Intrinsical - Lani Woodland [55]
“That’s new,” he commented, holding his stomach and wincing. “Guess we’ll be sticking close to each other, huh? Phil and I didn’t have this.” He gave me a wink. “Have to admit I’m glad it’s you and not him; you’re cuter.” Brent studied me intently. “You get angry when you’re scared.”
“I’m not scared,” I said, my eyes suddenly watery. I thought I had been doing a great job of ignoring the terror that had been gnawing at me all night.
“You don’t have to pretend. I can feel how scared you are.” He lowered his voice, “It’s okay to be scared, Yara.”
“You can feel it?” I asked, refusing to admit how frightened I was, even to myself.
“Yep. Wow, just knowing that’s how you deal with being scared helps me understand you so much better,” he said, walking again and disappearing behind the trees. The invisible hook in my gut was back. I closed my eyes, willing the tension and pain in my stomach to dim.
But I could still see Brent, his essence glowing behind my lids. To some internal compass, he was North, my guiding star. Following my Brent GPS led me to him in the Headmaster’s garden where he had taken me the night after the dance. He was sitting on the edge of the gazebo with his eyes closed, his head following my movement. My tension unwound, the pain easing the closer to him I got. Opening his eyes, he watched me, sifting through my emotions until I cleared my throat loudly.
“Sorry.” Brent laughed sheepishly. “It’s just so . . . interesting. You’re really sad and scared right now and you’re trying to direct all of those emotions into making a plan.”
“It doesn’t do good to dwell on things you can’t change. It’s better to do something useful.”
“But not being able to deal with them is just making you angry.”
“Cut me some slack . . . I just died here, okay?” I said, gesturing wildly with my hands. I felt suddenly a little morbid at how casually I had addressed my death. “Am I supposed to curl into a ball and cry? How will that help?”
“Okay, slack given, but only because you just died.”
I walked toward the edge of the garden, aware of how strongly he thought I needed to come to grips with everything. Just thinking of Cherie’s haunted look the last time I saw her or imagining my family’s faces caused acute emotional ache in my chest and I folded my arms around my middle, curling around them. I knew my feelings were simmering inside me like a beaker on a Bunsen burner and would eventually start to boil over, but I couldn’t dwell on that now so I thrust them to the back of my mind. I promised myself that when I was ready I would reach out to my loved ones and somehow let them know that I still existed and was okay.
That idea comforted me slightly, but my heart was hit with a sudden tidal wave of pain as I thought of my poor parents and sister having to deal with another loss, burying another member of the family. They didn’t deserve that. I buried my head in my hands and finally allowed myself ten minutes to cry and curse at the heavens. Anger, grief, and tears ruled me. And I let them.
After my allotted time I took a deep breath and found it odd that I still felt the need to breathe.
“I think it’s habit,” Brent explained. “Your mind says you need to breathe, so you do. We have a pulse, we cry— and, thanks to you, I can tell we still blush. It’s almost like muscle memory and phantom limbs. But your all-important heart no longer beats.”
A quiet thump-thump played in the silence. “But your heart is still beating. I can hear it.”
His fingers went to the left