Don't Let Go
Chapter Three: There's So Much to Be Said and Done
Sarah closed the door behind and dropped her bag to the floor. How many more scuffles did they have to have before Karen accepted that A) Sarah had a mind, and B) she wasn't about to share. Sarah went over to the bed and flopped down, causing the spreads to shift in slightly messy ways. She took a few deep breaths and tried very hard not to scream. Why wasn't anything going well today? All the words in the world weren't useful if they slipped out her mouth and messed everything up, over and over and endlessly over again.
With a sigh she rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling, her arms splayed out to her sides. Idly, she wished she had a fan or something that she could watch as it moved, because staring at the ceiling didn't do a single thing to quell the thoughts spinning madly in her mind. Unfortunately, really. A distraction would be nice-
No, a distraction wouldn't be nice. Not if it came in that form. Warily, Sarah turned to face her dresser mirror, and stared at her own suspicious eyes. Call it paranoia, call it delusion, call it what you will, but after the Toby incident she'd developed a severely cautionary apprehension of mirrors, more so in the dark than in the day. Sometimes, when she looked at her reflection at night, she couldn't tell if it was really her staring back out. And if she made the mistake of staring at her own eyes...she got caught, and couldn't look away.
She didn't think it was narcissism, if only because when it happened, the quality of her looks were the last thing on her mind. It was the nagging suspicion that whoever looked back out of the mirror, it wasn't her.
Sarah grabbed a light jacket and threw it over the mirror, blocking most of the revealing pane of glass. She exhaled with relief as the steady weight of being watched was lifted.
She went to her bookbag and pulled out a binder and a textbook. There was work to be done. And even though Sarah was fairly capable when it came to humanities and arts, math left her struggling. When she got a concept, she got it. In the meantime, though, it took her a while to grapple at the formulas, the logic behind doing this as opposed to doing that. Every once in a while, the concept would suddenly fall into place, and she could easily be the best in the class in that concept. Unfortunately, these flashes of insight occurred usually when the class had moved on, and so Sarah often found herself two or three concepts behind everyone else. She suspected she was not at fault; she wasn't stupid, by far. It just took her a while to get things the way they were taught.
She sat on her bed and started working at her problem set, ignoring the growling from her empty stomach. She couldn't go down and face Karen, not just yet. The tempers needed to cool before they were thrown together again.
As the night progressed, Sarah felt the hairs on the back of her neck prick up, one by chilling one. The steady stare from someone's pair of eyes bored into her back. Sarah sighed with exasperation and looked around the room, trying to find the guilty owner in the few dolls she'd kept in her last big cleaning, or perhaps the single photo she kept of Laura, her birth mother, who was still trying to make it big; or perhaps it was just nerves. She didn't dare consider the alternatives.
When she couldn't find the source, she turned back to her textbook and tried to concentrate. Failing that, she sighed loudly and slammed her book shut. She swung off the bed and fled the room, deciding that facing Karen was the lesser of two evils. But an evil to be avoided, if Sarah could just tiptoe and stalk into the kitchen without running into anyone.
No such luck.
"Sarah, can we talk?" Karen said, approaching from the living room. Sarah eyed her warily, and tried to fix her body language so that she didn't come across as sulky. She wanted Karen to treat her like an equal, since they couldn't build a mother-daughter bond. However, Karen had finally decided to really try to treat Sarah like her own daughter, leaving Sarah more frustrated than not.
"Sure. I guess." Sarah turned slightly towards the kitchen. "But can I get something to eat? I'm starving."
A look of annoyance passed briefly across Karen's face. "All right. You can heat up some of the macaroni, if you want."
Sarah shook her head. "No thanks. I'm more in the mood for a sandwich."
This time the look of annoyance stayed on Karen's face. "Sarah, if you refuse to eat with us-"
"Karen," Sarah halted calmly, moving along the kitchen counter to open the refrigerator. "You wanted to talk to me?" she reminded the woman, hopefully saving herself from a lecture on family togetherness.
Karen openly gaped at Sarah with disbelief. Then, struggling to recompose herself, she gritted,"Yes, yes I did. Sarah, look, I'm not trying to pry." Karen shrugged helplessly. "I just...I just want us to stop being strangers."
It was the same speech as always. Sarah had this one timed. If Sarah lost control and spoke her mind, the fifteen-minute peptalk easily turned into a two hour long scream and rage session. She really, really didn't have time for the two hour scream fit, so she simply nodded at appropriate points and let her mind wander as she chewed her ham and lettuce sandwich. Sometimes, Karen would walk away from the talk feeling as though she'd accomplished something, and could be counted on to leave Sarah alone. That prospect was particularly appealing, and Sarah hid a smile.
"...We do live in the same house, after all. And I know it's been rough, but if we don't work at it, we'll never be a family unit." Karen gestured helplessly with her hands. "I know you love Toby. I never thought you two would become that close, but I think it's wonderful," Karen looked slightly bitter as she said that. "I just wish you wouldn't shut me and your father out. We're here for you, and your poor father tries so hard. We went Christmas shopping last year, and he didn't have the faintest clue what to get you. You've become a stranger to us, your family, Sarah. I know that as a teenager, you have lots of things on your mind, but we're here to help."
Sarah swallowed a yawn. This would be winding down soon, judging by the look of defeat on Karen's face. Nope, this time Karen wasn't walking away with a sense of satisfaction. She knew Sarah wasn't listening, but she kept trying all the same. Sarah almost admired the woman's tenacity after a twisted fashion.
Finally, Karen's speech ran down, and she stared at Sarah quietly. Sarah finished the last bite of her sandwich and drank the last drop of water. Staring at the glass in her hand, Sarah asked,"May I go do homework now?"
At a loss, Karen sighed. "Yes, you may go do your homework." She made a stab of connecting with this daughter she'd inherited. "So, do you have a lot to do? Papers, tests?"
Sarah shrugged as she walked around her stepmother. "It's just schoolwork."
Leaving a perplexed Karen behind, Sarah retreated up the stairs and into her room. The minute her foot crossed the threshold, she frowned. Walking cautiously into the room, she closed the door behind her.
She was so sick and tired of all these games. But did she have the courage to end them forever? She hesitated, considering. The thought of having to spend the rest of her life under this shadow was unbearable, and she walked over to the mirror. She pulled the jacket off and took a few steps back, staring at the reflection that masked someone other than herself. She finally said in a quiet, surprisingly steady voice,"I know you're there. Come out and face me, for once."
Suspecting he had been there all this time was different than seeing him in the flesh. The Goblin King slipped through the mirror into her room, and leaned casually on the dresser, pushing aside a few impulse buys of nail polish and colored chapstick. She inhaled sharply, seeing him in his tight leather pants and poet's shirt. He had that same arrogant, self assured, lazy smirk on his aristocratic face.
She smiled faintly. "Hello, Goblin King."
His eyes widened mockingly. "So formal, Sarah." The words swirled in the room like an addictive aroma, saturating her soul. He licked his lips once and leaned forward slightly. "After all we've been through."
Sarah smiled sadly and tilted her head at him, keeping her distance. "I don't have the right to your name."
That gave the Goblin King pause, and he considered the woman-child with his beautiful mismatched eyes. "I have been generous."
"I know." Where were all the words she'd practiced? Where were all the thoughts and hopes that she'd toyed with, daydreaming in class about how she could fix things? "You came."
The Goblin King stretched out a hand and flipped it, revealing a crystal. He flipped his hand again, and another crystal appeared. These he began dancing them across his fingers, not looking at Sarah. "I came," he agreed in his arrogant voice. "Just as you wished."
"I would prefer you grant a different wish."
He paused in twirling his crystals and turned to stare at the girl. His face was curiously blank, disinterested, distanced. "Oh?" The single syllable was laden with so many thoughts and meanings.
Sarah wanted to respond to those emotions, to give him the right answer this time. But she had no right, not after all this time. So she said quietly,"I would prefer you not watch me."
The room stilled as two hearts skipped a beat.
Turning his cool gaze back upon his crystals, he began juggling them, throwing them up in the air in time with the steady pounding of blood in Sarah's head. "Whatever gave you the idea that I watched you, mortal child?" asked the Goblin King with cold amusement.
The coldness hurt, but Sarah didn't deny him the right to be so distanced. "You came," she responded simply.
The Goblin King smirked and caught the crystal balls. He vanished them as he stood up, his thinly veiled menace filling the room. "I came," he crooned softly, eyes half-lidded. The words were dangerous now. "Just. As. You. Wished."
Sarah swallowed and tried to quell the tears that threatened. "Look, I-"
The Goblin King shot her a disgusted look. "You're pathetic."
She stilled, dark eyes wide. Those words hurt. They hurt so much coming from him. She knew people thought it, whispered it around the corners of the school hallways, taunting her facelessly. To face that look on his face and hear those words...
He stepped gracefully aside to reveal the mirror. He passed one elegant hand over the glass, and the reflection of the room swirled, the colors mixing until an image appeared of-
"Christian," Sarah breathed, confused.
"I'll confess to watching you, if only for the amusement value." He smiled viciously. "Watching your pathetic attempts to interact with him- I was tempted to interfere, at first. To be as cruel as you can be. But you're succeeding well enough without my help." He glanced at the image of Christian. "You've twisted and churned his insides, and he still wants more." His velvet voice purred with indulgence. "I had once thought we were equals, Sarah." She looked at him with a pale face, and he leaned against the mirror lazily, sensuality rolling off his body in waves. She swallowed hard and fought tears. "But in cruelty...Ah, my dear, dear Sarah. In cruelty, you are the one and only master." With a smirk and a twist of feathered wind, he was gone.
Weakly, Sarah sank to the floor, and finally gave in to her tears. She bent over, silent sobs wracking her body. She had no right to feel regret, no right to feel anger; she had been the one to turn the Goblin King down in her fear of the possibilities. She'd moved on, and done her best to shut every memory of him away.
She had no right to wish any more.
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A/N: So...what do you think? And if anyone's curious, the title of the piece and the chapter titles all come from 'Don't Let Go' by Bryan Adams and Sarah McLachlan. It's on the STK of Spirit: Stallion of the Something-or-other. Anyhow, I liked this song, and somehow decided it fit the story. Yep, I live in my own world...