What Keeps You Alive

WKYA Chapter 4

When I had finally recovered myself, I smiled up at the sky. The sun beamed through thunderclouds as if trying to make things better for me. I turned the car on and pulled out of the empty parking lot and made my way carefully down wet streets.

It only took me a few minutes to get back home. The garage door was open and my brother sat on the hood of his car starting out through sprinkling rain.

"Where were you?" He asked immediately as I stepped out of the car. I readjusted my sunglasses and he somehow managed to come around in front of me and pull them off. He looked into my red-rimmed eyes and pulled me into a hug. Rubbing my back he asked, "What happened, Ari?"

"Alex. Alex happened, Cav! He called me. On my cell phone! Where on earth did he even get my number!?" I began sobbing on his shirt. "I can't do it again, Cav...I can't go through that again..." My voice trembled, but that was because Cav was shaking so hard from anger that my body was feeling the tremors. I dried my eyes quickly and pulled away. I grabbed my bags and took Cav's hand to lead him inside the house. He followed me, a silent earthquake, about to shake the earth to its core. We walked into the kitchen. He took the house phone off of the cabinet.

"First things first, Ari. We're going to warn the police, and then we'll call the Principal to make sure you'll be safe or can stay home for a few days...just lay low..." He trailed off as he dialed.

"Cav, not yet. I'll be fine. I'll just lay low at school and hope that Alex' threat was just that, a threat." I took the phone pressed end and set it back on the charger. I took my bags and walked up to my room.

I sat at the large broadway style vanity. My bedroom was gorgeous. Two of the walls were solid glass, and on one of these doors there was a sliding door which led out onto a personal deck with stairs leading down to the sandy beach. My floors were a honey gold hardwood and the walls seperating rooms were glass as well. There was a small room where I kept a coat rack in the door way and then once through the french doors there was a three-step platform where my bed, a night stand, a large lamp, an over-stuffed couch and a secret hidden-in-the-wall door to where my extra-large bathroom was. The walls were pale yellows, golds, reds, and pinks. The colors of a sunset. Outside of the glass doors leading from my bed platform was a door leading into my large closet. When I say large, I mean large. There were separate rooms for different pieces of clothing. My mom was previously a designer and therefore got to keep the clothes she designed. Fortunately for me, the clothes she designed were teens selections. She still does it on the side, just to keep me up to date. But I think its as much for her as it is for me. Leading out of a curtained stair was a catwalk, lights and all. It was put in, for mom when she was having me help her with designs. From another door in my closet was the vanity that I was sitting at. The door had a star on it with my name lit up. I looked at myself in the mirror. I was healthy now. I wasn't too skinny for my 5'10". Before, mom had noted that I looked to skinny to even be a model and that had depressed me even more, knowing that I had to keep getting skinnier and skinnier.

But I'm out of that mess, I thought to myself.

I left the suddenly claustrophobic room and made my way out to the deck to smell the cool salty fresh air. The sun was setting, one of my favorite times of day. The other being, the sun rising. I watched the sun sink lower and lower and smiled at the blissful calm.

Then sending an icy finger down my spine, I heard a voice from the darkness.

"Arya."