A/N: I didn't feel like changing Dallas' (Demi's older sister) name so I left it. This chapter isn't exactly dark, just sad.
Disclaimer: I don't own.
-x-
Throughout the day I have listened to the message Mitchie left on my cell phone 43 times and it's not even 5 o'clock yet. Her words were memorized by the 5th time I listened to them and I could probably tell anyone who asked the exact time that her voice was about to crack, when her loudest sob could be heard or even every time she took another shaky breath. It was chiseled into my brain for the rest of eternity. I didn't even truly need to play the recording over again; I could hear it in my mind instead, but it gave me comfort to hear it said in her voice.
No more tears have been spilt since my arrival back at the hotel. There was no more need for tears; they just got in the way anymore.
Harper had been carefully trying to avoiding me any time that she could, without it appearing obvious… or at least what she considered obvious. She'd just 'happen' to be heading into the other room when I would come into the same one. It didn't bother me though; I didn't want company. Not hers, at least. There was only one person with whom I wanted to share any space with at the moment.
I haven't called her back; that's just not good enough. Just calling her to tell her, 'yeah I think I'm in love with you too!' isn't good enough. Not after what she did. Not after telling the whole world just to tell me too. The only problem was that I just couldn't think of any way that was good enough. I have been brainstorming all day and nothing I come up with is good enough for her. I wasn't good enough for her… but I'll try anyway. She says she loves me, so I just have to trust her and trust that, even though I'm not good enough for her, I'm still what she wants.
I jumped up from the uncomfortable couch and jogged into the other room to retrieve my laptop. Harper was seated on her bed with her own laptop lying in front of her. I glanced at the screen to find her watching a movie. I chuckled when I realized it was High School Musical.
My laptop was waiting patiently for me on my bed. I snagged it up and hurried back out of the room not wanting to make Harper feel like she needed to leave again.
I turned my laptop on and waited for the welcome screen to pop up so I could type in my password. My icon was a picture of Mitchie and me on the set of the movie we shot together.
I quickly typed in 'Mitchie' to unlock the computer and sighed when my background came up. It was yet another picture of Mitchie and me, this time taken shortly before she went off on tour. She looked perfect, as always, with her arm slung around my shoulder, pulling me closer into her.
I pulled the internet up and typed in the web address for Expedia and booked a flight to leave from Florida to California, from my heart's resting place to hers. I found a nonstop flight to Los Angeles that would leave tomorrow night at 6:20pm and would arrive there at 11:30pm that I decided to go with instead of the flight that would leave tonight; I needed more time to gather myself and figure out what exactly I was going to do about Mitchie.
Instead of spending time brainstorming again, I chose to give my head a rest and just spend hours looking through all the pictures on my computer. Most of them were of Mitchie and me striking some random pose or pressing the sides of our faces together and making a kissy face or something.
Most of them made me smile, some made me laugh, and some, mainly the ones I took of Mitchie when she thought I wasn't looking, made me want to cry all over again due to the defeated look in her eyes that I was only just now noticing for the first time. I have no idea how I had never seen it before.
Hours upon hours I looked through hundreds of pictures of just the two of us. Every picture I looked at made me want tomorrow night to come sooner. It was eating me up inside.
I. Wanted. My. Mitchie.
But still, I didn't call. God, how I wanted to hear that sweet, angelic voice, even if it was just through the phone… but I resisted. Instead I sufficed for the warped voice that was only an echoed compared to the real thing.
I listened to her broken voice on my phone again, mouthing each word along with the recording, I got onto Youtube and watched the videos that we had made together what seemed like an eternity ago, I watched the dumb videos that we had made when we were little that I had cleverly downloaded onto my computer years ago.
I sufficed for those, but it wasn't fully satisfying. I knew it wasn't the pure essence of her voice, but instead an almost twisted version of it… but it helped. It helped hold me over until I could hear her voice myself, perfectly through my ears, no middleman.
Her videoed confession was up all over Youtube. I didn't watch it. I didn't want to watch it again until I had told Mitchie I loved her just the same. I wouldn't let her tell me twice before I even got to say it once, even if it was a silly, nonsense reason.
The minutes ticked by in the right-hand corner of my laptop screen. I yawned and glanced at the numbers in the corner. 4:13am, it read.
I knew that I should get some sleep but I came up with the brilliant idea of staying up all night watching videos, listening to voicemail messages and looking through pictures, so that I could sleep all day and not been freaking out and watching the clock tick by, getting slower as every second passed, tomorrow… or I guess today. Time always seemed to pass quicker for me at night.
I set my laptop on the coffee table to come back to in a few moments and went to grab all my stuff from the other room.
Harper had long since passed out and, judging by her snores, I didn't have to worry about waking her up if I made too much noise.
I unzipped my suitcase and picked up my half –okay, three fourths– of the clothes that were strewn around the room and threw them into my open bag. I didn't even try to zip the thing completely back, only zipped it partially then dragged it into the back room.
I got my PJ's out and headed for the bathroom. I set my clothes on the counter and turned to the shower. I turned the water on to warm up while I quickly stripped out of my jeans, flannel shirt, bra and panties.
Turning back to the shower, I stuck my hand into the stream of water to assess the temperature. It was almost too hot, but I didn't care.
As the water sprayed on my back I left out a soft moan. Scratch the 'almost', I revised but left the water the way it was anyway.
I felt knots in my shoulders that I hadn't even realized were there, loosen. I closed my eyes to relish the feeling of the water hitting my skin and running down it in streams. I felt the caress of a lover.
I took my time in the shower, knowing that I still had a little while before I would journey off to sleep.
After washing my hair, conditioning it, washing my body with an amazingly good smelling body jell that Harper had left in the shower, and shaving my legs to a silky smooth texture, I turned off the shower and dried my body.
I walked out of the bathroom clad in my cute Power Rangers shirt and a pair of athletic shorts, shaking my towel through my hair to try and dry it.
I plopped back down onto the couch and brought up yet another Youtube video. I was going through and looking at the wide selection of videos that paired Mitchie and me together. Most of them were sweet, but I stopped watching them when I started to regret not booking the soonest flight out to Cali.
I brought up my iTunes library and clicked on the playlist that Mitchie had created two years ago. It was packed full of love songs that I was just starting to realized must have all earned a place in that playlist because of me. I pressed play and listened to the music that brought me back to so many late night talks and crazy memories created in the past years.
-x-
I snapped up from the couch and looked around the room for some device that would tell me the time. I ran into the bedroom and quickly pounced on my bed to get a good look at the clock. 4:51pm. I let out a relieved sigh that I hadn't slept through the whole day and already missed my flight.
I clambered off the bed and ran back into the room that I had spent hours in, on my laptop last night and this morning, and grabbed the clothes I had set out for me to change into today.
After changing and brushing my teeth, I grabbed the suitcase that I had left partly unzipped after my shower and tried to shove everything inside of it in a way that would make it plausible for me to be able to actually get the zipper all the way around the thing. After a couple of minutes of failed attempts, I finally got it to zip completely around.
I turned around and nearly jumped out of my skin when I found Harper standing in the doorway, watching me with an amused expression on her face.
"How long have you been standing there?" I asked, embarrassment coloring my cheeks.
"Oh, just long enough to watch you jump up and down on the clothes, kick and punch it multiple times and throw a pillow at it… which, if I may say, throwing the pillow had to be the dumbest out of those." Harper smiled as she listed my idiocies.
"Well I thought the pillow might… maybe if it was… yeah, I got nothing." I mumbled before stalking past her to grab my purse out of the other room.
"So have you finally come to your senses and are going to go get your girl?" Harper asked as she watched me hunt through my purse for a piece of gum.
"My flight leaves as 6:20." I answered with a grin and stuffed the minty gum stick into my mouth.
"Yay!!!" She yelled and hurried forward to embrace me in a tight hug. "I knew you'd realize you're in love with her too sooner or later."
"You knew?!" I yelled, my surprised outburst making her jump.
"I'm pretty sure anyone who actually has an open mind knew, Al." Harper said in a 'duh' tone of voice.
"Ah… yeah, I could see that being true." I agreed then ran back into the other room, Harper following close behind.
"So when do we need to leave for the airport?"
"Um… right now." I said as I ran back past her again to grab my Converse and hop around as I put them on.
"Awesome. I'll get your carryon." I heard Harper say before she turned to grab the bag that I had just stuffed my laptop into.
We hurried down to the lobby of the hotel and out into the parking lot.
There was a group of paparazzi waiting to ambush us on the walk to the car. I just did my best to ignore them and focus on my mission. Harper almost hit two guys when pulling out of the parking lot but at this point, I didn't mind, much less care.
The ride to the airport felt a little longer than I would have liked due to the silence that stretched on and on.
"You are okay with me bailing out early on our vacation, right?" I finally asked Harper after twenty minutes of silence.
"Of course I am! And I'm actually going to bail, too, tomorrow anyway. I'm going to go spend time with my grandparents for a little while." Harper explained, making me feel lodes better.
"Alright, good. I didn't want you to feel like I was ditching you or anything."
"Nah, you're fine."
The silence started up again and made me feel even more uncomfortable.
"So what did you tell Mitchie when you called her?" Harper asked me as she kept her eyes zoned on the road.
"I haven't called her, actually. I'm sorta surprising her?" I said uncertainly, making the second sentence sound more like a question.
"Oh, that's cute. What are you going to say once you see her?" Harper was trying just as hard as I was to not let any more silences start.
"I haven't really figured that out yet, but whatever it is I want it to blow her away. You know, make her feel like she's the most important thing to me?" I said, my mind going back to my previous dilemma.
"Yeah, I get it. Well, whatever you come up with, I'm sure it'll be perfect." Harper pulled the car up to the airport drop off and popped the trunk for me.
We both hopped out and grabbed my stuff. She hugged me tightly before wishing me good luck and a good flight.
With my bags in hand, I headed into the airport and over to the short line of people waiting to pick up their tickets. I pulled the baseball cap I had stored in my carryon and the too-big sunglasses out and slipped them both on.
The line moved quickly and I was pleased that I hadn't been bombarded by fans yet, although now that I looked around, there weren't all that many people around.
I got up to the desk and, after giving the lady my information and getting my tickets, I signed a piece of paper that she insisted she was only asking for to give to her niece.
She took my suitcase and I hurried on to the metal detectors and my flight gate.
An hour later and I was sitting quite comfortably in a first class window seat though the plane was still on the ground. I was relieved when an old man sat down in the seat beside me, happy that I wouldn't have to deal with a crazed fan all the way there when I needed the time to figure out what I was going to do.
The seat belt sign lit up but I didn't worry because I had already fastened it the second I had gotten comfortable. I sighed as I waited for the plane to actually take off already. My phone was also already turned off and resting comfortably in my pocket.
My heart started beating in excitement when I felt the plane start to move though I'm not sure why, seeing as how it was only the very start to a five and a half hour ride.
I spent an hour just staring out the window into the clouds with nothing but Mitchie occupying my mind.
I'm on my way, Mitch. I'm coming. I told her in my mind even though I knew she wouldn't hear it.
My mind was still racing with ideas of what I should do and say to her once I got there. I ran through her message in my head again and the memory of the last song of her tour. The lyrics played through my head and, though they were painful and sad lyrics, they still made me smile because it was for me that Mitchie wrote them. Just for me.
It clicked.
I jammed the button to summon the flight attendant, making me remember doing the same thing two nights ago with the elevator.
A woman in her mid twenties came walking down the isle, a pleasant smile fixed on her face.
"What can I help you with?" She asked in a too-sweet-to-be-sincere voice.
"Do you have a piece of paper and pen I could write on?" I asked her in the same fake voice.
I was lucky that she didn't seem to notice she was being mocked and instead just walked away and returned a few seconds later, producing a blank piece of paper and a ballpoint pen.
"Thanks!" I said before turning my attention to the project I only have 4 more hours to work on.
-x-
My plane landed at 11:39 and I felt like I could literally feel the distance between Mitchie and I lesson dramatically with the first step off the plane.
It took thirty minutes to get my luggage back in my possession and wheel it out of the airport and to a taxi that I had called for transportation.
I quickly jumped into the back of the cab and waited for the driver to finish loading my bags in the trunk and climb back into the car. I gave him Mitchie's address and then sat back to catch my breath for a second. I was wiped out.
I opened my eyes and pulled out the now crumpled piece of paper that was scattered with barely legible scribbles and pieces of my heart, and a second piece of paper I had copied the words onto that the flight attendant had willingly brought me, and scanned the worlds for the hundredth time, just to make sure I had gotten it all right. It had to be perfect and anything less was just not acceptable. I was happy with it, but I just hoped Mitchie would be too.
The cab pulled to a stop outside the Torres' house and I quickly paid and thanked the driver.
I grabbed my stuff from the trunk and started the short walk up to their front door. Most of their lights were still on so I didn't have a problem with grabbing the spare key hidden under the rock and unlocking their door. I quickly slipped the key back under the rock.
I pulled my stuff inside and dropped it against the wall as quietly as possible before I took a deep breath through my nose to take in the perfect smell I had missed so much.
I knew that Mitchie's mom was always in the bed and asleep by 10 o'clock so I didn't have to worry about walking around the corner and giving her a heart attack by just randomly showing up like this.
I could hear the TV in the living room on and, as I snuck around the corner, I spotted Dallas catching some late night TV sprawled out on the couch. I tip-toed over to the couch, thanking the good God with such an amazing sense of humor that the couch was facing away from the door and away from me… and then thanked Him again when I realized that she was watching a scary movie that was playing scary, suspenseful music at the moment.
I snuck right up behind Dallas and quickly cupped my hand over her mouth and whisper-yelled a sudden 'BOO!" in her ear at the same time.
She jumped so high that she actually smacked the top of her head against my chin. I was very thankful that I had thought to put my hand over her mouth beforehand, because the scream that came out of her throat would have woken the whole neighborhood up if it had come out unhindered.
"ALEX!" Dallas whisper-yelled at me in a tone that sounded like she was deciding whether she should just fall over dead right now from the heart attack I just gave her, or kill me first and then die.
"Surprise" I said, jokingly striking a 'ta-da' pose.
"Mitchie's locked herself up in her room since the end of her tour and I suggest that you head there while I'm still deciding whether or not to strangle you." Dallas said, her message through her threat quite clear.
"Right, thanks. Enjoy the rest of your night!" I said with a quiet snicker as I walked up the stairs and down the hall to Mitchie's room.
I paused at the door to take a breath but hurried through it, the breath completely forgotten, when I heard a soft whimper and sniff.
I stopped dead in my tracks, my eyes widening, my jaw dropping, my heart stopping dead and my whole world falling away, only leaving a crying, broken, bleeding, destroyed Mitchie, lying sprawled out on her floor with a gleaming pocket knife sliding exhaustedly once more over her bloody, shredded wrists.
Her once-tan carpet now held a pool of red that should be pulsing inside of the love of my life and not rippling with every new drop added to it.
"Mitchie …" My voice broke just like my heart had at this picture playing out before me.
The knife dropped from her hand but she didn't look up at me, I didn't think she had even heard me call out her name. The loss of so much blood was taking its toll on her. I watched her close her eyes, giving in to the call of death that I would be damned if I let take her.
I dropped to my knees beside her and grabbed one of the shirts that was lying on the floor and wrapped it around her wrist, then did it again with the other one.
"DALLAS!!!" I cried out for the older girl, not caring if I woke anyone up at this point. The panic and anxiety in my voice was enough for her not to question my motives of waking up her mom and little sister. "Call an ambulance!" I shouted at her through my tears.
"Mitchie, Mitchie, Mitchie, Mitchie …" I mumbled over and over again as I cradled her head in my lap and held her t-shirt wrapped wrists.
"Al… Ally, you got my message?" I heard the most precious voice in the world whisper mournfully, though she sounded weak and breakable.
"Yes, baby, I got it. I got your message and I love you, too. You just have to hold on for me, Dem; do you think you can do that?" I sobbed to the broken girl in my arms.
"I couldn't live without you. You… y-you didn't call me back so I just figured… I just figured you hated me." Mitchie tried to talk but I could barely hear her weak whisper.
"No, never. Don't you ever say that again! You're the only person in the world I can't live without. Don't you dare leave me! Prove that you love me; fight Mitchie!" I begged her. I could hear Dallas frantically talking to someone on her cell phone in the hall just outside Mitchie's room. I blocked it out and instead focused solely on my Mitchie.
"Mitchie, don't do this to me. Please, I can't –I won't– live without you. Come on, Mitchie!" I shouted at her. I needed her.
"Don't say that." She mumbled, tears leaking out of her eyes too now. I wiped them away hurriedly.
"Then don't leave me." I argued back in a mumble too. I stared into her eyes worrying that this might be the last time I could ever get to see life in them.
I heard an ambulance siren in the background and all I could do was clutch Mitchie's hand tighter with each passing second.
I pressed my lips to Mitchie's forehead and whispered to her quietly "Hold on, just a bit longer. I promise that I'm yours forever and ever afterward, just hold on." I whispered desperately, but it fell on deaf ears.
-x-
A/N: Like the summary said, there's still one more chapter to go, so no, Mitchie isn't dead.