THE BOY WHO WATCHES THE MOON [werewolf]

CH 2

CHAPTER 2

After I went back inside, all I could think to do is wait. I laid down on the sofa, picking at a piece of string hanging loose from the stitching. Slowly, but eventually, I found myself dozing off into the faded, soft leather.

By the time I woke up, I was eager to check the clock to see what time it was. When I came face to face with the clock, disappointment flushed across my face. It was two o'clock. Only one fucking hour had passed. I closed my eyes to go back to sleep, but came to find it wasn't going to happen because I wasn't tired. I reopened my eyes, staring at the pattern on the ceiling. No words could explain how I felt.

I was still angry about having to move, still depressed about my family.

But most of all, I was so frustrated with myself that I lived and they didn't.

Family members die all the time, every second of the day. Maybe not to you, but to someone, somewhere. Parents die in car crashes. Sibling and cousins die of cancer. Grandparents of old age. Miscarriages. Disease. War. Overwork. Suicide. Murder. But there is absolutely no pain the same as people you love dying when you could've done something about it.

I rolled out of bed, quite literally, subsequently falling onto the hard wood floor. I laid there, nearly an unconscious corpse. I stared at the ceiling, so hard and concentrated that everything became blurry besides the faded pattern etched into it. At one point, I couldn't tell the difference between the blurriness of my concentration and the blur from my own tears, building up to the seam before slipping away.

I heard the jostling of footsteps as someone ascended the stairs, so I bounced off of the floor into the bed, slamming my head into my pillow. I forced my body to stop shaking; by any means, I had already dictated that I wouldn't talk.

My door cracked open. I didn't want to uncover my face, I didn't want to be seen. I just wanted to be invisible, so that they would shut the door and leave; perhaps I just wanted to be a ghost.

"Chase?"

I had grown accustomed to hearing voices. This voice in particular, though: I couldn't bear to look up and see what my imagination had played on me this time.

"Chase, I know you're awake. Stop hiding, please."

I sat up, but kept my eyes shut. I was too afraid to come to the reality of nothing being there, of me being wrong. Wrong, wrong. I knew he wasn't there. But for some overpowering reason, I felt his gentle thumbs wipe the tears from my face, and in that moment I honestly thought I was going to go out of my mind.

My eyelids unfolded open, and we both met each other eye to eye. It was him, but it couldn't be. Could it?

"Dad?"

He was crying. I'd never seen him cry. He was laughing, too. "Chase, I love you. Your mom and I were in an argument, but I knew I could come see you, I ca—"

I scooted away quickly, and backed up until the small of my back was plastered against the wall. "No, you're not real. You're not really here, please, please, just... just go away,"

His laughter faded, and his face molded back into it's same, tired self. The bags reappeared. "Obviously I'm here. You can see me. You're looking at me,"

I closed my eyes, crying, my lips puckering as I tried to shrink into a tiny little ball. "You're not here! You're dead, remember? You and mom died, you died a couple weeks ago, someone shot you, you're in a grave and that's why you can't be here! Go back to Mom and Riley and have fun up in heaven but you can't be here!"

We both looked at each other, and for a moment it seemed like I was the only one breathing. I slowed down, and he took his thumbs to my face in attempt to wipe away the streaks of my failing mascara, but this time I couldn't feel it. I couldn't feel it because he wasn't there.

His body started fading, and I watched. I was making the same stupid mistake as I did when he died the first time, and I couldn't even move! I tried to move, but my spirit felt like it was trapped in a dead body, I couldn't move anything! I was screaming on the inside, I needed out, I needed to hug, I needed to say goodbye! But I couldn't manage to do anything; I was forced to watch his blank face as he faded away.

My lips parted, and I slammed my head into my hands. How could I let this happen?

Goodbye, dad.