Home

Chapter 11

My phone starts jumping on the nightstand next to my bed, metal case hitting hard against the wooden surface. The vibrating sound wakes me up and, for the first time in a long while, I'm thankful for it. The only reason I fell asleep in the first place was because my eyes were too sore, and my eyelids too heavy for me to keep them open. The tears have dried the skin around my eyes, making me feel as if my eyes are falling deep into my eye sockets. My dreams turned into nightmares once I've let bits of reality step into them. I've been running from my demons for years now, living under the delusion that I can actually escape them, but now that I've gotten too slow, and too tired, they caught up with me. Everything is too bright now, too violent, too much.

I reach for my phone, still half asleep, my face buried into a now flat pillow, and press it against my ear. "Hello?" I whisper, my voice barely recognizable, muffled by the cotton I'm desperately trying to speak through.

"Where are you?" someone shrieks on the other side of the line, and it takes me few moments to realize to whom the voice belongs to. The tone of Bonnie's voice wakens me up, making me detach my face from the pillow.

"Oh my God, Bonnie," I groan into the phone, "What time is it?"

I blink a few times, trying to get the sleep out of my eyes.

"It's 2pm," she says through her teeth, obviously angry at me, for reasons unknown to me. "I'm waiting for you to pick me up at the airport! I've been calling for you for the last hour! I've left you countless massages!" her voice starts dying down by the end, and she swallows the last few words, making them hardly understandable.

I stay silent, not knowing what to say. She's waiting for me to pick her up at the airport? Which airport? Where is she? And how am I supposed to pick her up? I don't even own a car! My head starts spinning with questions I know I should have answers to.

"You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?" she huffs once she realizes that being angry with me will bring her nowhere.

"No," I say quietly, embarrassed by having to admit that.

"Katherine e-mailed you. I texted you and left you massages when you wouldn't pick up your phone," she exhales disappointingly, but when the next words come out of her mouth, her voice is filled with worry. "Elena, what's going on with you?"

My already sore and dry throat tightens, making it hard for me to breathe, or speak. "I – " I start, trying to think of some kind of an excuse, like I've been busy, or the reception is really bad out here, but I give up on it. Bonnie deserves more. She's my best friend, she would never judge me, and I've been keeping enough secrets from her as it is. No need to add more to the pile. "I don't want to talk about it over the phone. We will talk eye to eye."

"Then come pick me up!" she says exhaustedly, worry for me still stretching her voice.

"Where are you?" I ask, getting out of the bed, finally. I haven't left it in days, other than to go to the bathroom. My feet welcome the ground and the fuzzy carpet underneath them, but it's like my legs are not accustomed to walking anymore, so I sway left to right with every step that I take.

"Charlotte."

"Why are you in Charlotte?" I narrow my eyes, rumming through my luggage in order to find something to wear. Something that is not creased or already worn.

"Well, if you've read any of the e-mails Katherine had sent you, you would have known that I've been assigned to photograph your darling little town," she makes a pun and I can basically hear her grinning at how witty she is. "Which means that I'll be staying for as long as you are. Or, well, at least until you finish your article."