And She Was Caught (Completed)

Chapter 20

CHAPTER TWENTY

My eyes fluttered open and saw that the bed was empty but the sheets were rumpled and I knew like the other nights, Jack slept with me --- beside me, holding tight.

I felt like I was drowning, my vision was murky and the sounds I hear were muffled. I have been living like this for days or maybe weeks. Honestly, I didn't know anymore. I lost track of time.

I didn't care anymore because I didn't want to feel anything. And I had learned that if you willed yourself not to care then you wouldn't feel anything.

I wouldn't feel the pain and that would be better because I couldn't die. I hadn't died.

As the sleep drifted away from my system, I rolled to my side to face the window but then she was there again.

Her brown hair gleamed under the sun, the girl's back facing me. She was tall but I knew she was around eighteen years old. She has the same body built I had back when I was at that age, and the hair, yes I remember that shade of brown.

I always saw her. She was always with me, always on my line of vision but she never faced me. Her back was all that she showed me but despite that, I knew her.

But I didn't expect the difference that morning. Because as I stared at her back, thinking about nothing exactly, the girl finally turned around.

My lips parted from awe, because in all God's honesty, she looked like an angel, her beauty was majestic. Her thick brown hair framed her extremely serene face, her perky nose turned up, her full lips resting on a small smile and her eyes, those eyes that I'd recognize anywhere, pale green eyes, zeroed on me. The light the sun was casting made an illusion of halo around the top of her head making her thick hair a bit frizzy.

She looked so peaceful it made my heart ache. I blinked and then her lips quirked as though fighting a full on smile.

I frowned.

The girl dipped her ear to her shoulder, her face looking cute as she drew her eyebrows together. "You gonna keep on staring at me?"

I blinked again. Damn. I was hallucinating again? Was I seriously turning into a crazed woman now?

"I-" I started but she spoke over me, straightening her face and folding her slim arms across her chest. She was wearing an oak green tank top and washed out denim jeans.

"Vanessa, get up, we don't have eternity to stare at each other." She said impatiently but she didn't sound irate. She started thumping her booted foot on the wooden floor.

Was I dreaming?

"You're not. And again, darlin' get up and change! You can't act like an emotionless doll forever darlin' you should start snappin' out of your crap." She sure didn't talk like an eighteen year old to me.

My body jolted from surprise and I immediately rolled out of the bed, ran out of the room and straight down to the bathroom we all shared at the second floor of the house.

Heart pounding, blood rushing against my ears, I placed my hands on my chest and started deep breathing. Damn it, I should really start to pull my shit together. I didn't want to end up crazy and locked up inside a frigging white room with no windows.

Crazy people didn't think that they were crazy. Oh my God, I didn't think I was crazy.

And they wouldn't also wonder if they were crazy. I closed my eyes tight, counted to ten and then when I had calmed my heart, I went on to my business inside the bathroom.

Hesitantly, I went up back to my attic room hoping that she wasn't there. But to my non-surprise, she was still there but this time, she was sitting on my bed, waiting for me expectantly.