Gold Fever (m×m) ✔

XXX: Gold

《 ELIAN PHOENIX 》

My mind was a jumble of emotions too big and unbearable to feel without them breaking my heart. And I don't mean breaking it like Levi dumping me for the last time had done, but like someone was tearing strips off it and leaving the raw skin exposed. 

If Rain were to die, in time those lacerations would heal to ragged, tender scar tissue, but they would never go away. I would feel them with every heartbeat, when the unyielding tissue makes the muscle work that much harder. It just wouldn't be the same ever again, not without Rain in my life. Even the possibility of him dying was too much to bear.

I wanted to sob, scream and claw my heart out of my chest. Anything to make the pain go away. I couldn't think through the haze, and I couldn't keep the magic from bursting out. Light exploded from my hands, blinding brightness swallowing the forest and everything inside of it.

A little girl appeared out of thin air. Her black hair flounced around her shoulders as she turned on her heels and circled me, giggling. Then there was another girl, identical to the first one from the black hair to the joyful face, the big brown eyes. She tucked at the billowy sleeve of the other girl's shirt, then sprinted past her.

Piece by piece, the whiteness filled with details. The girls were in the backyard of a mansion, and they didn't slow down even as they pushed open the heavy, decorated doors. I had to run to catch up with them. The interior of the mansion was all white, shine and marble, pristine without a single particle of dust in sight. 

It was a memory. Not just any memory, but a happy, cherished one. And it definitely wasn't mine.

The girls were halfway in the kitchen now, and I rushed after them, curious to see what it was all about. But I found myself unable to pass the kitchen doorway. It was like one of those dreams where you dry to run, but your legs feel like lead.

I stepped back, and tried but failed to fill my lungs with air. I inhaled again, but it only made my body spasm like I was trying to breathe underwater. My mouth filled with liquid, and when I realized I had to be drowning, I started to panic. My heart thundered like it wanted to break out of my chest, only instigating the sense of terror.

Scraping at my throat with my blood covered hands, I was pulled back to the forest. Aspen was still laying on the ground leaning on his elbows, his face turned away and eyes pressed shut. A gurgling sound escaped somewhere deep from my throat, and it was enough to make Aspen's eyes snap open. It was all I could see, before the onslaught of memories pulled me under again.

There was a girl, with thick eyebrows and a wild billow of light brown hair. A cute button nose and thoughtful hazel eyes, rimmed with long, thick eyelashes. A splatter of freckles and a baggy t-shirt with some never-heard band's logo on it. I studied her while she smiled, finding all those details to be the most remarkable thing of all. I thought that I loved her.

The air was filled with the heavy tang of grease, spices and sweat. She was leaning her elbows against the fence, squealing something in an excited voice as I ran to her across the field. Adrenaline was soaring in my veins, making me feel invincible. We had won and, out of all the guys, she was here to cheer at me. I kissed her, while something trickled down from the corners of my mouth. 

I wanted to ask her what was happening to my face, but I found myself unable to speak. I fell on my knees so hard they scraped against the ground, but she kept smiling and babbling like nothing out of the ordinary was happening to me. It was so loud in the stadium, people chanting and having to raise their voices to be heard over the booming uproar of the crowd.

"No, no, no.." Aspen's voice broke through it, and I was back in the forest yet again. He was scrambling towards me in a hurry, with real panic and terror in his eyes. My sight was spinning, his voice fading away..

I was at the manor, gripping my cellphone with white knuckles as I listened to the shouting of two equally furious voices. Through the windowed door I could see the side profile of a teary-eyed, middle-aged woman. The man, who did most of the raging, was facing away from the door and all I could see was the back of his head and the set of his shoulders.

I gripped the cellphone tighter as I slumped to sit with my back against the wall. My gaze grew blurry the more I stared at the unanswered message on the screen. She had said she was going away and that she wanted to leave it all behind, but that meant things like school and the family drama caused by the missing money and not things like her boyfriend. So why wouldn't she answer now that I needed her the most? She couldn't just leave like that. 

I blinked my eyes open, and the first thing I saw was Aspen's face silhouetted against the sky. I felt a shiver running down my spine, a feverish chill aching my bones. Aspen was shaking me, and his mouth moved but I heard no words. I heard nothing at all. His eyes were liquid gold, warm like sunshine in a field of sunflowers. Najwa was right, he was gorgeous. 

I was back in the manor. They screamed so loud now, their words hurtful, the kind you wish to but can never take back. When did it get so bad? I dropped the phone, covering my ears with my hands and thought: make it stop. The shouting came to an abrupt end, silence echoing in the hallways of the mansion. 

When I got up to take a peek of what was happening outside, my brain glitched, failing to make sense of the sight. The disappearance of money was weird, but it could be explained with logic. The golden statues standing where my parents had been, on the other hand, couldn't be.

"Oh.." I found myself saying, staring stupidly over Aspen's shoulder. The sky was beautiful, clear from clouds and bright with daylight now that I had stopped stealing all the light from around us. I didn't know how it was possible that while Aspen was shaking me awake, I was inside his head.

Because they were his memories.

The two little girls were there and before I could stop them, they too had glimpsed at the unbelievable, horrifying sight at the other side of the door. They had been bickering over some meaningless thing, trying to block out the actual fight, but now they too had grown silent. Then, doing everything together, their mouths opened to a scream.

And then, right before my eyes, they turned into gold. There was nothing, nothing, I could do to stop it. Nothing I could do to help, to save them. So I pressed my eyes shut and waited for my turn, because I was going to turn into a statue like the rest of my family. My heart thundered, my survival instinct kicking in, but I wanted to follow them wherever they had gone.

Only, I never did.

"Oh." I echoed, uselessly. Back in the forest, as the memories faded away. My mouth curved upwards into a smile, and again I felt something wet spilling from between my lips.

I studied Aspen's horrified expression, the wideness of his green eyes, and the way he kept chanting one word over and over again: no. No. No. No. No. Something was wrong. Well, duh. Something is always wrong these days.

When I lifted my arm, it was as heavy as my legs had been during the memory. When I touched my lips and brought my hand where I could see it, my fingertips glistened with gold. 

Perhaps it should have surprised me, but then again, what the heck. Hadn't I just found out that I know absolutely nothing about anything? That all along, I had thought I had the answers, but I had gotten it all wrong.

It was you. I wanted to laugh. It was you, I thought and I wanted to get up and rush to tell it to my friends. Wherever they were and why they weren't there with me, I couldn't remember. It didn't matter. I just wanted Najwa to know that all along, Birdy's life hadn't been on me. None of Gold fever had ever been my fault, and I was so happy, so relieved I could die.

I gave in to the heaviness of my eyelids and let the dreams take me away.

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So, this is actually the end of book one. I'll be posting more info about the next book of the series soon! :)