FALL (DIMENSION Series #1)

CHAPTER 45

"You saw me as you were falling?" Derek asked, sounding stunned.

     "Yeah," I replied. It was my turn to stare off into the distance. I looked past the edge of the cliff and remembered the moment clearly. The moment right after the dirt bike had tipped me off balance and I'd become airborne.

     "You mean you saw me in your mind's eye?" Derek asked and there was a tightness in his voice. His eyes had gone darker again, but the golden speckles hadn't been dimmed down. They were glittering against the dark green backdrop, like lightning bolts against a dark sky.

     Wow, I thought. His eyes were so intense. I felt a new rush of emotion for him that seemed to expand my heart. I adored him but it was more than that—I was in awe of him. Even at this juncture, when he clearly preferred hanging out with Isabelle, I still was obsessed. It was because I knew it would be hard to find someone with this kind of intensity again. I was pretty sure it would be impossible.

     "I saw you as of you were in a movie," I replied, still staring into his eyes. Getting more hypnotized with every passing second. "You seemed like kind of special effect. Like a person who could change shapes. And go from being one-dimensional to being three-dimensional.

     He stayed silent, but his eyes were wide. And they were brimming with something. They'd gone all liquidy and they had darkened further, like an ocean in the midst of a storm.

     "You saw all that, Ellie?" he finally asked, sounding tired. Like the storm in his eyes was sapping the energy away from the rest of his body—stripping all movement from his arms and legs and concentrating it in his eyes—in waves that rolled across them.

     "Yeah," I replied. "I saw all that."

     I saw the energy drain out of him. It was like looking at an actor on a screen who'd been shot and was bleeding and might even be bleeding to death. Derek's eyes were that darkest green. Like a heavy shadow was draped across them. Even the golden speckles were dimmed down now. But the darkness wasn't just limited to his eyes. It seemed to spread all the way into him. Making him go quiet and still. Leaving him without any movement. But it seemed to go deeper than that. He seemed vacant—without any of his mannerisms I'd gotten used to.

     It was hard to see his eyes go dark like that, to see him taking flight from himself as the darkness invaded him. But maybe I had gotten it wrong. Maybe it wasn't the darkness that found him. Maybe the darkness was his default condition. Maybe he didn't just dwell in the darkness. Maybe he actually became it. The darkness. Maybe the moments of light—those moments his eyes were two bright shades of green—and he was accessible to me—had been the anomaly. Maybe those had been the ones who had to descend on him, that had to fight to gain a foothold. For the privilege of bringing him to me, briefly.

     I needed whatever was left of him to stay with me. And I needed his essence to return. But how could I do that? I needed to say something. It always seemed to come down to the right words at the right time. But I didn't know what those were.

     "Are you with Isabelle now?" I said. This had been an involuntary sentence. It seemed that whatever secret thoughts were lurking in the depths of my soul were coming to the forefront. And there'd be little I could do to stop them. Something inside me had been triggered and I didn't actively decide what thoughts I'd actually speak out. It was mysterious and strange and I couldn't explain it at all.

     "Isabelle?" he muttered.

     "Yeah," I continued. "Are you guys together now?" I pictured the two of them at school. Leaning back against a row of lockers with their posse surrounding them. I felt heat in my cheeks. Despite the fact that I couldn't control what I was saying, it seemed my body still had the rest of its normal reactions. I was embarrassed to realize that I was going on and on about Isabelle.

     "I'm with her in a way," Derek said.

     My heart plummeted. It settled down lower in my body, closer to my ribcage. This wasn't what I wanted to hear him say.

     "You said it wasn't meaningful," I said softly, and I bit down on my lip. For a brief instant I could feel the tears right behind my eyes. They were about to well up and spill out and that couldn't happen. I had to stay strong. I blinked until they went away.

     "She earned the right to my presence," he said.

     "She what?" I blurted out. The sentence didn't make any sense. I had no idea what he meant.

     "How did she earn the right to your presence?" I asked and shook my head. And I noticed my hands were shaking too. I didn't know if it was rage or disappointment. "You mean she won you in a raffle or something?" I continued and my voice had an edge to it. I couldn't help it. Things were moving too fast and they were going in the wrong direction. Instead of denying that Isabelle meant something to him, Derek was implying the opposite. That there was something. Something about her or something between them, I couldn't be sure. I felt off balance, as I had the day of my fall. And things around me seemed to be moving. I looked sideways at the orange and red leaves that looked blurred into a single color now. 

     "She saved me once before," he said and he seemed weak, like a wounded soldier. He leaned back against a tree and closed his eyes.

     "Saved you?" I asked and noticed that I'd leaned back against a tree too. I wasn't feeling weak—I was feeling dizzy.

     "I should have died," he mumbled, his eyes still close. A pained expression around his mouth. "I should have died with them and she brought me back."

     "You mean your family?" I managed as I thought of the time he'd told me about his family. We'd been in my car, listening to Joni Mitchell. I hugged my arms to my chest. I was feeling chilly. I didn't know if it was the shadows of the trees or the fact that I was in a state of shock.

     "Yeah," Derek said and opened his eyes. "I'm indebted to her in a way." He said and sighed. His eyes were still dark, but not as dark as before. Some light had returned to them. And some life. "I owe her," he said. "Do you understand?"

     I didn't answer him. I understood some things. There was some bond between Derek and Isabelle and it was because of a shared past. One in which she had saved him from death. But I didn't know what had happened or what it had meant. Derek was looking at me. I thought he was trying to read my expression and maybe trying to find out how much more he could tell me.

     "She brought me back from the other side," he said.

     "From the dark side?" I asked. I was referring to the way in which he was supposed to have died. But I was also referring to his recent absence when we had searched for him among the piles of cinders. And somehow all of these things seemed link to his absences from himself. When his eyes went dark and his essence took flight. 

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