Hollows In Time (✔️) | 'Hollows' Book Ⅱ

Chapter Seven

_________________________________

H o l l o w s I n
T I M E
_________________________________

31/08/16
Twelve months and one week ago

"I bought you a notebook." My mother suddenly spoke up in our more than silent car. I was busy on my phone—I still hadn't got used to that.

I had all my old photos, both my lock and home screen weirded me out on a daily basis. My Instagram had been flooded with comments, follows and DMs as I had opened up my phone for the first time. They ranged from the day I went missing to now, even a few seconds ago. Everything felt unfamiliar. Worst of all, I had Carter's number. It felt like a time warped reminder that he just wasn't here. He doesn't exist in the 'Real World', nor in the secret world with the academy. He doesn't exist at all.

His death replays in my head over and over again. Guilt fills my heart, but not like the kind I felt for Angela. Technically, I had killed her, just, it was her choice that her death had happened. But, with Carter, it was a different kind of guilt. I had broken his heart, and then his heart had died—and it broke mine. You reap what you sow.

"..Sky, are you listening to me?" My mother took a right and then, without waiting for an answer, she continued. "Your therapist recommended this, I want you to write everything down in it." She tapped it—it now laid on the edge of my seat, much like how I was feeling as I stared at it.

I picked it up daintily and peered at its dismal brown cover. Couldn't my mum have gotten a more vibrantly coloured book for me to write down all of my heart-bound secrets?

"You don't have to share it with anyone, just write it down to get it out of your system." She continued, driving down our road. "Your therapist said it'll be good for you, that it will help you." She blabbed on, looking at me from the corner of her eye as our house came into view from the distance.

"I'm aware, I was there." I responded, earning a sidewards glare from my mother. Whatever. I unbuckled my seatbelt as we slowed down, then shot out of the door as the car stopped, not even waiting for my mum to shut the car off.

Like a genius, I had brought my keys with me, despite the fact that mum had her own house keys—but it was for good reason. And as my mother shut the car door behind her, calling out my name, I shoved the key into the lock, turned, and bolted up to my room. I had been doing this for three weeks now. And afterwards, when I was in the company of my own solitude, I'd think back to the edge in Jameson's voice as I had cried.

"You're going home, Sky, you're going home."

Then he had cried too. I still wanted to cry now. My life at home was a disaster.

I sat on my bed, staring through the window—except, the curtains were pulled; I didn't want any of the reporters to see into my room, I didn't want anyone to see me at all. I had become a hermit. My mother had told my therapist that I had become a walking secret—addicted to the art of hiding. She had told me that if I stayed like this, I'd never achieve anything. That was the day she went back to the mother who spoke more to me about my failures than she did to me at all, ever.

I sighed. My dad had made furious attempts to get us to talk with genuine manner after our outburst, but the attempts had remained unsuccessful.

Is that what I had to write in this book? All of this deep family stuff? Is that what's wearing me down? Or do I have to write down all of those poisonous secrets—the ones that could get a whole organisation of people sued, maybe arrested? It became evident, that, in that moment, I had no idea how to distinguish between the heavy weight of my academy life and the stress of my new one. Where did my heart lie?