A/N:
I hope you enjoy this next installment! I want to thank all my readers and reviewers for being so kind to me. This chapter is much more suspenseful than the last two have been. Please enjoy it!
Chapter 12
Her mother laughed gleefully as she was tackled. The girl smiled big, enjoying the moment. They were together in the grass. She picked a bluebell flower and gave it to her mother, who was pleased. Her mother in turn gave her a crown of daisies she had been making. Her mother insisted that a true princess should always wear a crown.
The girl sat in front of a strict woman. The strict woman had a long ruler in her hands and would beat her wrists when she said something out of line. "Your name is Valette," the strict woman would say. "You live here, with me and the others. These are your family, friends, and school. You belong with us." But the girl couldn't help but feel like the strict woman was wrong. She felt an odd feeling of resentment, but she couldn't grasp why.
She sat with the other children, wondering what would be for dinner. Her stomach growled, reinforcing her hope for potatoes or chicken. Finally, the food came out and it was pasta with meat sauce and she frowned, making a disgusted face toward it. She had eaten pasta the last three nights, and was in no way excited for it. But she grumbled, picking at her plate and eating bits of the food. She knew it was better to eat now rather than to be hungry later. She had been through the hungry phase before, and had learned that no matter how hungry she was, if it wasn't time to eat then she wasn't eating. It was the "only way to manage food in this house."
She was running in the streets, trying to get away from a building that towered in front of her mind. She was afraid, although why exactly was lost on her. She felt a need to escape. She ran, taking a left turn then a right then another two lefts until she came to the train station. She snuck onto a train, not sure where it was heading, but positive that it would lead her someplace better.
She walked into a shop with a neon green sign. It had a variety of things on the shelves. She went to the back and found the cloths section and started to pile her arms with many different shades of black fabric. She took it to the counter and paid for the cloth, getting a plastic bag with a fish on it from the lady. She walked out of the store. She kept walking, but sensed someone behind her. She whirled around to face a skinny boy about her age. He looked hungry. She sighed, ushering for him to follow her.
They went to a fast food restaurant a few blocks away. She paid for his meal and they ate in silence. He thanked her greatly, but she only smiled. "I've been hungry like that before, and I know how it feels to be turned away by everyone else," she said. She got up to leave, motioning for him to follow. As she was walking out, he hugged her from behind, grasping her tightly, as if from desperation.
She felt a great shiver wrack her whole body, as if a sign that the hug was wrong. Her eyes widened in fear, and she spun around, wiggling out of his grasp. But then, she felt like she was supposed to want to be hugged. As if the hug was a miraculous, beautiful thing. She felt terrible that she had turned him away, and looked up at his face to apologize.
He was Mecha Cop.
Valette shot up, breathing heavily. She clutched her head. No no no no no what is up with me? She shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts, but her mind wouldn't stop racing. Something must be wrong with me, she kept thinking. And it's all Mecha Cop's fault. I…
She had to escape. She didn't know why exactly she had to escape, but she had this burning feeling in her chest that she felt wouldn't go away unless she escaped. Unless she got away from the source of this. She threw herself out of bed, looking for the closest way out. She turned toward the window. She rushed to it and opened it and threw herself out into the cool night air. She fell onto grass, and felt a small twinge in her ankle. Hurry… have to escape…
She sprinted around to the front yard, past Mecha Cop's car and toward the gate at the front of the long yard. She heard the front door to the house open, and she spun to see Mecha Cop, his eyes wide as he chased after her.
"Wait, Valette!" he called. Her eyes widened, and she found that she couldn't run. She tried to back away slowly, knowing that she needed to get out, no matter what, that she needed to escape. But she was stuck.
"Come back!" Mecha Cop cried. Valette shook her head, trying to back away more, but she couldn't break contact with Mecha Cop's pleading eyes. She couldn't stop staring into those terrified, wide, concerned eyes that—finally, she took another step, and then another, and then—
Valette's foot went straight into the ground—the same foot that she had felt a twinge in earlier. Her eyes shot wide with pain as she gasped. She fell onto her back.
"Valette!" Mecha Cop screamed. He ran to her side, checking her for signs of injury, when he noticed her foot. "Are you okay?" he asked.
Valette didn't respond. Her eyes were slightly open, and he could tell that she was still breathing, thank goodness. He gathered her in his arms. Her body shivered all the way back to the house, and the same feeling overcame her as did in her dream. That same feeling of being held as wrong, yet beautiful, yet so terrible at the same time. She didn't know what to believe anymore.
He set her on the couch, putting a pillow underneath her injured left foot. He propped her up with another pillow behind her back. He turned on a lamp nearby, then went into the kitchen to get some ice.
Valette breathed out a sigh of relief. She looked at her ankle, trying to move it from side to side, but when she moved it too far to the left, pain shot up her leg. She gritted her teeth in frustration. What the hell happened to me? She thought.
Mecha Cop returned with an ice pack wrapped inside a washcloth. "Are you okay?" he asked, placing the ice pack to her foot.
She cringed. "What's wrong with my foot?" she asked.
"You may have sprained it when you stepped in that hole," Mecha Cop said, carefully holding her foot to the cooling ice pack. "Was it hurting before then?"
"I…" Valette trailed off, realizing that she was getting that odd feeling again. The feeling from the dream. No, focus, she thought. What was the question again? She tried to think of another instance in which she could have hurt her ankle. "When I jumped out the window, I felt a small twinge in my ankle, but I assumed it was nothing."
"You probably hurt it then, and it only got worse when you fell in that small pothole."
"Oh."
"Tell me if this hurts," said Mecha Cop. He slowly turned her foot to the right, finally reaching ninety degrees. Valette shook her head. He slowly rotated it toward the left, but when her ankle hit forty five degrees Valette cried out in pain.
"Sorry," said Mecha Cop, putting her ankle back to its normal position. "We'll have to take you to the doctor's tomorrow to check it out. Do you need anything?"
Valette shook her head, the feeling getting stronger.
"You're okay?"
"I'm fine," Valette said through gritted teeth. The feeling was getting intolerable. She didn't like it. It was new and weird and she wasn't quite sure what to think, so she immediately classified it as a bad thing. It was altering her perceptions, but how, she wasn't quite sure. But she knew that she should have been responding differently to everything that was going on right now. What is wrong with me?
"Will you be able to get to sleep?" Mecha Cop asked, shifting the ice pack on her foot.
"I'm fine," Valette stressed. She noticed a mood shift in Mecha Cop as he stood up from the couch. Did he look kind of… sad now? Perhaps a little distressed, even?
"Okay. Good night," he said, nodding at her. He walked off, up the stairs and to his room. Valette heard the door shut behind him. He was gone, and yet the feeling wasn't.
She was positive that the feeling was because of him. She hadn't felt it until her dream, which, despite fading, the very last picture of his face wouldn't go away. She rubbed her forehead, trying to rub the feeling out of her head, but she couldn't make it leave. And with it came thoughts of Mecha Cop. She wasn't quite sure what it was, or why it came, but it was new and annoying and she hated it. Why can't I make it leave me alone? She thought desperately. I don't… I don't want to feel anything if this is what I'm feeling. I don't even know what it is and I already dislike it.
She swept her feet down to the floor, getting up to pace, when her ankle screamed with pain and she dropped to the floor. She had been so caught up in her thoughts that she had forgotten about her ankle. Oh, god, OW.
She carefully crawled back up on the couch, laying on her side. She fumbled for the blanket on the side of the couch, pulling it over herself as the tears came. Tears because of her ankle, which she could tell was starting to swell again even after she had put the ice back on it. Tears because of that ugly feeling in her stomach. Tears because for some reason, she couldn't get his face—the true one she had seen, without his mask—out of her head and it scared her. Her body started to shiver again as she huddled in the blanket, silently crying herself to sleep.
Am I worth anything if all I can do is cry?
