Anywhere But Here

Chapter Eleven, Zyra's POV

Then she was gone. I didn't want to her to leave. I just wanted her to stay and hold my hand. I wanted to talk to her and let all my pain disappear. Now it was just me and the evil doctor. I look out the window and think about Dawn. I always get a strange warm feeling when I am around her, and she makes me so happy. How can she do that, how? Then an image pops into my mind, disrupting my thoughts altogether. It's an image of my mother before she shot me. Her ragged face, her unbrushed hair, her dirty and oily skin, her determined and awful face. Then an image of dad pops into my head, the one of him throwing a chair at my head. His horrid smile, his sickening yell, his twisted mind, his smell of beer. I shutter. The doctor then turns around and look at me in the eyes.

"That girl is bad news," She says to me calmly and pulls up my blanket to my neck, "I know that for a fact, plus she never goes to class at school, she must be dumber than a box of rocks"

I scowl at her as she gives me a blank expressionless face, "She is very smart, kind, and caring, and how do you know she is bad news?"

She is so caring towards me. So much that she would protect me from rumors and stop my father from killing me.

The doctor turns away from me, "I just know, now I am going to leave this room so you can go to sleep, you better not move a muscle"

Then she leaves, turns off the lights, and I am alone. I pick up my phone and call Dawn. I need to talk with her.

"Hello Zyra" I hear her say calmly through the speaker.

"Hey," I say back to her.

Then some awkward silence.

"So.....why did you call me?" She says nervously.

"Because I wanted to talk to you" I spit out.

I hear a nervous laugh coming from the other end of the phone, "What do you want to talk about?"

"I don't really know," I say and that's when the tears start falling.

"Zyra? Zyra what's wrong?" I hear Dawn say to me over the speaker.

"Nothing" I sniffle and wipe the tears out of my eyes.

"Nothing, Zyra you're crying, what's wrong?" She asks me compassionately.

"I just....." I say quietly, "Miss you"

"Zyra, I am coming over, are you still in the same room?" I hear Dawn say.

"Yes I am in the same room but no, you can't come over, they'll catch you, you'll get arrested!" I say to her.

"I don't care Zyra, I am on my way, make sure you're window's are unlocked, I'll be there in five," She says this forcefully and then hangs up.

She cares so much about me. She is going to get arrested because of me. She is making the choice to come but........ she is going to jail once they find out. My tears crowd my eyes. Then I start to cry. I cry softly without making much noise, but tonight it sounds like a hurricane. While I am crying I make sure to unlock the windows. There is no way I can stop her from coming. By the time the window opens, I am sitting there, crying my eyes out. I have no idea why I am crying. Maybe for Dawn, for my parents, or maybe in self-pity. Dawn comes in through my window, immediately she hears/sees me crying and comes to comfort me. The window is right next to my hospital bed so when she comes in, she lands right in front of me. She looks at me with sympathy. She grabs my hands and holds them in hers.

"Please, shhhhhh, it's okay, you're okay, we are okay, no one can hurt you now," She says while I am still crying.

I try to hold back my tears but I can't hold back the pain. The pain of what is what I have no idea. Then Dawn does something surprising. She takes her hands away from mine then hugs me. I don't know why that surprises me, maybe I just always figured she wasn't the hugging type. She is taller than me so my head lays on her chest, she breaths slowly and evenly into my hair. She makes me feel better but not to the point where I would stop crying. My tears make her shirt moist but she doesn't seem to care. She caresses my back and it calms me to the point that I stop crying, not to the point of not being sad. She holds me in her arms and it feels so natural.

"You hear my heartbeat? focus on that," She says calmly.

I do and I hear her heart beating quickly, rapidly, like she might have a panic attack, but instead she continues to caress my back. Her touch gives me warmth and........love. Love. What a strange way to feel for someone of the same gender. I might love her. Then Dawn pulls away from our hug and looks at me, she's grinning.

"Do you feel better now?" She says to me; She takes my right hand and rubs my palm with her thumb.

I shake my head no. I still feel empty inside.

"No, I still feel like I have a hollow soul and that my life is slowly melting away into the drain and," I say but Dawn cuts me off when she kisses me.

Dawn is kissing me. A female kissing a female, is this even supposed to happen? Her lips are round and soft like butter melting in a hot pan. My lips feel like they are burning with warmth, not the bad kind of warmth, Dawn's warmth. It feels so good to be kissing her. It feels so good but so wrong at the same time, how could that even be possible. Her kisses are just little pecks as if she is waiting for my consent to go any further. She stares at me with her icy blue eyes which shimmer in the light of the moon. I no longer feel hollow and bleak, I feel love.