An Open Sky

Chapter Five ~Alexa~

I woke up screaming. After a moment of gasping for air, I realized how swollen and tight my face felt. My fingers went up to my eyes, tracing the tears smudged around them. I couldn’t shake the image of her just lying there, helpless, hopeless…

It was light now. The sun was shining through my curtains. I checked the time on my phone: 12:23 p.m. The last time I’d slept until noon was back in Melrose after a crazy party the night before. I pulled myself out of bed. My feet carried me downstairs. The carpet rubbed against the soles of my feet. I flinched. My feet were raw from walking through the woods without shoes.

 I wanted to think of Jay, about what happened this morning, but I was too disturbed by my nightmare to let my thoughts linger on him for very long.

There was a note on the kitchen table; it read: Gone to get groceries. Please check mail, might be back late. Go figure. At least I’ll be alone. I turned and went back down the hallway. I hesitated to open the front door because of the slept-in look that my body had currently possessed, but I forced myself out the door anyways. My feet stumbled below me, scrapping the pavement. I cringed as my skin joined the cement. I glanced down. My navy flats were neatly set on our welcome mat. The shoes that I’d left on the beach were sitting right in front of me.

I bent over and picked them up, goose bumps inhabiting my skin. It had to have been Jay. No one else was there… The odd scene of Jay tensing over me played in my head, only feeding my doubt. My eyes caught the note. It was neatly tucked underneath the shoes on half a piece of what appeared to me as sketchbook paper. I wasn’t an artist, but Kaylee was. I’d seen paper like that in her studio many times. She’d told me that the texture was different, to smudge, and perform other artistic techniques to. I never understood the difference between it and normal paper. I picked up the note and, with fresh chills racing down my spine, read:

You left these at the beach this morning; I figured you’d want them back.

I did the only thing I thought was appropriate at that time. I shut the door, turning the lock with shaking hands, ran back upstairs, and threw my shoes, along with the note onto my floor. My phone was in my hands immediately. In a matter of seconds Jay’s voice came over the phone.

“Hey,” he sounded distracted, “what, you miss me already?”

I laughed, “Maybe, maybe not. Thanks for dropping my shoes off,” I said cautiously, half-dreading that I already knew what his answer would be. My heart raced, accompanying the long silence between us.

“I didn’t drop your shoes off…” he started.

“Oh sorry, not you,” I covered, “I was talking to my dad, sorry.” My doubts were confirmed. My breath stopped. Jay had definitely seen more than a wolf this morning, unless wolves could deliver shoes and creepy, handwritten notes to the correct house in Rexford. I didn’t know anymore. I’d found myself second-guessing everything about myself, and about the place that my father wanted me to call home.

“Oh, so what’s up?” His voice pulled me back to earth, but I didn’t want to stay.  

“Nothing, actually my dad wants me to unpack some boxes so I should go,” I lied. I needed time to think.

“Need some help?” he offered.

“No, but thanks anyway,” I said. The phone clicked off.

I went downstairs and flopped on the couch. I concluded that it was probably just someone that saw us walking in the woods and found my shoes later in the day. I mean, it’s not very hard to recognize a new person in a town of one-hundred. It was probably just another person being friendly. Just another friendly person… I kept repeating in my head. I figured it’d seem more realistic if I kept repeating it.

I decided to go out and sit on the deck. Maybe some fresh air would do me good. I was definitely sick of walks. All of the new deck furniture was still sitting in neatly stacked boxes in the corner opposite of the stairs. Being too lazy to unpack a chair and figure out how to set it up, I sat on the top step and lay back on the deck. I let the sun-baked wood warm my shivering body. I had to close my eyes to shield them of the burning sun.

 There was a cool breeze. It swept some of the heat of my body with it as it went by. The way the breeze went through the trees reminded me of a whisper. It was as if the very breeze carried secrets to the trees and the constant rustling of their leaves was the gasp of their reaction. The mystery of the unheard secrets drew me to them. Once again I found myself in the protection of the trees.

I sat down on the damp ground and leaned my back against a fairly large tree. The rough bark scratched the bare skin around my shoulders. I let the tree mark me as I sighed, sliding closer to the ground. I closed my eyes once again with my fingers delicately brushing the soft grass underneath me.

I kept taking deep breaths. The smell of fresh rain and pine, we never had it back in Melrose. At least we didn’t have it for real, not the artificial scent of an air freshener. It was so different, so close, so real. I breathed in deeper and deeper almost to the point of hyperventilation. I had to store it in my mind. I couldn’t let it escape my lungs; I couldn’t let it flee my nostrils, for I feared I might never get it back. Almost eighteen years, and I’ve missed this. For almost eighteen years, I didn’t know this existed.  Until now.

I shook myself back into reality. Melrose is my home. I hate this place. I tried to convince myself, but I knew better. All those years of trying to get rid of me, gone. All my hard work of recreating myself, lost. Here it was like I couldn’t escape myself, and I hated it. I hated it because I hated me. I hated the real me; the sappy, gullible, insecure, unconfident, trying to find a place in this world, me. I hid myself from the world. Until now.