Highway To Hell
"Damn it!" I heard Matt curse from downstairs, after a crash that sounded like breaking glass. I almost laughed. I hadn't told anyone about the incident with what shouldn't have been real. What I had to have hallucinated due to her. I hadn't even told Wendy, and she was supposed to be my best friend. She didn't know about my illness, though, what the doctors called my illness. It wasn't my illness, it was hers.
"Matthew," Sara's voice mentioned in a warning tone. This time I did laugh. Wait for it...
"Sorry, Mom," I muttered in unison with Matt, but the next part Matt was improvising. "Where's Jules anyway? Isn't she always in the mood for food?" I smiled, but she quirked an incredulous eyebrow.
-Not anymore, you're not.
-Sh. I want to hear this.
-Hell, why not? You're already crazy with your hallucinations about that weird boy of yours.
But then, when I strained my ears to hear what was going on downstairs, I heard nothing. Well, it wasn't nothing, but it was a blur of voices and words all mixing together to make everything indistinct. I wrapped my blankets around myself tighter, hoping that somehow I'd have a way to drown her out. It was her fault I was still up here. She'd told Sara (through my voice) that I wasn't hungry. She was making me starve again, and do something that I never wanted to do again.
"What did you all do today, Wendy?" Sara asked. The kids (Mary and Billy–ha!) giggled.
"Sh! We mostly played outside and Jules taught them this one song from her Bible camp back home. She has the songs in these cassette tapes in her luggage." Wendy laughed at me, and I could just see her rolling her eyes at me, too. "When you're just talking to Jules, she seems the same as before, but she's really matured over these years. She said she went to the hospital for a few separate years. She was...weak, mentally, she said. I missed her, though. It's nice having her around."
"Well, I'm glad you like having her around, Wendy," Sara said. "I'm sure she's just trying to settle in right now. We all had a bit of a tough time getting settled."
"Can I be excused, please?" Matt was whining, and I say that because his voice was high and drawn-out. His footsteps echoed loudly as he ran from the table and into what I can only assume was the bathroom, because after, the loud sounds of his retching and coughing reverberated in my ears. I pulled my pillow more securely around my head until the sound of vomiting had gone. I shut my eyes and tried to relax myself into sleep. Right as everything began to fall away, something else sounded in my head.
"'Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in thy breast. Would I were sleep and peace, so sweet to rest. Hence will I to my own ghostly cell, and into slumber my dear Juliet hath fell.'"
"That part's wrong," I mumbled, muffled by my pillow. "You're going off-text." The voice chuckled.
"It fits better into this context, love, with you here and as I have no ghostly father, but indeed a ghostly cell. 'I would were I thy bird, yet I should kill thee with much cherishing. Good night, good night, parting is such sweet sorrow. That I shall say good night till it be morrow.' Yes, Juliet, I know that's the woman's role. Sleep now, love."
"'At what o'clock tomorrow shall I send to thee?'" I finished, feeling the numbness start to soak in through my veins. The last the voice said became very cloudy.
"'At the hour of nine,' love. Now, please sleep."
-He'll ruin everything, she spat, venom coursing through her blood vessels.
She was right. With a male presence I was unstoppably attracted to, even an imaginary one, her bond and mine would be tested to the extremes. He would come between us and she was about to get a lot harder on me than she'd been in the past. I was going to hell and back.