as I couldn't even detect it, and unbelievably conspicuously heavy as I couldn't stop thinking about it, lingering just beyond the passenger side door. It was the most irritating thing about all this, beyond even my helplessness.

I was very aware of the safe air left in my lungs as I leaned over and smiled again, trying to become as aesthetically pleasing to her as possible. Widened eyes, my head tilted down slightly in a sign of submissiveness, kind, polite smile...and no teeth. What wasn't to like about the volatile vampire?

"How old are you?" I asked as sweetly as possible.

She sucked in a quick breath as if I had told her I stepped on a nail this morning. It was the sound of sympathetic pain. "You really want to ask that?"

"Yes." Did she find my question rude? Had I actually offended her and if I had, how deeply? I instinctively probed at her silence and found nothing. It was like she didn't even exist, though she stood but feet from me.

She was close enough for me to reach over and touch her...but I wouldn't. It would be dangerous and foolish and just plain stupid and irresponsible on my part. I had done enough damage.

Or had I? She seemed incredibly placid for someone who had seen something very strange. Did she even remember it? Maybe she had already explained away my sudden appearance at my car. Explained it as something normal, and then, as humans so easily do, she forgot about it.

Humans liked what they understood. It wouldn't be the first time the self preservation mechanism to make sense of unusual things had worked in my favour. The apparent safety in the common and everyday put humans at ease in ways that the actual truth of a situation never could.

I wasn't sure how she had warped the scene she had witnessed to force it into the strict confines of normalcy. The darkness had played tricks on her eyes? I had found a different exit from hers? I wouldn't know. She stood staring at me with those sharp eyes that seemed to show an incredible depth into her, and yet were so dark that the secrets that swam tauntingly just below the surface were thrown into absolute shadow. Absolutely impossible to read, and yet, somehow, I felt as if I was part of that opaque darkness. So close that I could almost just lean forward and touch—

Stop.

I shut my eyes tightly. What was I doing? I needed to stop trying to decipher her eyes. Granted, her mind was an anomaly, and yes, such was unusual enough to garner interest, but I would not be interested. I had already decided this. She was human, and humans had a tendency to think in such similar ways that hearing one was just as well as hearing them all.

Besides, the disappointment in expending so much interest and energy in cracking into her mind, just to uncover the same mindless, self-absorbed chatter that filled the rest of the population would be a far greater blow than simply walking away from a curious situation. It would be a waste of my time to even watch the slight changes in her expression. She obviously hadn't tortured herself as I had from our previous encounter, so why should I continue to worry?

I would simply disappear as a strange rich fool who threw his wallet around for a laugh.

I refused to care anymore. Even if she was young, what was done was done with apparently no damage done.Why bother? Why worry? It was over.

What I wouldn't give to actually be able to believe that.

Chime was silent, watching me with a troubled expression. Finally, she sighed. "Do me a favour Edward, and I'll tell you what you want."

"A favour?" I started, unsure. Her silent mind was becoming more and more troublesome, rather than more bearable as time passed.

And then I realized she said my name.

I had never told her my name.

"How—" And then I looked down at the wallet that was still in my hands. My ID. My name, my age, my birthday, even when my licence was up for renewal.

A cool sinking feeling started in my stomach.

Not good.

Chime cocked her eyebrow at me with a small knowing smile. She was well aware of my realization as she produced my ID from her back pocket. "A favour?" she repeated as I stared at her in shock that slowly dissolved into anger.

I glared blackly at her. "What?" I asked sharply, not making any promises. I was already planning how I would get out of the car. I could easily run her down without even breaking my human facade. Her legs, while long for her body, were short in comparison to my stature. Then it would be an easy task to simply pluck my ID from her fingers. All she was doing was inconveniencing me, and putting herself in danger.

Stupid girl.

Chime seemed absolutely unfazed by my anger. She was even so bold as to sit down in the car with me. I tried very hard not to think about how her scent was soaking into the leather through her jeans, how it would permeate through her sweater and into the air. Even with the door open, her scent would be nearly lethal. Simply taking a breath would cause me to combust into flames.

"I never want to see you again." She said simply, and then flicked my driver's licence at me before I had even a chance to get over the new shock of her words, let alone agree.

I realized as my hand automatically rose to catch the thin slip of plastic that she never meant to blackmail me with the ID. It was simply to get my attention, and I had to applaud her technique grudgingly. She had my undivided attention.

"Why?" I gasped. Not that I was ever planning to return to her, or any of her friends, but I was impossibly curious. Maybe what she had seen in the parking lot had affected her. Maybe she remembered.

Maybe she had theories.

A strand of hair had fallen out of her pony tail and into her face. She blew it out of her face in an irritated way that both interested and amused me. Why not just move it? I caught my hand just as I moved to tuck it behind her ear myself.

Stupid. There was no 'you break it, you buy it' policy here. Once she was broken, there was no way to compensate for her absence.

"Because, Edward," she said shortly, "I have seen too many kids like you get messed up by hanging around with the wrong crowd," she gestured to herself.

Kid? Did she just call me a child? I was older than her grandfather.

I cocked my head at her. "You're the wrong crowd?" Was she seriously trying to tell me she posed a danger to me? That was the most ridiculous thing I had ever heard. Even more so than her implication that I was too juvenile for her life style.

Chime watched me sadly. "I'm not good, Edward. I could destroy your future by just being around you."

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. She had already taken my lines. No, I wanted to argue, I'm not good for you. I could take your future from you by simply breathing at an inopportune time. Like any time around you.

What was I supposed to say to that? I felt very much speechless.

"Just promise me you'll stay away? That you won't do this again?" She stared at me, and I was suddenly lost in her face. There was such a depth of emotion to her face. Not just her eyes which seemed to see right through me, right into me, into my past but the whole of her face right down to the way she held her mouth. I imagined she saw each of my regrets as easily as I saw the concerned lines between her brows, gathered into a small 'V'.

For that one moment, I was at ease. Terrified by the newness, the strangeness of this sudden comfort, but strangely at ease despite it.

"I promise."

Her eyes closed and her head dropped forward slightly in relief. I felt a sudden, urgent bloom of intimacy in the gesture. The strange misplaced trust on her part to feel that she could rely not only on my words, but the safety she seemed to feel this close to me. And then, to make herself more vulnerable still by closing her eyes.

I tried to think back to when there was ever a human that was at this proximity and still at ease. Or even this close to me at their own freewill, at ease or not. I couldn't remember any.

She opened her eyes then, and smiled at me. Thankful, though she didn't thank me. I didn't need to read her mind to hear the gratitude. It was there in her face, the small smile on her face that pulled at the corners of my mouth.

Suddenly giddy, I smiled back at her. My teeth slipped past my tight lips into a generous smile. Happy. I felt happy. I liked pleasing her, this stranger whom I didn't know at all. Not even her age.

She hadn't told me.

She stood up, getting out of the car. I had about enough air to ask this, and maybe a few small words, and then my oxygen was gone. Before I could though, she turned. She looked unwilling, as if giving me this small amount of information pained her.

"I'm seventeen."

I relaxed.

She smiled kindly then, "And I like your contacts."

My brow furrowed in confusion. "I didn't get contacts."

"Oh," now she was the one who looked confused. "Your eyes changed."

I went rigid with stress.

She walked away from the car, the door closing behind her with a very loud bang to my suddenly keen ears. Just like that, she left me again in a state of devastation. Of horror.

Another slip. Not a large one. Not like the last one, but it was a slip all the same. I hadn't even been with her for a full five minutes this time.

Humans should be too nervous around me to even note the colour of my eyes to begin with. The humans at my school that had known me for years still confused the colour of my eyes. Jessica Stanley had even imagined me with blue eyes in one of her many fantasies.

Laughable.

Yet this strangely observant girl had not only remembered the colour of my eyes from our last short meeting in the dark, but knew the exact shade a week later well enough to confidently make a comment about the change.

What else had she remembered with such accuracy?

My hand thoughtlessly rose and turned the time sensitive light off in my car, still lingering, as if waiting for her return. I realized I was hoping that I could hide in the darkness, as if by simply being unseen, I could erase what she could see.

I needed a distraction, even if just a small one. I opened my wallet with much more concentration than was needed, checking to make sure I had all of my other meaningless slips of plastic. My credit cards, the average one that I used regularly, and the sleek black one that I used when we needed to conceal ourselves. My student card, my bank card, and others.

No pictures but my photo ID's. No receipts. Nothing personal enough to link me to anyone or anywhere. All my personal pictures and things were either in a safe that held the last of my parents' belongings or in my room.

As I slid my driver's licence into the clear plastic sheath in the forefront of my wallet, I saw with a shock that there was money in my wallet. I pulled it all out.

There seemed to be more here than before. That couldn't be right though, could it? I counted it quickly and found that there was an extra three bills in here than before. And yet there was One-hundred-and-twenty dollars missing.

I frowned and counted it again, not understanding and then it struck me as I hit the four extra twenties.

I hadn't had twenties in here before. It had only been hundreds and two one-thousands. I had planned to break some of the hundreds while on my little excursion the night I met Chime.

My head snapped up towards the bench.

Her charge. She had gone and broken one of my hundreds to get her charge. I stared at her as a light started to rise around her.

Why? Wouldn't it have been less troublesome to just take two hundreds? I couldn't imagine she would have easily found a place in this neighbourhood that would trustingly take hundreds. Why not just strip my whole wallet of cash? It wouldn't have been less than I deserved for how I had treated her. Karma dictated that I should come back to find my wallet empty.

I kept tumbling over questions without a hope of an answer when I became horrified.

I was staring at the bench where Chime sat again with her back-pack without meaning to. Now my eyes drifted past her with a sinking feeling to the horizon where the clouds that had before been saturated with the night were now aflame with the sun.

I had dragged her out into the day.

She turned then, as if just realizing that I was still there, feeling my gaze on her. I couldn't see her features, the light had risen directly behind her, so I was perfectly visible in the dark corner of my car while she was veiled in light.

She raised a hand and waved.

I pretended not to see, pulling away from the curb instead. Goodbye, I thought. Goodbye and good luck.

I turned illegally on the street and started for home.

The light chased me all the way there.