H A U N T E D

t h i r t y - s e v e n

t h i r t y - s e v e n

"Thank you for the present", I thank Jack once he's helped me to put on the locket. It has a heart-shaped pendant, with a picture of us on the one side, and on the other side, there's a picture of both Flynn and my mom - obviously not together, but edited to look that way. Once the pendant rest's on my chest, it lays against my heart, where these people always will be.

"Well, it was either this or an Ouija board, but I figured that would be in bad taste", Jack jokes and adjusts the locket. I click my tongue at him, although the joke is funny. Slowly, small groups forms between the family, with the adults taking their conversation to the dining area, where Jack says they'll offer Flynn some whiskey. He'll enjoy that. Edward and Bella call Renesmeé closer to discuss Jacob's arrival with her. She knows he's coming, but they just want to make sure she's comfortable with his presence. Rosalie, Emmett, and Jasper decide to play Monopoly, excluding Alice as she always seems to win. The latter decides she'll print those photos I asked her, in the meanwhile.

"Come on, let's go upstairs to my room. I want to show you something", Jack suggests and pulls my by my elbow to ascend the stairs. To some, Jack's words may seem suggestive, but I know that they are innocent. It is one thing that I know I'll always be comfortable with, is the topic of intimacy with Jack. I've always been one to fall fast and hard, but with him, I want to take things slow. It has been difficult for me to learn that love doesn't necessarily mean sex, when most of my relationships were based on that notion.

It is my first time seeing Jack's room, and it mirrors his personality almost perfectly. His unused king-sized bed is positioned in the middle of the room, against the south wall. The sheets are a dark blue, with lighter decorative pillows. The walls are decorated with paintings of shipwrecks, or deep ocean life, like the kind you'd see in old adventure books. Opposite his bed, is a rectangular wood dresser with a few titbits on its surface, like an old broken compass, a record player and a cone shell. Above the dresser, is a shelf that holds a lot of books, and I recognize the Song of Achilles copy Jack annotated a few weeks ago. I never realized he finished it. It's squeezed between a few others novels I recognize, like In Watermelon Sugar and Pride & Prejudice. Jack's taste is never constant, it always changes from day to day. That's what made it so hard to buy him a present, but I eventually did.

Jack placed the framed map of his hometown, on top of his dresser, letting it lean against the wall. It was rather difficult to have found one, but with Alice's help, she was able to find someone who made old maps by request. I was, of course, worried that Jack might have been offended by the map, or it might've triggered some traumatic memories from his human life, but Alice assured me he would've loved it. The map shows his town, and where on modern-day maps some of the town's characteristics might have been erased, the old map shows every nook of the small town. Jack was stunned once he unwrapped it, and Flynn didn't understand it, but simply figured that Jack might be into old maps. The rest of his family though, they knew. Everyone fell silent, holding their breaths for Jack's reaction. I grew nervous as the moments stretched on, believing Alice's foresights to have failed, before Jack released a deep breath.

"I love it. I absolutely love it", he expressed with so much joy, it shook my core.

Now, Jack falls down on to his bed, and I fall down next to him. The boy places his hands behind his head, staring up at the ceiling, as if trying to make out constellations in the cracks of the wood. I curve into his side, resting my head on his chest while staring out of the floor-to-ceiling window. It is strange to not hear a heartbeat when I try to listen for one, or miss the way lungs grow with fresh air, but if that means Jack gets to roam this planet for all eternity, it is probably not such a bad thing. One day, after I am gone, his heart will never stop beating. You can't bring alive, that which was never meant to live.