Remnants of Shattered Innocence (Unedited First Draft)

Chapter 6 (September 30, 2004)

Skylar stared at the ice beneath her feet. Looking past her reflection, she saw the faint silhouette of a woman cradling a newborn in her arms with a man standing beside her. They looked so happy; Skylar almost couldn't take her eyes off them. She looked up to see her parents sitting at a patio table drinking something. Was it tea? They looked over and smiled as they waved, then continued with their tea party.

She was vaguely aware that she was dreaming, although it felt so real. It felt a little cold out, but nothing Skylar wasn't used to. A small gust of wind went by, tousling her platinum blonde, waist length hair.

She held up her hands to her face as she breathed into them to try to warm them up. She could see her breath as she did it. She tried to take a step toward her parents, but couldn't get traction on the ice. No matter how much she tried she couldn't move. She stepped harder, hoping to dig her heel into the ice to help her gain traction. She only succeeded in creating a hairline fracture in the ice.

She tried calling to them but they couldn't hear.

"I'm stuck!" she yelled as loud as she could.

It appeared she had gotten their attention.They gazed over at her for a moment, but simply smiled and waved and then resumed their conversation. Skylar wrapped her arms around herself, feeling stranded.

She heard something scraping the ice. She turned around to see Jimmy. He was about the same distance away as her parents, but in the other direction. He was in a canoe, trying to row his way toward her, but was stuck in the ice.

"I'm coming for you, Sky!" he called in his beautiful Gaelic brogue.

He was chopping at the ice as he tried to row. That's when Skylar saw the cracks forming in the ice. They were originating where Jimmy was and they were creeping toward Skylar. She started to panic.

"Stop!" she yelled, but didn't manage to yell loud enough because he kept hacking at the ice.

"Jimmy, you're breaking the ice!" Skylar screamed, but to no avail.

She looked down as a large crack traced its way past her, appearing to split the silhouette right down the middle. She waved her arms at Jimmy trying to tell him to stop, she was frantic. Looking back and forth from her parents to Jimmy, Skylar knew she wasn't going to get through to either party.

Jimmy kept hitting the ice with his oar, and it seemed as though he didn't realize he wasn't getting anywhere. More cracks formed as Skylar searched for the happy silhouette. The silhouette was riddled with cracks and they were growing. She noticed the cracks were inching toward her feet. She kept trying to back away, but without traction she couldn't move. She felt breathless as the ice shattered and she felt herself plunging into ice cold water.
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Skylar's eyes flew open to the sound of her phone going off.

It was the twenty-third day of her senior year in high school. The dream faded from her memory as she lay in bed for a few moments. She didn't want to get out of bed. She knew if she did that she'd have to deal with the accusations, the questions, the demands.

Honestly, she didn't know how much fight she had left inside her. Her mom knocked on the door.

"Skylar, time to get up." Skylar heard her mom's footsteps continue down the hallway.

Skylar closed her eyes tight as her stomach cramped up. She put her hands on her stomach and tried to think of happy things. Sometimes she felt silly by doing it, but she felt that she could transfer her positive energy into wherever she was feeling pain and in doing so she'd overcome the pain. Pain was mental anyway, wasn't it?

Finally, after rolling out of bed, she looked in her vanity mirror and gave herself a disgusted look at how disheveled she looked. She picked up her brush from the vanity and brushed her hair. She ran her straightener through it, touching it up in a few spots until it was perfectly straight. Pulling some from the front, she put a bobby pin a few inches back from her hairline to keep it back out of her face.