Learning to Fly

Chapter 2: A Ribbon of Black

A/N: Yes, this chapter is uber short. But it has to be, this chapter is important! I promise this is one of the only ones that is this short!

And I should put in once again that I'm not Stephanie Meyer. I'm just playing with her characters a bit.

Read on!

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As I rode through the remainder of Seattle, I couldn’t help but remember what had been happening here last year. Had it really been almost a year already? Sometimes it felt like less time had passed, and sometimes it felt like it had been decades. But I remembered.

                Because I lived just outside Seattle, all the reports of murder in the city had been unsettling. No, it was more than that. Hearing about murders was always unsettling; hearing about a serial murderer close by, now that was frightening.

                My dad had been, at that time, a hell of a lot more sober than he now was. He had enough sense to warn us about staying inside at night and always carrying pepper-spray with us. Kate and I had enough sense to do those things without being asked. But during those months I rarely ever let her out of my sight.

                It had been more than just wanting to keep her safe. I was so protective of her because during those months, my best friend, Bree, had been reported missing. But from the first moment I heard about her mom filing that report, I knew she wasn’t just gone. Her heart was no longer beating.

                Bree, my very best friend, the only one I knew I could have talked to about my dad because her dad had beaten her too, was long dead. And it was that killer who had done it.

                I knew that, and I wouldn’t ever let my little sister become her. Because though I may be able to hold a good fight against an assaulter, Kate wouldn’t be able to. Bree may have been a strong girl, but she just wasn’t strong enough. She had always been smaller in size, easily beaten….

                But I couldn’t let myself think about her now. Bree and that serial killer were all in the past.

                I felt a shudder rip through me as I left Seattle behind.

                Sure, the Serial Killer of Seattle was gone, but something, some ancient instinct, was telling me that there were some exactly like that person who had stalked Seattle a year ago.

                But because I was some inconsequential human and couldn’t place where that feeling had come from, I would learn how right I was in the future, perhaps under the same circumstances that Bree had realized that same truth.