If We Survive

Chapter 29

Remeber that time, like nine chapters ago, when I said that the story was finally starting?

Well, I lied. 

It's starting next chapter. 

Seriously guys.

Seriously.

-

Maybe I'm dead. 

When it came down to it, I wasn't ready to take the leap into the other side. I suppose I just needed a little shove.

There's pain. It's all I know, for a long time, and then, I'm sitting in my dorm with a tall woman across from me, dark blond hair tied into a tight bun. 

It takes me a monet to realize that it;s me. Me wearing profuse amounts of makeup, me in about ten years, but never-the-less, it's me. 

"Hello Cassidy." She says softly, looking me in the eyes. They're the color of rust, like mine, but much deeper. 

"Am I dead?" I demand, a frown caressing my face. I glance down at my body- it's like it was. Curvy, and a little overweight, covered by a superhero shirt and a pair of worn-out jeans. 

She chuckles, a smile playing her lips. Underneath are the whitest teeth I've ever seen. "Not nearly, Cassidy Lee. You've got a helluva road ahead of you." She sounds like me. A helluva lot like me. 

Exept for the fact that she calls me "Cassidy Lee" that name is only used when I've broken something, or if I failed a test- that name isn't even on the roll at school. It's always Cassy. 

There's sadness in her deep eyes, like she's waiting for me to do something dumb. 

"Who are you?" I choke out. I'm getting an emotion, a strong one. Like a slew of everything that it;s possible to feel- euphoria, depression, anger, pride... And it's makeing me want to burst into tears. 

"Me? I'm whoever you want me to be." She replies, pulling a clipboard out of nowere. 

"I want Dee." I say, looking her in the eyes, which she doesn't raise. "Hey!" I shout at her, knocking the clip board out of her well manicured hands. "I want to see Dee!" 

She looks at me, heavily penciled eyebrows raised. "I can only be that which is lost." She says cyripticly. 

Was that I sign? 

I wish that wasn't a sign.

"Well what the hell does that mean?!" I shout, pulling myself up to my full hight, my eyes aflame. I might have anger issues. 

You wouldn't like when I'm mad.

I've found myself wuite unlikeable when I'm not mad, actually. 

"I'm the you that can never be." She says, calmly picking up the clipboad from off the floor, and returning to her privious work. 

"Why?" I ask, running a small hand through my hair. "Why me?" 

This time, she does look up, right at me. "It always had to be you Cassidy. Always."

A competely unimportant teenage girl from Colorado gets to go to hell and back for no good reason. Sure, it always had to be me, lady, sure. 

We always like to think of ourselves as special, and apparently that's a normal human thing. Maybe we all are specil, if you get really philisophical. 

I'm quite into that philisopical sort of thing. 

"In all reality, it's because you're strong, stonger than you think. Rember the day you left? You underestimate yourself, Cassidy." 

Now that's something I don't hear everyday, not like that. 

Back, a long time ago, everybody told me that I was stong, because I was big. But I get the feeling that's not what she means. I'm strong because I wasn't afraid to leave them. 

Here, I thought that was a bad thing. 

"Thank you." I say to her, sitting back down. The bed springs creak uncomfortably. How many nights did I spend awake on this very bed, thinking, wondering? How many days did I spend, wishing that my life could be different, that I could stop the dominos that I knocked over. 

And now, I wouldn't give all the banks in Switzerland to go back here. Because I was happy, but a different kind of happy. There are a lot of different kinds of happy, I think. 

The ignorant kind, that I lived in for so long, the true kind, that can't be bought or sold or taken away, and the fake kind, that I mastered a long time ago.

"You don't need to thank me Cassidy. I should be the one thanking you." And she means it. "You are  Great, and nobody can tell you different." She sounds a bit like a self help tape, and if this is some sort of mental coma thing, then it's working. 

I wish, a little that I could still grow up to be that woman. Because if that's how I was going to be with out this whole zombie mess, then I'd be a pretty cool person. 

"You said something." I say, suddenly remebering. I furrow my eyebrows into one, looking down at the rough wood floor. 

"Yes?" She says, goung back to her paperwork. 

"You said you could only take on forms that are gone, but... Dee is dead. He's dead, right?" Maybe there's a that spark of hope inside me, maybe it's been there the whole time. I want her to squash my hopes and dreams as hard as she possibly can, as quick as she possibly can. 

But she just smiles at me mysteriously, reddish eyes glimmering. "It's nearly time for you to wake up." She announces, same look on her face. 

"But you have to-" But she just looks at me, and she fades out, laughter in her face, toughing my forehead with her index finger. 

"Be brave, my child." She whispers, and pain sends me riviting away, to a soft bed in a cabin, far, far away, near to a girl with a torn open chest and rusty eyes. 

And maybe that was the way it was supposed to be.