Own Me

Chapter Thirty

A.N. IT'S FINALLY AT AN END!!! I hope you guys like/hate how I end it... here it goes. Sorry in advance. Xoxo, Clay.

♔ Chapter Thirty ♔

Tom followed me everywhere, now. Most of the time, he wouldn't say a single word to me, and he didn't even need to. We were alike in more ways now than we had ever been before, and for the first time in a long time, I realised that. Since he had died, every day after I'd look in the mirror, and each time I did, I'd look less and less like myself. I'd look more and more like someone else, someone I didn't recognise, and someone that terrified me to death.

In a way, Tom and I didn't really need to communicate through words. I think our minds were always thinking the same thing anyway. Full of fucking regret and old memories, fading faster than we could ever be able to remember them.

Things I couldn't change now, playing over in my mind, toying with me and reminding me of what I'd done, of the things that I'd destroyed for myself that I'd never be able to get back. He stood as a reminder to them, the only reminder I had, so I wasn't going to let him disappear like Fletcher.

I did it all to myself, though, I kept reminding myself. I wouldn't dare blame anyone but myself, for any of it. The reason I was alone now, that was because of me. The reason Tom was the only person that stayed was because I'd chased everyone else away. No one else did it to me, no one else made me this way - it was something I'd turned into since he died. Something wrong, and something I couldn't stand. But I was stuck with it now, stuck in my own skin, a skin that I despised, forever. Unable to change or become anything better, I was rotting in my own despair, locked inside of myself like my body was a cage. Like I was a prisoner in my own head.

Tom was always around, now. He was the only blessing I had left, and the only thing left in this world for me, even if he wasn't even real. I knew it, the whole time.

Looking at him, at his cold blue eyes, seeing him all around me, following me, I knew. I hadn't become stupid or senile. I knew that he was just an apparition, a cruel mirage of my mind. But he was the only thing that kept me grounded, now, so I pretended, and I let myself give into the idea that it was really him. That it wasn't just a reflection of my own twisted perception, but that he was something more.

I'd forced myself to believe that maybe it was actually him, actually his ghost. That he'd somehow managed to come back, just for me, so that I wasn't alone.

I'd always believed in ghosts, anyway.

Later in the day, I'd gone back to the apartment by the sea, only to find the top floor had been boarded up entirely. The windows had been re-glassed and the fire escape blocked off. Hebe Hollern must have finally managed to buy the whole building, including the penthouse, so now, at the end of every day, I really had nowhere to go.

The sea crashed and thundered nearby, loud and annoying. I still felt Tom standing beside me, as silent and as present as ever. I could hear the water, standing on the same street, the currents flowing back and forth, and in that moment, it seemed so enticing.

It was almost by instinct, that when I saw the same red double-decker bus driving over the road, I ran to the bus-stop and stepped onto it. The No. 42 bus, the one Tom and I would take everyday to school.

Now, it would take me back home, back to that same house where my mother would be sitting, waiting for me to come home. Or back to the house opposite mine, where Tom used to live. Or maybe just at the very end of the road, where the hills spread out into valleys, and suddenly flew up into the sky - the cliffs, hanging on the verge of oblivion. The same chalky white cliffs. They seemed more like a home to me now than anywhere else.