Dream Weaver (Dream Weaver #1) (4 page)

             
“Oh. I’m sorry.” Her cop composure faltered briefly and she suddenly looked very young and naive. “Um, a brother or sister then?”

             
“No. It’s just me.” My heart remained tender to this kind of questioning. I would have to work harder at not sounding like such a pathetic Little Orphan Annie. Poor Officer Elliot was stunned into silence.

             
The nurse flitting around my bed froze at my words, her hand moved as if by instinct to stroke my arm. Her brow corrugated and her eyes darkened with a shadow of grief. “There’s someone named Ivy out in the waiting room, honey. Would you like to have her with you during the exam?” she offered. This short, plump, kind-looking woman, with short, curly graying hair was graced with a gentle, compassionate smile and a tender heart. I imagined many small children had lain their heads on her ample breast for comfort.

             
“Yes. Please,” I mumbled through my haze.

             
Ivy skittered into the room a few moments later, pale and frail-looking, streaks of tears dried on her face. “Em. They’re treating Jess like a suspect,” she croaked.

             
“What?” I nearly launched myself off of the gurney. “No. Officer Elliot. Jesse didn’t do this. Make them stop.” The cop lurched away from the counter she’d been leaning on and scurried out of the room. When she returned her stern scowl melted into an apologetic smile.

             
“All taken care of,” she said.

             
“Thank you,” Ivy and I said in unison, and couldn’t help a tiny huff of humor.
Jinx.
I knew she was thinking it, too.

             
“Miss Sweet, how old are you?” Officer Elliot asked, her voice small and careful.

             
Oh boy, here it comes.
“Seventeen,” I told her.

             
“And you have no legal guardians?” Her eyebrows arched like tight-strung crossbows.

             
“No. I filed for emancipation after my parents were killed. I’ve lived on my own for a few months now.”

             
“I see.” She continued to scowl. “And there’s no one you would like me to call? At all?” she pressed.

             
“No. I’m fine. Ivy’s here,” I said, as though that explained everything.

             
Officer Elliot remained silent but her face twisted in thought.

             
Then the world shifted gears again, and lurched into slow motion like the Enterprise dropping out of warp drive. Ivy held my hand through the entire process, except during the CT scan and when Officer Elliot took pictures of my hands; she said to show evidence of defensive wounds. She stood by the head of my gurney in her cop pose, and took notes as she questioned us.

             
“So, from the beginning, what was this guy’s contact with you?” she began.

             
“He would call me at work, but only when no one else was around. Like he could see me.” My throat hardened around the words.

             
“Did you report the calls either at work or through Crime Check?”

             
Ivy supplied this answer. “Yes ma’am. Collin, our store manager knew and set up LP guys to keep an eye on her. And Jesse escorted her to and from her car every day. Crime Check took the report, but said there was nothing they could do unless the guy actually did something.”

             
“Do you know how the assailant got into the stockroom?”

             
Ivy shook her head but I answered. “He had a key.” My voice pitched higher. “One of us probably left it in the door and he took it. He was hiding in the old observation nest the whole time watching me.” Ivy laced her fingers through mine.

             
“Emari, I went in there during—the time you were missing. I couldn’t find you.”

             
I fought down a whine. “I know, Baby. We heard you.”

             
“What?! Why didn’t you call out for help? I could have…I could have…” she stammered.

             
“Because. He said he would kill me and you would be next. I couldn’t let him touch you, Baby. I couldn’t let him hurt you and I knew he would.” Ivy pulled my hand to her chest, clung possessively to the one part of me she could get to. She closed her eyes and sobbed, her hot tears cascaded down my skin.

             
“Oh no!” I gasped. “My bracelet!”

             
Ivy clutched my bare arm against her chest, stroked my forearm. “It probably came off during…in the stockroom. We’ll look for it, ‘kay?” she  consoled.

             
I nodded, and sent a tumble of tears down my cheeks. It had ceased to sting long ago.

             
“Miss Sweet, can you describe your bracelet for me?” the lady cop asked.

             
“Um, yeah. It’s white-gold, big links. It has a heart pendant with the engraving ‘Emari…FOLLOW YOUR DREAMS…Mom & Dad’. They gave it to me as a sweet sixteen gift.” My wrist felt weak and naked without the bracelet hanging around it where my parents placed it over a year ago. The memory of its tiny chimes shivered down my spine.

             
“Some of these guys like to take things. Like souvenirs,” Officer Elliot explained, but her face screwed up with frustration and her shoulders dropped forward. “I’m sorry. That sounded crass.”

             
Could this day get any worse? I sobbed into Ivy’s shoulder. What more could this man take from me?

             
Officer Elliot heaved a reluctant sigh. “Miss Sweet, is it possible you were raped?”

             
I squeezed my full eyes closed and forced the lump out of my throat. “I don’t know—for sure.” Ivy rubbed my shoulder, shushed me gently as the tremors rocked my body.

             
Officer Elliot continued. “If it is possible, we need to have certain tests done, and evidence collected.”

             
I mentally scanned my own body, tried to forget how I’d found my clothes when I finally came to, my bare skin singed by the cold concrete.

             
Officer Elliot and the mother-nurse reiterated the importance of the exam, it was necessary to catch the ‘assailant.’ Despite that, I couldn’t help but feel violated all over again. But this time I was conscious. My clothes were cut from my body because it was too excruciating to take them off. I stood naked and freezing on bright white paper while I was combed, scraped, examined and photographed. The room swam around me when the Wood’s lamp showed the proof—glowing smudges across my thighs.

             
A millennium later, the room finally settled to a hospital hush. A thorough investigation was completed; the doctor’s exam, police photos, and CT scan, the sutures—a dozen or so for the back of my head, half a dozen more for my left brow and four more across my cheek. I was just another piece of evidence in the ongoing investigation, not the victim.
Perhaps they could tag and bag me in a little brown bag like the rest of the evidence.

             
Ivy stayed glued to my side. Her voice remained calm and soothing as she drew my attention to more pleasant surroundings and happier times. Her words transported me to memories of a Halloween party she had thrown one year, our summer trips up to my parent’s cabin on the Pend Oreille River, and going to the
Rocky Horror Picture Show
with all the props.

             
Finally, after the bright white day evolved into a cold crisp night, they released me to go home. The scan showed no concussion, despite the pounding I received. The doctors determined my loss of consciousness was most likely from a psychological mechanism—my brain blocking out the trauma.

             
Jesse warmed up my car and drove it to the covered entrance while the mother-nurse wheeled me out.

             
“You take care now,” she said and patted my shoulder fondly.

             
The doctor prohibited me from driving for a day or two, so Ivy drove me home while Jesse followed in his car. We stopped briefly at a pharmacy to fill my prescription for pain medication and continued on the handful of miles north to Mead.

             
My little house in the woods felt abnormally secluded and tenebrous on this dark December night. My nearest neighbors lived over a half mile away. The 1903 craftsman was planted on twenty-five acres of towering Ponderosa pines and scrubby saplings. Winter-stark aspens quaked ominously as they absorbed the highway noise on the west end of the compound. The silhouette of a giant blue spruce merged into the dark sky. A snowbound metal shed and an old wooden outbuilding that resembled a very small barn blended with the snowy ground, seeming natural outcroppings in the landscape.

             
The lights in my parents old house just up the hill to the north glowed dimly behind halos of crystalline air. Only a dim reminder through the thick night air of my loss.

             
Normally, the solitude comforted me. Tonight, once Jesse and Ivy were gone, my gratitude for the seclusion was an epic consolation. Once they left, I could finally give rein to the raging beast that clawed at my chest.

             
Ivy pulled under the carport on the side of the house and Jesse parked behind her.

             
“I can carry you.” Jesse stepped effortlessly into chivalrous Prince Charming mode.

             
“I’m good. Thanks, though.” But when my steps wobbled, he wrapped his arm around my waist for support.

             
“I got you, Em,” he whisper. I leaned into him and plodded along beside him to the kitchen door under the carport. Ivy unlocked the door and I fumbled with the keypad to disarm the security alarm. In the living room, I delicately lowered myself into my recliner. Jesse skulked through the house, feigning nonchalance, but I could tell he was staking it out, verifying what I already knew; the closets and basement harbored no predators, no shadows lie hiding in wait in the built-in cubbies or attic access.

             
Ivy brought me a warmed can of instant tomato soup and a couple of pain pills. “Thanks, Baby.” As I gratefully took them, she perched on the arm of my chair, protective and silent, and watched me with doleful eyes. I rested my head on her lap and she contentedly stroked my hair. Ivy was never so happy as when she had someone to fuss over.

             
Jesse returned in a few minutes, satisfied with the absence of marauders. As I started to nod off, drowsy from the pills, he knelt beside me, a faithful and sorrowful hound dog. “I can take you to your bed, honey.” He brushed my hair away from my face.

             
“No. You don’t have to do that,” I insisted. “You guys don’t need to stay. I’ll be fine.” And I laid my head back in Ivy’s lap, too numb to hold my head up. Murmured conversation filtered into my sleep. I loved my friends. I knew Ivy was more than reluctant to leave me alone. And Jesse was in full-on protect mode.

             
Some time later, I vaguely remembered being lifted from my chair, the rhythmic rocking as Jess carried me to my bed.

             
I drifted in and out of consciousness for hours. At one point, I awoke to the tangle of arms around me. My head rose and fell in time with Jesse’s deep breathing. Ivy’s chest pressed against my back. Both of them had their arms wrapped around me. I hummed a sigh, laced my fingers through Ivy’s and nuzzled closer to Jesse’s chest. He stirred.

             
“Hey, you doing okay?” he yawned.

             
I nodded and snuggled into his warmth, lightly sailed between awake and asleep. “Jess?” I mumbled.

             
“Mm-hmm?”

             
“Thank you…for…” How did you tell someone thank you for saving you?

             
“Sure thing, Sweets. It’s all good.” He pressed a tender kiss to my hair.

              More hot tears seeped from my eyes and I drifted away into narcotic dreams.

Chapter 4 My Immortal

             
The morning found the three of us huddled on my bed. Ivy cried out in the middle of the night and I wrapped her tiny body with mine. Jesse curled around us both, an exhausted sentinel.

             
“Hey, girls,” he mumbled, and smiled at Ivy’s haystack of hair. That dark crushing pain returned to his face when his eyes fell on me.

             
“Is it bad?” I wasn’t sure I really wanted to know.

             
Jesse nearly flunked out of Drama class in school so his feeble attempt to smile told all I needed to know. It was definitely bad.

             
Jess and Ivy took their showers while I lounged on the couch in a narcotic induced haze. Their voices filtered into my numbed brain—plans for who would baby-sit me that day.

             
“Listen. Guys. I know you mean well. And I’m really glad you stayed last night. But, I think I just need some time alone.” My protests fell on deaf ears. But a beast ravaged inside my chest, clawed and screamed for release. My powers of persuasion against it were growing weak. My friends had endured enough already. I couldn’t expose them to the danger of those claws.

             
“Emari, honey,” Jesse said as kneeled in front of me, “I don’t want to scare you. But what if this guy knows where you live?”

             
“Dude, my house is wired, and it’s not like I’m going to open the door to a stranger,” I protested. “Besides, I’ve got Pinky by my bed.” It was a silly name for a stun gun. But I liked it.

             
Jesse pursed his lips and looked to Ivy for support.

             
She pushed him aside. Unbalanced, he toppled to the floor with an “
ooph
.”

             
“You are such a wuss, DeLaRosa,” she scolded playfully. Then she rounded on me. “And you. You don’t have to be brave all the time. You don’t have to protect everyone else all the time. Let someone protect you for a change.”

             
“Ives—it’s not about being brave. Being brave is doing this in front of an audience. I need—I need to vent all this shit that’s penned up, curse God for just one more shitty thing—I need to fall apart so I can put me back together again. Understand?” Her scowl told me ‘no’.

             
I dropped my fuzzy, aching head into my hands. “I need you both to go,” I said with all the authority I could muster.

             
Jesse pulled me to my feet and wrapped his arms around me. His body trembled against mine. “Em, please?” He tried one last futile attempt.

             
I buried my face in his chest, and despite the pain, I held him even tighter. “Jess. I love you. You know that. I can’t,” I sobbed, “I can’t. This is too hard to do with either of you here. Understand?”

             
His whiskers combed through my hair as he nodded. He shuddered again and buried his face in my hair. “I am so sorry, Emari.” His voice pitched up under the strain.

             
We stood in each other’s arms, our shared heat drew sweat to our skin. Finally, I petted his back. “It’ll be okay, Jess.” He nodded and released me. I squeezed his hands to reassure him as he leaned down to kiss my forehead. I flinched away and he stepped back.

             
“Emari, I…”

             
“I’m sorry, Jess. It’s not you. It’s me.”

             
He smirked at that. “Yeah,” he sighed, “I’ve heard that one before.”

             
I reached for his hand, squeezed it and willed him to be okay. “Okay?” I encouraged.

             
“Yeah. Okay,” he gruffed, then shuffled to the kitchen door to wait for Ivy.

             
Ivy was an ice princess, cold and rigid in my embrace. “I don’t like it,” she argued.

             
“I know. But we’ve done this before. Please, Ives. All of this is bad enough for you to have to go through. Don’t let me make it worse. Just give me some time. A day or two, maybe—a week. Please don’t make me do this in front of you.”

             
Her arms crushed around me. “Fine,” she said as trembling and tears drowned her. I held her for several moments until she drew in a bracing breath and she stepped away. Slow and reluctant, she headed out the kitchen door with Jesse’s hand clutched in hers. I made a show of rearming the alarm system, and waved goodbye drowsily. I blew her a kiss and mouthed to her “Love you”. She raised her hand and curled her fingers into the ‘I love you’ sign. Tears spilled and sparkled down her cheeks as she turned to leave.

             
Jesse’s scowl drew my attention as Ivy brushed past him and tugged on his coat sleeve.
My poor Jesse.
I pressed my hand to the window and forced a quick smile. “I’ll be okay,” I said loud enough for him to hear through the glass. A jet of misty breath erupted from his nostrils like the snort of an angry bull, then his face and eyes finally softened and his shoulders sagged with resignation.

             
“Finally,” I murmured once the car rolled out of sight. The sound of my own voice in the silence startled me. Finally alone. Alone, so I could fall to pieces without scaring the hell out of everyone around me
.
Alone to plunge with abandon from the cliff I teetered on since the day the troopers came to my home with the news of my parent’s deaths.

             
Alone by choice. Alone by chance.

             
Alone by fate. Evil fate.

             
Alone by volition. Alone by violence.

             
By preference or providence.

             
Decision or divinity.

              Twenty-five acres of glistening snow lay before me as I sat in my window seat. Yet I didn’t see a yard of it as I stared bleary-eyed at nothing for an eternity. My body felt filthy and crushed, like going through a trash compactor. Hot water would feel so divine, and I momentarily contemplated the bleach. But I decided against the sting. I shuffled stiffly to the bathroom and gingerly stripped away my charming oversized green scrubs from the hospital. The police had taken mine as evidence.

             
The magnetic pull of the bathroom mirror drew me. I wanted to see—and I didn’t. I braced myself for the worst but nothing could prepare me for the image that stared back at me. Both of my eyes bulged like a prizefighter, my left puffed to barely a slit. My coppery spikes were matted against my head, a dark, saturated red. The anvil of fists had re-forged the contours of my face. In junior high, I wished for fuller, poutier lips, a little more Angelina Jolie, but I hadn’t quite had this in mind. The tiny curl at the corners of my mouth, my secret smile, receded beneath the swelling. I wondered if I would ever smile again, or if the brutal hammering purged any sense of happiness out of me forever.

             
The water streamed over me, as hot as my tender skin would tolerate. I scoured myself all over, desperate to remove the stench of
him
, though I doubted I’d ever feel truly clean again.

             
My wrist felt naked and weak without my parent’s gift, as though the gold heart was the source of my strength. My heart contracted at the loss and my legs folded out from under me. I crumpled to the floor of the tub. My emotions reeled out of control, careened precariously with grief. Hot tears spilled down my face mixing with the stream that rained down in steamy torrents over my shattered body. I hadn’t believed the pain could be any worse than what I suffered after the crash. Now, I knew better. Hyperventilated breath wheezed through my raw throat. Peace betrayed me, my body and soul roiled in a storm of agony.

             
Finally, I drained the hot water tank, a mammoth task considering Dad and I installed a high-capacity heater. Dad knew I loved long hot showers. I dragged myself out of the tub, toweled off and dressed in my fuzzy black pajamas with green scowling skulls. I’d save the laughing skulls for when I felt more optimistic.

             
I was greeted in my bedroom by the usual suspects; werewolves and zombies and vampires. I turned on the black and white filmstrip lamp next to the bed, illuminating the eyes of my faithful sentry in their constant vigil over me. I knew all along these weren’t the real monsters. Not all monsters are make believe; not make-up, latex and costumes. The real monsters truly did lurk out there in the real world in the dark and secluded corners. Waiting.

             
But even with the glossy gazes the bed wasn’t safe. It was open on three sides, leaving me defenseless and exposed. I had to make it safe. My ribs and shoulders screamed in protest as I pushed the bed into the corner. Perhaps I should have let Jesse do this, but the vulnerability hadn’t occurred to me before. Last night, huddled with my friends, my bed felt safe.

             
Wrapped in the comfort of flannel sheets and fleece blankets, I pressed my back to the wall and closed my eyes. Steeling myself with shaky, measured breaths—I took the plunge, released my breath and my hold on sanity. The tenuous ties that anchored me snapped and stung like heavy rubber bands. The darkness broke through my fragile walls, the stones of my heart crumbled under the force. So I let it—too weary from fighting, too broken to care.

             
That was it, all my poor heart could endure. Gloom curled slowly through the cooling embers of my soul like the smoke of a dying fire, filling every recess.

             
I knew I could never—would never do it. Though, sometimes, I closed my eyes and imagined the shining, silver blade. A scalpel-sharp edge as it dragged down the length of the tender flesh of my forearm, flaying it open, releasing my inner torment.

              I had tried to return to school, at Adrian’s behest, after my parents died. But kids can be so cruel. The psychedelic press of hormone-driven bodies had swirled in a miasma around me. The Shadle Commons were crowded with jostling heat that smothered me; sent me running for freedom and fresh air. I sat on ‘the hill’ with my head between my knees, grounding myself to Earth.

             
“Whatcha doin’, loser?” Who knew a cheerleader could be such a bitch?

             
I glanced up from my spiraling orbit.

             
“Hear you’re an orphan now, Sweet. How’s it feel to be all alone
and
a loser?”

             
My God! I’m having a Harry Potter moment. “Where’s yer mum, Potter? Is she dead?”

             
But I didn’t have a wand, or magic. If I did, I’d use it to bring them back from the dead.

             
“I trust you know no magic can bring back the dead, Harry.”

              And I wasn’t nearly as brave as the Boy Who Lived. So I just walked away, with sole possession of the dementors that stalked me.

             
The normal world can’t handle people who are different. And Ivy and I were truly different. We liked who we were, and most days, what ‘normal’ kids thought of us was irrelevant. They were cookie cutter kids, so alike in their sameness. We were unique, and it scared them.

             
They called kids like me ‘emo’, and naturally, if you were ‘emo’ that meant you’re a cutter as well. But like most ‘emo’ kids, I wasn’t truly suicidal. The fantasy of the cut wasn’t about death at all, but release, a physical pain to commute the emotional pains of life that found no other outlet.

             
Before the crash, sometimes, I fantasized about a duller blade and shallower cut—just to feel the pain--though the deed was dangerous, a precarious line to cross. What if the first cut didn’t suffice? What if the pain wasn’t enough? And I didn’t want to become one of
those
girls—a cutter.

             
I did it once—after the crash, on accident. Sort of. I’d slashed the new key to the cottage across the delicate skin of my wrist. Unfortunately—or fortunately, the key still had sharp metal edges, to my shock and elation. The pain was heady, intoxicating. Morbid triumph welled inside me. And, I wanted more, more of the sweet ecstasy. The savage jubilation coursed through me at finding an external testimony of the internal pain for which no other remedy existed.

             
I never told Ivy. I never told anyone. Most of the time, I could ignore the urge. Sometimes, the lure required indomitable effort to deny. Occasionally, it dogged me so rabidly that it took everything in me not to relent.