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When I woke, my throat burned, it was painfully dry and my voice was no more than a hoarse wheeze. The doctor later called it inflamed. My hands were warm, each held tightly in the grasp of another.
Jamie sat in a chair to my right, bags darker than the bruises up and down my forearms weighed heavily on his sagging features. He wasn't the handsome prince of a boy that all the girls chased after. That I'd chased after. He looked like he aged a decade since he left for West Point a few months ago.
Alexei held my other hand with both of his. He sat on the floor, his head laying on my bed beside our hands. His hair was messed, like when Jamie used to ruffle it, and his nose was scrunched up. Did I smell? How long had I been here? Why was I suddenly self conscious? Those questions remained unanswered for a long time.
Warm light filtered into the room, streaking it with golden light. I could see my reflection in the mirror on the opposite wall and for once my hair looked beautiful, golden and wavy. I wanted to reach out to the girl in the mirror, tell her not to make my same mistakes. I wanted to hold my mother when she was my age and tell her to get rid of me before it was too late. I wanted to save the girl smiling in the photos on the bathroom wall. Her bathroom wall. I could almost hear her voice, calling my name, humming quietly while she twirled around the room. Her room. She would always be it's one true owner.
I was stunned into submission when my eyes fell back to the mirror. With the rising sun's glare blinding me, even I could have been tricked. Most could have been fooled into believing I was beautiful, like her, was her, but besides my hair I was disastrous. I looked worse than when I'd fallen from the German wall into the Canadian Courtyard.
Knock. Knock.
I whipped my head around, away from the mirror, the beautiful façade slipping away. Ms. Chancellor stood in the doorway, a soft and gentle smile was on her face. I could feel it's warmth like I felt the sun rays.
"Good morning, Grace." Her voice made the smile more obviously born of sympathy and worry. It didn't feel as warm anymore.
I wanted to wave, but I didn't dare. To move my hands would be to wake the boys. I wanted to speak, but my attempt resulted in nothing more than a few strangled and foreign noises. I had so many questions, but all I could manage was a smile, a weak copy of her original warmth.
"Would you like a glass of water, dear?"
I nodded and a throbbing pain engulfed my head. I couldn't help pulling my hands away from the boys, throwing them up to clutch my head. I felt hot tears roll down my cheeks and felt the bed dip on my left side as Alexei moved closer, hoping to inspect the newly awakened Gracie.
"Grace? Gracie, honey?"
"No!" I screamed, but it too was only a strangled cry, "Stop it! Please!"
"Gracie." Jamie called for me, moving closer. What was he doing here?
"Grace!" Alexei held my head in his hands trying to recapture my attention.
"Grace, dear?" Ms. Chancellor had floated over from the door.
"Gracie..." the voice of a ghost.
All their voiced blended together until only the strongest remained. I could tell you which voice belonged to each person and whose I most wanted to reply to, to hold on to like my life depended on it, but the haunting strength of the first and last calls sent me spiraling.
My name continued to ring out through the room, over and over and over, dozens if not hundreds of times, but only in her voice, my mother's. It haunted me, waiting to strike me dead, take revenge, as soon as no one was looking. Her voice was like a phantom, and so were the smoke and flames hiding around dark corners and crowding behind every picture and memento of her. The room was like an incinerator and I was dying in its embrace, no matter how lovingly she held me.
I felt warmth spread across my cheeks as I cried harder, and soon the voice disappeared, the flames receded, and the smoke was gone.
"Gracie!" The only noise left was this single voice speaking my name. It was deep, thick with worry, and harshly accented.
I blinked, hard and fast, and the room came back to focus. Alexei sat beside me, leaning over my reclined torso, his face less than a foot from my own, my shoulders in a grip so tight his knuckles were white.
Like a reflex, my arms were up between us, guarding my face. It felt like muscle memory, but when my body had learned it was a mystery. I squeezed my eyes shut, and he sat back, giving me space.
When I opened my eyes again, my soaked cheeks had been softly wiped dry, presumably by his damp sleeve. He soon noticed my eyes darting around, caught up in reality's current reformation. He gently put a hand beneath my chin and called my name again.
Reality was gone, so were Ms. Chancellor and Jamie, who I still could not be sure was actually here. Everyone and everything was out of sight, out of mind as his eyes pierced my soul and my walls imploded. I was terrified and he could see it all, everything, but now I'm not so sure why I was scared, because Alexei could always see right through me.
Maybe it was because for the first time in three years, since I killed my mother, I was vulnerable. I was hurting in front of Alexei for the first time since my leg was bloody and broken, my face pressed, firm and secure to his chest, wrapped in loving arms. That moment had long since passed. My leg is okay now, at least I think it is, I'm not in Alexei's arms, and I'm not the only vulnerable one.
Somewhere along the way, his walls had imploded too. Or maybe my own implosion had destroyed his too. For the first time ever, I can see how terrified and desperate he is.
He lowered himself so he was laying beside me in my mother's big pink canopy bed, and kicks off his sand crusted boots before pulling his legs up too. He puts his arm around my shoulders, and after a while he turns his head. His nose is pressed into my hair, eyes shut, and his grimace fades to a soft smile.
He murmurs nearly unintelligibly in my ear, and I could swear he says, "I do not want to lose you again."
I chalk it up to wishful thinking.
