Dear Emmett

Chapter | Eight

That afternoon, I don't go to swim practice.

Immediately after the bell rang, I bolted out of Biology and down the northern sidewalk. The wind was refreshing on my steaming neck and face, drying my sweat where it lay nestled in my skin.

Two words invaded my head with a repetitive loop. Reiden Lake. Reiden Lake. Reiden Lake.

There was no way in this universe that I was going to Reiden Lake. I didn't have a death wish and I wasn't socially suicidal either.

It was barbaric of me to think that anyone could see me as anything but the town freak or the school misfit. No one had ever asked me out before, for whatever reason. Mia and I only ever had three sleepovers in our lifetime. All of them at her house.

As the sun beat down on me like a thick, heavy weight, I felt my phone chime with an incoming call. Rhys. I shoved it back in my pocket and continued my hike.

It buzzed again, and again, and again. Furious at my brother, I snatched my phone - nearly smashing it on the pavement in the process - fully intent on swearing my head off at him when I caught sight of the contact name hovering at the top of the screen. My heart fluttered painfully and I halted, bumping into a lady with her pram. I didn't register what she was saying to me, I was absolutely fixated on my phone.

Emmett. Emmett was calling me! His name was like the sun, imprinted into my vision as soon as I looked at it. Oh Shit. Oh Shit.

Breathing erratically and almost maniacally, I pressed the answer button with a wobbly finger.

"H-Hello?"

Heavy breathing identical to my own was my only response. I thought I was hearing myself on the other end of the receiver but then the sound stopped and my breathing only became more intensified.

Little boy will die.

I inhaled, even though I hadn't yet exhaled.

Little boy will die! Little boy will die just like me! You kill little boy, just like me.

I hung up and flung the phone into the nearest bush, horrified. Then I ran. I ran and I ran and I ran.

I flung open the door and sprinted for my room, only mildly aware of another presence in the house. I shut my door with a slam and sunk down in the corner furtherest from the door. I pulled my knees to my chest and wailed.

Why couldn't he just leave me alone? Why was my mind doing this? Why was God doing this? It was a sick and twisted kind of torture, to dangle those you love just out of reach.

My laptop tweeted, letting me know I had just received a new email. I opened the lid and started it up, hopeful that it was something good. I really needed-

I chocked on nothing. There, in my inbox, was a message form Emmett. You kill little boy, you kill little boy was copied repeatedly, filling up the screen with those four, foreboding words.

I hit my laptop shut and run back out the door. My tears were near hysterical now. I was so scared I felt I might wet myself.

I flew down the stairs having no idea what I was doing or where I was going. Before I even got through the kitchen, though, someone caught my waist and spun me around to lessen the impact. I cried out from the unexpected contact, somehow thinking it was an infuriated Emmett.

"What are you doing-"

I threw myself into my brothers arms and buried my head in his chest as the flood gates opened. I don't think I have ever cried so much lately.

I was so relived that it wasn't Emmett in the flesh - or in the ghost like the other week - that I hadn't even released which brother it was.

"Bailey, hey, why are you crying?" Ezra tried to stroke my hair away from my face so he could glance at my eyes but I just turned further into his embrace.

I didn't know why my brother wasn't working but I didn't car either. I was just so unbelievably grateful he was home.

As soon as I thought about why I was crying in my brothers arms, I cried harder.

"Bailey, come on, your scaring me." Ezra tried again to pry me off him but I held on tighter, shaking my head vehemently.

"Bailey, please."

Ezra sounded so unnerved that it made my nerves spike too. What if he came back somehow? What if his haunting me was real? What did he mean by little boy will die? What little boy? Why did he say I was going to murder someone?

So many thoughts crushed together in my head that my knees buckled from their weight.

"Shit!" Ezra caught me before I hit the floor and flung me into his arms. I closed my eyes tight, but that didn't stop the tears.

He placed me on the couch, then quickly ran back into the kitchen. The next thing I knew, there was a damp cloth resting on my forehead. I was practically gasping for breath.

"Calm down. Shh." He smoothed away my tears.

He pulled his phone from his pocket. "Hey, man, it's me."

He was silent for a second.

"Yeah, I know. Look, you need to come home, right now. Bailey . . . I don't even now man. She came down the stairs all hysterical and freaked out and then she nearly fainted and . . . and . . . it just reminded me so much of-"

He cut himself off but when his gaze met mine, I knew the unspoken words. So much of Dad. Thats what he had been going to say. I reminded him of Dad. I felt a pang of depression at knowing that was how he saw me in that moment.

Ezra hung up without uttering another word, presumably because whoever he had called was on their way. His thumbs fluttered away with a text message, no doubt it was for the rest of the family.

When he was done, he glanced back down at me with a look that gave my heart a thump. And not a good kind.

"Just rest, Bean. And try not to worry."

How could he even say that? He knew as well as I did what was happening and it scared the hairs off my body. It'd been fine the first time I saw Emmett. I brushed it off as a one-off, stress-related incident. But now, I knew I couldn't hide it from my family.

I was just like my dad.

I was schizophrenic.