A/N: Surprise! Honestly I have no idea why I keep giving estimates of when I'll post when I obviously am painfully incapable of sticking to them. Anyway, here's August.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot; everything else is S. Meyer's.
August 1 – Saturday
Angry red lines, zigzagging up my forearms.
Don't be mistaken, these aren't scars.
Scars prove mending. These are cracks, foreshadowing my imminent shattering.
oOo
August 2 – Sunday
I don't even know anymore. She craves silence, but she fills her days with noise. White noise, black noise, furious raging red noise. Her eyes are hard and her fists are balled up. She revels in spiteful, acidic words, that she hurls at our faces like she can force more corrosive syllables out of us.
She's been shoving at everyone, and no one knows how to talk to her anymore. She's like a storm, looming in the background, aching in our bones.
We all know it's but a matter of when.
oOo
August 4 – Tuesday
She's been diving more than ever, but now she scares even Leah. Her exhilarated whoop is a battle cry, a challenge, a huge come get me to the world. Only no one's there. No one will come and get her. She knows she's screaming out into emptiness - and it drives her wild.
She's ready to fight, but no one's in the arena with her. So she turns against herself. Jump after jump, scream after scream, word after word, she slashes and slits again and again. Then she writes the tale of her battles in a small black notebook, and I get to grieve for what she's lost.
oOo
August 6 – Thursday
Forget days – she's closing off by the hour. Something's happened in that head of hers, something I don't quite understand. An epiphany.
She's weighing the pros and cons now, but I know her mind is already made up. What hurts most is that she hasn't breathed a word to me. Or anyone else, really.
Her friends can't see this – this energy building up, ready to strike when and how we don't expect it. Rose thinks she's being "bitchier than usual". Jake thinks she's musing. Em thinks we fought. Leah thinks she's just grumpy.
Only Alice and Jasper's deep eyes and silent thoughtfulness make me think they might feel it too.
oOo
August 9 - Friday
She's gone. I don't understand. She's fucking gone.
No one's home anymore. Her dad's at La Push, but she's not. Searched the entire house, panicking like a motherfucker, when a phone rang. Her old one, that she'd replaced a couple months ago.
A sticky note on top that said, please don't pick up.
The voicemail she left was exactly fifty-seven seconds long.
"Edward. I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing. But I need out. I'm sorry, I can't stay anymore, it's just… I can't. I need to be out for a while, and breathe different air, and feel myself moving. I swear nothing will happen to me. I won't… do anything. Not without… You know. A goodbye.
This isn't goodbye. This is "I'm elsewhere but I'm still thinking of you". This is "doing things for me doesn't mean I won't be back for you". This is "I can't promise I won't get hurt, but I swear I won't be hurt beyond a reasonable limit". I need to hurt, Edward, but I can't hurt you.
I swear I'll be back, okay, but it won't be right now. This, right now, this is… time for me."
Forget about the scars, and the silence, and the jumping. Today was the day Bella Swan pushed me past the brink of sanity, into a whole new territory, essentially made of deprivation. Sleep, food, conversations, focus – all of that she took and left with. And I have nothing left to do but wait by a phone she won't let me pick up.
oOo
August 12 – Monday
She keeps in touch, through voicemail. Won't talk to me, but lets me hear her. I think the recordings only drive me crazier. They're full of sentences like get the fuck off of me before I stab the cocky out of you and no, I don't; and even if I did, it wouldn't be yours. Those aren't for me. They're for the bad news guys she surrounds herself with. I can almost hear the fucking oozy leers and grimy words.
She tolerates them. But stays away from me.
oOo
August 16 – Friday
She won't tell me where she is until she isn't there anymore; and she's been hopping from city to city on a bike she got from Leah's brother.
I may or may not have threatened the kid with severe bodily harm. And attempted to make good on said threats before being stopped by some of the other guys.
oOo
August 18 – Sunday
Her dad and the rest of the PD have no idea where the fuck they're going, even though they keep telling the good people of Forks that they're "doing everything they can" and Bella "will be back in no time".
That's absolute bullshit. B'll be back when she wants to, and not an hour sooner.
And I'm terrified that when she is back, it'll be for a goodbye.
oOo
August 20 – Tuesday
The voicemails are getting longer, she's telling me more. Not about her whereabouts, more about who she is.
"You asked about my nightmares. They're nothing special really, I just… don't like giving people insight on what's going on inside my head.
It's always people, so many faceless, grasping people. In my room, in my old house, always somewhere that feels both like home and a cage. And they're coming for me. Reaching, struggling, their hands all over me until I suffocate. I'm getting tiny and they're getting huge and there's nothing I can do, because really, who am I? Some random speck of dust?
And there's more and more and I shriek and fight like a mouse bleeding to death. Slowly fading, but really there was nothing much to start with. I end up torn apart, and every part of me becomes theirs to toy with, because I was never my own to protect and nourish. They carry me in their pockets and I'm fragmented and dispatched and still they're all over me and it never stops, never stops, never stops.
So, yeah. I don't like to sleep."
oOo
August 23 – Friday
"You know that text I just know you read in my notebook? The one about bloody snow?
It wasn't even snowing when I jumped. But when I was falling, that visual wouldn't leave my mind. I'd been feeling kinda bad about the gruesome splatter I knew I'd leave on the sidewalk, a tale for my neighbors, a memory for my mom, but that image… it seemed so pure, undisturbed, like it was meant to happen. Delicate snow, crimson drops and tiny glass daggers. No footprints, no sound, just the soothing murmur of too much silence. The subtle glow of a landscape you know no soul has seen before you. It gave me hope."
oOo
August 27 – Tuesday
"You know what happened this morning? I breathed.
I mean it, Edward. I sat on a bench and realized I was breathing.
I'll be heading back, now. I found what I've been looking for."
oOo
August 29 – Thursday
She was home today. I haven't seen her that much. She's fine though, that I've made sure of. Physically, at least.
We'll need to talk once the rest of Forks is through with her.
A/N: So. The end is near.
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