In the Melancholy Moonlight, Part 5: Dark Matter

Chapter 209: When I Miss You

CLAIRE:

Whatever nightmare I had been having dispersed the second my alarm jarred me awake at 5 AM. I shot out for my clock with one hand, smacking it until the beeping stopped. I opened my eyes to see that my room was darker than usual.

A cloudy day. No, not just any day, a cloudy Monday.

I groaned and rolled over, only to sit straight up in a panic when I realized that Tenderheart Bear wasn't pressed snugly against me the way he was supposed to be. I patted down my bed frantically, thinking maybe he had just gotten lost in my sheets overnight, but when that search yielded nothing, I got out of bed and dropped to my knees, fumbling around in the darkness until I finally touched his familiar softness.

"I'm sorry," I whispered as I clutched the stuffed animal to my chest and buried my face against his head. "I'm sorry."

It wasn't often that Tenderheart Bear managed to escape my arms in the middle of the night, but it broke me every time it happened. Sometimes I woke up as soon as he tumbled to the floor, and I'd shoot out of bed and scoop him up, still warm. Sometimes, like that morning, his fur was cold, meaning I had lost him and not even noticed. Those were the times that my arms trembled as I curled around the stuffed bear and rocked back and forth, the sting of loss so profound it didn't even matter that he wasn't truly gone.

Tenderheart Bear was her bear.

Funshine Bear was my bear.

Tenderheart Bear had slept with me every night for almost eleven years.

Funshine Bear had been shoved into my suitcase when we left London, and then she had been moved to the highest shelf in my bedroom, and she had remained there, untouched and neglected, for almost eleven years.

I inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly, forcing myself to unclench my shaking muscles and set Tenderheart Bear on my bed. I turned on a lamp nearby and started my morning routine with unshed tears clogging my throat. The perfect Claire Everlin didn't cry when other people might see her or hear her. The perfect Claire Everlin shouldn't be crying anyway, because she shouldn't have dropped her lost sister's beloved stuffed animal in the first place, and she shouldn't be so depressed every time it was cloudy.

Unfortunately, I knew better than to lie to myself. I wasn't perfect, so a couple of tears escaped as I changed from my pajamas to a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. I wiped my cheeks with the backs of my hands before reaching for my running shoes, then sniffled hard and swallowed as I tied each shoe a little tighter than necessary. I made my bed and placed Tenderheart Bear carefully on my pillow with another whispered apology.

My cloudy Monday was off to a predictably awful start.

Ten minutes after my rather rude awakening, I smiled as I bounced into the kitchen, ponytail swinging behind me. "Morning, Dad!"

"Morning, Claire Bear!" he replied, reaching forward to envelop me in one of his famous bear hugs for a long moment. "How'd you sleep?"

"I slept well," I lied. "How about you?"

"Your mother claims I snored all night and told me she was relieved I was getting up so she could finally sleep, so I think I slept well too. You ready?"

I nodded. "Let's go."

Running with Dad every weekday morning was one of the better parts of my routine. Fall, winter, spring, summer, we met in the kitchen at 5:15 and returned home at 6:15. Each day had its own route and its own pace, depending on how much energy we had and where we wanted to go. We lived in a neighborhood that was somewhere between suburban and rural — hanging a left meant running deeper into the canyon and passing ranch-style homes and corrals before reaching an open space with hiking trails, and hanging a right meant running through suburbia and crossing the train tracks before reaching downtown and commuters already stacked up trying to get to the freeway. More often than not, we headed left, fewer obstacles that way, but downtown meant our favorite donut shop, so we tended to hang a right the morning after one of my sporting events to celebrate, win or lose. But I almost always won. The perfect Claire Everlin worked too hard to lose.