Watched

Chapter 12

After the spat with Izzy, she seemed to avoid me for the rest of the day and that night while we both lay on our beds staring up at the glow in the dark stickers on the ceiling. I broke the silence to confront her.

"So are you just not going to talk to me anymore?"

There was a short pause before she replied.

"No,"

I furrowed my brows and hoisted myself up on my elbows.

"What does that mean?" I asked while straining to see her face in the dim moonlight that flooded in through the window.

"It means I'm sorry that I over reacted"

I closed my eyes and let out a sigh.

"I'm sorry I acted like a jerk,"

I heard some movement as she came to sit on the edge of my bed.

"It's just that...nobody understands me," she said hugging one of my pillows to her chest.

"What do you mean?" I asked cautiously I could tell she was on the brink of opening up to me and I didn't want to say anything that would change her mind.

"When I was little I used to have these nightmares all the time."

"Nightmares...?"

"Yeah, I would wake up in the middle of the night screaming. My parents were worried about me although they wouldn't show it. One night my dad started praying with me before I went to sleep. He told me that I didn't have to be afraid because God would always protect me. So he started to pray with me every night hoping it would take my nightmares away."

I was taken aback she had never even mentioned this to me before.

"Did it work, did the nightmares go away?"

"Hmm, no not at first but my dad refused to give up and after a few weeks they just stopped. I slept soundly through the night for the first time in a while."

I was at a loss for words.

"So you see apart from the other obvious reasons, that is why I love God because he makes me feel safe...protected."

"Wow," I said looking at her with a new found respect.

Talking to Izzy about her childhood inevitably made me think of my own. Not that I remember much about those early years, but I am sure my mother made me feel safe although, now I couldn't quit remember the feeling and that's when it occurred to me.

A stark realization that apart from my mother, in all my life I have never met someone who made me feel safe, or someone who loved me unconditionally.

Someone who felt like a home to me,

"I can't imagine what that must feel like." I said truthfully.

She nodded in an understanding that only the two of us had, after years of being friends and sharing the same room. She knew me so well that she could tell what I was thinking without me having to say a word and vice versa.

She moved back to her own bed in the darkness and pulled the covers over herself.

"Someday you will," she said, and that was the end of our heart-to-heart.

After that Izzy fell asleep within minutes, but I still stayed awake for hours unable to shake this new feeling of melancholy.