"Lost in your heart, lost in your eyes Lost everyday, no map to follow Entire days, weeks, a blur Flickers of light, in the darkness, Only to be enveloped by the shadows once more..." ~Peter Winstanley
Chapter Twenty-Three
August 9th 3012, 9:57am
"Claire!" I called after her. "Claire." I huffed out as I saw her in her room. I entered the opening to, what used to be a small clothing shop, but was now her room. "We need to talk." I told her.
"She doesn't want to talk to you." Chase so kindly reminded me.
"I'd really appreciate if Claire would be so kind as to explain what I did to deserve this treatment." I said ignoring Chase's comment and making sure Chase knew I was here to speak with Claire, not to have him speak for Claire.
Claire seemed conflicted with herself. After a moment of her internal struggle, she came up with a way to make both Chase and I happy.
"You can say what you wanted to say, but Chase stays." Claire decided.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Chase grin at me. I brushed it off and entered the room. With Chase on the bed the atmosphere had changed drastically. It was no longer warm and comforting, it was cold and had a feeling of emptiness, like the whole thing was fake and at any moment the cardboard walls would come tumbling down and we would all be buried beneath the lies.
"I just want to know what I did." I pleaded. "After... the incident you just left and today, you were with them. We hate them. Audrey and her clan, that's what you called them."
"They're not as bad as you think." She defended them. Her eyes were cast down like she couldn't bring herself to look at me. Her voice was small and scared sounding. All evidence of the girl I once knew was gone.
"Do you hear yourself, Claire? Those people hate me." I said, trying to bring my friend back to me.
"That sounds like your problem." Chase said from behind me. I brushed off the comment and kept my eyes locked with Claire's.
"Is it because of Chase?" I asked. "Claire, it's okay if you want to hang out with him, but don't let him change who you are." I begged. Her eyes snapped back up to mine, they held anger I didn't know she was capable of. Was this another explosion? Was she about to release her pent up emotion like Rebecca had?
"You want to know the problem, Danny?" She asked, spewing my name out like Rayleigh had done so many times before. "The problem is that you don't give a damn about me." She shouted. "This entire time I've dealt with your problems, and you still wouldn't care about me. You're a void, Danny. That's the problem! That's always been the problem! Your kind doesn't care about anything or anyone. You will never be able to really care about me or the "friendship" we used to have." She yelled.
"Claire, this isn't you." I said calmly as I fought the tears welling up in my eyes.
A part of me knew what she said was true. I had been suspecting this would happen for a while but I never really thought it would happen, I thought it was my paranoia and the newly found emotions messing with my mind. Claire couldn't really be like this. Not the person I knew, she cared too much, she was too considerate, too understanding.
"Claire, you understood. I tried to be the best friend to you that I could; I tried with everything I was and what I wasn't. The cell isn't me, you said so yourself." I argued.
"No Danny, I was wrong." She said coldly. "The cell is in your DNA, and the cell is what makes you up, there's no changing that.
"So what, you're just going to suddenly change your entire point of view?" I asked feeling frustrated.
YOU ARE READING
Void
Science Fiction"You don't feel! You're not human, you're just an emotionless shell!" He yelled at me with a passion that was unknown to me for so long and was now overwhelming me. "Maybe you're right, I'm not human," I said, forcing my voice and expression to be...
