FULL ECLIPSE (Book #2)

𝕱𝖔𝖚𝖗

I gradually flutter my eyelids open to find myself exactly where I left off – the cinema, movies, theatre, whatever you wanna call it. Ella is frozen in front of me, like she's waiting for her picture to be taken or something. Except I'm not a photographer nor am I holding a camera.

Sweat is drippin' down my neck and getting soaked up in my white tee. It's like I ran a non-stop marathon to the edge of the world with no notion of what to do next. Which is dumb because I'd be begging to come back to this world, and when I do, I have no idea what to say. I don't wanna waste my time here, waste the seconds and the minutes I could have with her. But I know where I left things off, and if I ever forgot, one glance at her face and I'd remember it all over again.

"H-how.. how'd you know all that about me?" Ella finally finds the courage to say.

Unlike her, I'm still frozen. Half because she's just so beautiful, so beautiful even when she fears me to death, and the other half because how do I begin to explain another dimension to her?

"How?" she says a little more aggressively this time, and it's not even an act, she's actually getting angry with me.

"You told me."

She peers at me, confused and curious, but resentment overpowers both. I'm going through a war she doesn't know about just to have some peace with her and in this world. How could she hate me for it?

"How could I possibly tell you?" she says 'you' as if like I'm the most hated creature in the world and it makes me feel disgusting.

"You told me," I say again, what else can I say?

"I did not."

"That's because you didn't here, not in this dimension, but in the other one. I can explain it properly if you just let me."

She scoffs like I'm making the biggest joke of the century, "you're crazy."

"No, it's crazy. But listen-"

"Stop."

"Ella, you haveta believe me. I swear it'll make sense if you just lis-"

She spins on her heel, her curls slapping me in the face as they flip over her shoulder. She leaves me standing there like a total loser. That's probably all I am to her. And the worst part about it all is I can't be mad at her. I sound like a lunatic, even me wouldn't believe me if I were in her shoes.

❖

I go home. I press the doorbell of our maroon front door with a golden number 17 screwed into the middle of it. Nobody answers. I press the doorbell again. Then again. A minute or two later, it finally swings open.

"You have the house keys for a reason, egghead," Amber greets me.

"Lost 'em."

"Of course you did."

She heads to the kitchen and I follow her. I notice that she has The Vampire Diaries playing in the empty lounge as we walk past it. She was in the middle of fixing herself some cereal. Because I have nothing better to do, I grab an energy drink from the black steel fridge and sit on the stool at the countertop, accompanying her.

"Spill," Amber says pouring milk into her cereal.

"Huh?"

"How was it?"

"How was what?"

"Ella and you," a smirk forms on her face. "The date."

"H-"

"Before you ask 'how', she's my bestie."

Right, of course, it still comes as a shock to me just like the first time I found out back in the apocalyptic world – it was the day Amber went guns blazing on them lurkers. I just never imagined the two were ever friends, I never saw them hang out. Maybe because I was too caught up in baseball and crushing on Ella to realise my very own sister is literally her best friend. I don't know how to feel about it.

"Who eats breakfast at 11 PM these days?" I ask her, a tad bit irritated because me and Ella aren't any of her business.

"Who drinks energy drinks at 11 PM these days," she comebacks.

I flip her off and chug down more of the drink at the same time.

"And you changed the subject, loser."

"MYOB, maybe?"

"No, 'cause she's my friend, egghead. And fine don't tell me, idc, she will," Amber grins. 

I sigh, why do they have to be friends? "She ran away."

Amber chokes on her cereal, "she what?"

I shrug.

Then she bursts into laughter.

I roll my eyes, "I'm going to bed."

In my bedroom, I remove my shirt and chuck it somewhere. Crashing into bed, I stare at the ceiling with my arms crossed behind my head. I'm afraid that if I close my eyes, I'll fall asleep and jump without my permission. If I can't rewind 'time', how can I stop it instead? How can I freeze it and hang it up on the wall? And the second I want to use it again, I let it melt... I let it melt down my walls. I control it, I decide how much it affects me. I'd have all the time in the world. I'd be my own God.

That'd be dope.

"I need more time," to make her understand... I whisper to myself and let my thoughts finish the rest of my sentence.

❖

"Dean! Wake the hell up!"