Chapter 7: Abilities
I felt weak, but I opened my eyes; the sun was blinding. Skylar kept rocking us back and forth. I felt like I was going to be sick. I moved my arm and made a slight whining noise without intention.
“Scarlett, what happened?” He asked.
“You need to tell me…” I stopped to breathe; I was getting dizzier, “…about my dreams and what you did.”
“I don’t know if—”
“You have to,” I pleaded. “She said I needed to find out.” He just went on rocking us back and forth. “You see what they can do to me; they’ll kill me next time.”
“They almost killed you this time,” he argued.
“My point exactly,” I persuaded.
“It’s not a good idea,” he protested.
“What are you talking about, why wouldn’t it be a good idea? I have to sleep. I’ve never had a dream like this before, but it's obvious that it picks up where it left off, and that’s what will happen next time. I won’t wake up, so is that better than whatever reason you’re trying to keep this from me?”
“I don’t know everything about you, but once you find out…” He sighed, “…at least in my case, a lot of pieces come together. You might find out a horrible truth, or you might put two and two together and come up with—”
“Just tell me, please, I need to know. I lost a lot of blood; I’m feeling sleepy already,” I begged.
“What did she say you needed to find out?” he asked.
“First she said she was normal once, she came to me for help, and I changed her into what she was.” I began.
“I don’t understand that,” he admitted.
“She said to find out about my dreams, and how you moved us from my room to the living room, then to the car,” I continued, ignoring him.
“Right now, the world is simple, innocent, what you’ve known your entire life. When I tell you, it will never be that way again.”
“It won’t be anything to me; I’ll be dead if you don’t tell me.”
“We have powers.” He stopped. “Gifts, abilities, god it feels so stupid to say, but it’s true.”
“So, why couldn’t you tell me that?” I asked. He stared at me in disbelief, and I knew why; he didn't expect me to be this calm.
“You’re supposed to find out on your own,” he whispered. “You would have realized it, but whoever set you up ruined that for you, you just thought you were going crazy.”
“Okay, I don’t think it’s quite hit me yet, but I still don’t understand. What does that have to do with the people in my dreams?”
“I don’t know either. You’re different…” He must have seen the sad look on my face. “I mean your dreams alone, what’s happening with them now. I’ve never heard of or seen anything like it.”
“Well that doesn’t matter, does it? If I can’t help her, or do something, she’s going to kill me.”
“I’m sorry that’s all I know,” he helped me up. I stumbled to the back seat, with him ready to catch me the whole way. “Lie down, rest.”
I shouldn’t have listened; he should have kept an eye on me. Before I knew it, I was back in the field. It was nighttime now. The fog remained, and the moon shined through. It was the most beautiful, amazing and horrifying thing I’d ever seen.
“Ah welcome back,” she rang as she came up behind me. “So what did we learn?” she asked as if I was a little kid.
“I have powers. That’s it. I don’t know what I did to you. I don’t remember things, a lot of things. I don’t know why. If I remembered I would do something, I promise, but I don’t know what I did to you, or how to fix it.”
“Ooh, wrong answer,” she pushed me down, lifted the knife up to the sky and went to plunge it into me. I rolled over and instead, it had sunk into the dirt. I closed my eyes and imagined I was somewhere else—alone.
I opened my eyes, and a beautiful garden surrounded me. I’d imagined it in my head, but now, seeing it before my eyes, I realized I had been here before. I’d never been able to do this in my dreams in the past, why now? I looked around at all the beauty. Wonderful lilies, coneflowers, sunflowers and other beautiful flowers I didn’t know the names of. I noticed something lying under them. It was a folded up newspaper with a picture on it. I was almost certain it was the girl who tried to kill me. She died in an accident, over fifteen years ago. She popped up from nowhere, and the newspaper clipping fell from my hand.
“You can’t hide from me,” she laughed an evil laugh. I had an idea; it was worth a try. I closed my eyes and imagined her looking just as she did in the picture. When I opened them, she was no longer horrifying. “I—I’m me again.” She cried with joy in a voice that sounded nothing like her old one.
“Yes. So we’re okay now?” I asked.
“As far as this goes, but I still need your help.”
“Why do you need my help?” I asked.
“I’ve done some bad things. I can’t do much about it now, but you can.”
“How?” I asked, and she was gone.
When I woke up, the sun was setting. We were parked down a secluded road. There was a lake just in front of the car, the water mimicked the sunset. I got out of the car and walked to the shore where Skylar was sitting.
“Have I really been asleep all day?” I asked, amazed.
“Yeah,” he looked up and his face was pale.
“Are you okay? What happened?” I sat down next to him.
“I couldn’t wake you up. I thought—”
“I’m fine,” I assured him. He still seemed upset. “Okay, what else is wrong?”
“I just wish things went different.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, taking offense. What he really meant to say was he wished he never met me.
“Things could have been different.”
“Well, I’m sorry I messed things up for you,” I thought about walking away, but I wasn’t finished. “This has been one day of your life. It’s been the last six months for me, and it will never go away.”
“That’s not what I mean,” he said as he got up. He wiped the sand off of his blue jeans. What the hell else could he mean? I didn’t even care. I doubted he would give me a straight answer; we’d been playing this guessing game since we met. “Scarlett, wait!” He yelled as I walked away from him.
I didn’t know where I would go, if I would just run to the car and lock the doors, or if I would run into the always-terrifying woods. Before I had time to decide, he grabbed my hand and pulled me into him. He grabbed the back of my head and locked his lips with mine. I couldn’t pull away, not even with all the anger coursing through me.
“Hello?” a girl’s voice called from behind me. I stepped back and almost lost my balance.
“Hi,” Skylar said, confused. “Is someone here with you?”
“No, I don’t know where my family is,” she whispered.
“What do you mean; did you get separated from them or something?” I questioned.
“I guess you could say that, they’re gone.” She leaned in closer, looking both ways. “Someone took them. I don’t have a car, so I just started walking.”
“What do you mean someone took them? Who would’ve taken your family?” I asked.
“I didn’t see them. I just woke up, and they were gone.”
“So how do you know then? That somebody took them, I mean.”
“I—I can’t really say…” she cried, still looking all around.
“Okay we’re going to help you, just give us a minute.” Skylar grabbed my arm and led me over by the car.
“Why couldn’t she tell us how she knew someone took them?” I blurted once we were out of hearing range.
“I don’t know, maybe—maybe they threatened her… or—”
“Before we do anything, I need to know at least that. I mean we can’t just leave her, but we don’t have time to play games with her. She’s not going to want to go with us to find Grace while her parents are missing, but can we really
make them our first priority?” I stared at him waiting for an answer, though I felt a little awkward considering what this girl had just interrupted.
“We’ll see what she says.”
We walked back over to her; I stared up at the clear night sky and wondered if anything would be simple again.
“We will help you,” I said. “But first, we need to know why you think they’ve been taken. We kind of have some important things to do ourselves. So we can’t waste any time not knowing what you know.”
“Okay,” she cried. Tears streamed from her sparkling blue eyes. “They left a note. It didn’t say anything about how to get them back or anything like that though.”
“So… what did it say?” I asked, losing my patience.
“I can’t say. I’m sorry, I really am. It doesn’t make much of a difference at all really.”
“Alright, what’s your name?” I asked.
“Annabelle,” She answered, tears still rolling down her cheeks.
“I’m Scarlett. This is Skylar.”
“Are you guys staying here tonight?” she asked so quiet I had to lean toward her to hear.
“Yeah, we were planning on it…”
“Okay, do you mind if I rest in the car?”
“No, not at all, you go ahead. I’ll lock the door once you’re inside, okay?” He assured her.
“Okay, thank you.”
She couldn’t have been much younger than seventeen, but she seemed so innocent it made her appear much younger. She didn’t have much of an accent. I assumed she’d lived here for a while, but she still had a slight southern drawl. I was jealous. She was beautiful. Her blue eyes matched with her dark-brown hair, and the pink tint of her cheeks. All I had was the vibrancy of my features. I never felt like I had what it took to pull off my red hair.
Even though I only met Skylar yesterday, he was the version of Dante that I had a shot at, as stupid as it might sound. I could feel him watching her walk to the car. I sat down in the sand, and he sat next to me.
“She’s pretty,” I blurted. He looked over at me.
“I don’t know.”
“I haven’t been around anyone in so long; I forgot what it felt like to be, I don’t know, insecure because of someone else.”
“You don’t need to be insecure because of anything,” He put his arm around me. “You’re beautiful; she is pretty, but she’s no match for you.”
“Right,” I laughed.
“I know what you think, but you’re wrong. I’ve never met anyone like you. I could find a million girls like Annabelle.”
“Forget it,” I said, embarrassed.
I wasn’t looking for compliments, or attention, to be honest I didn’t know what I was looking for. Everything felt surreal; I didn’t even feel like I was real anymore. In the hospital, it was different; I had something to look forward to—getting out. Now, I felt like day after day I would be stumbling around, without purpose, without a point to any of it. Was I sure Grace was alive? No, I wasn’t. I didn’t have much hope in anything anymore. I didn’t know this boy sitting next to me; I had only a slight idea of who he was. I had memories from long ago, but it wasn’t him. It was Dante.
“I’m sorry. I know you’re going through a lot, but we’re going to find her,” he assured me.
“We don’t have the first clue of where to begin. What does it matter anyway? I saw her die in my dream. She’s probably dead.”
“Wait,” He stopped, his eyes wide. “You saw her die?”
“Yes, but I didn’t see who did it. For all I know—”
“Did you tell her?” He demanded.
“What does that matter?”
“Did you tell her?”
“I had to.”