How to Live | ✓

nine

>>nine

These days, Evelyn slept better. The release that writing gave her eased her mind enough to get her through the night unscathed. Suddenly, the endless hours of darkness and fear started to become a few minutes of mindful breathing until slumber hit.

It was something that she hadn't ever had before, and she prayed every night that such reprieve wouldn't slip through her grip.

And when she woke up in the morning, the prospect of putting pen to paper, of seeing him, was enough to get her to make it through another day.

If she was being honest, she didn't really know why he did all this- whether he really thought she was good at writing, or saw she just needed some kind of liberation.

Either way, whatever the reason, she was willing to take what she could get.

In the past, she'd meddled with other methods— each as stupid and reckless as the next. But in the end, they'd all left her in the same place she began, empty and starved.

Tonight, though, just as she was about to fall asleep, she was jolted back into consciousness by a sudden, light rapping sound.

She waited for a few seconds, her breathing the loudest thing in the room, until she heard it again.

Is that coming from my window?

With a cautious demeanour, she pushed herself out of her bed, and walked towards the source of the noise, conscious of not stepping too heavily on the floorboards.

She pulled her curtains back to find Darren looking back at her, the moonlight framing his angled face. In an instant, she pushed the window open in a multitude of concatenated emotions.

"What are you doing here?" She whispered, but made her disbelief apparent.

"I'm busting you out of here for the night," he said, unfazed by her tone.

"Y—you what?" She stuttered. "You're crazy. You know I can't."

He took in a heavy breath, and something changed in his eyes— they didn't have that typical glint that she was convinced was perpetual. "Please, I need to get away."

She bit her lip, knowing that she was now faced with a serious ultimatum. There was something wrong, she could tell that much, and such thought washed her in a slurry of worry. However she couldn't help how her mind fell back to the other time she tried to do something like this, and where that led her.

This is different, a small voice in the back of her head told her.

Somewhere deep down she knew it too.

This was different. But more importantly, Darren was different.

Nothing will happen.

Mother is fast asleep.

Nothing will happen.

These days it was easier to convince herself to do things she thought she probably never would. She didn't know if that was because Darren made it so easy to forget, or if she was starting to realise a truth that counteracted the lie she had always believed.

At some point, 'Mother knew all' began to morph into 'Mother knew some', and most of what came under 'some' was what Evelyn told her herself.

And so, with as much conviction as she could muster, she grabbed a cardigan, slipped on her black ballet pumps, pushed herself out of the window. She followed him out to the front of the house.