Chapter 29

I felt wonderful the next day; clean and full of life. I woke up on the bathroom floor where I had spent the whole day before. Rylan was asleep in the bathtub next to me with his head resting against the faucet. He was so sweet to me that I decided that I would make him breakfast in bed�"or no�"breakfast in tub.

                Quietly I stood up and tiptoed out of the bathroom and headed for the kitchen. Knowing Rylan he had everything stocked in the fridge. As I opened up I was proven correct. He had everything from frozen waffles to strawberries, or even frozen crepes. What he did in his spare time was amazing. I guess that’s what you get when you can control time.

                I prepared one of my favorites, crepes with peanut butter and chocolate. I topped it with a big glass of milk. I also made a fruit bowl of: blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, with yogurt and almond clusters. It’s one of my favorite things my mom made for me as a kid.

                I started setting the plates on the table when a very tired and worn out Rylan walked around the corner. His hair stood out in all crazy directions and he rubbed his eyes. “Morning,” I said as cheerfully as possible�"for comedic effect, of course.

He looked at me with squinted eyes. Apparently he’s sensitive to the morning light.  “What’re you doing up so early?” He asked and sat in a chair with a thud. His elbows rested on the table in front of him and cradled his chin.  

                “Making breakfast for us,” this time the cheeriness wasn’t fake. I was actually pretty excited about what I had done.

                He smiled, “oh good.” He wasn’t faking the happiness either.

                We sat down together and ate. We ate in silence for the first few minutes until I finally couldn’t contain myself. “Do you have a family?”

                He looked at me strange then laughed, “of course I have a family.”

                I looked down at my plate and continued to chew my food.  “Where are they?”

                He chewed away at his crepe. I watched as the jaw muscles twitched below his skin. “They’re back on my island.” The sentence really didn’t reveal anything.

                “You’re informative.” He hardly gave me anything to go off of.

                He smiled, “Sorry.” He sighed and put down his fork. “I have one brother and one sister, Haulani and Kei. They’re both a couple years younger than me. My father died when I was eight, in a war on my island.”

                “That’s horrible.” I said with my hand over my mouth.

                He smiled sympathetically, “I’m pretty much over it now.” He paused and scooped his spoon into the fruit and yogurt cup. “My mom got remarried about a year later. It was my dad’s wish that she did. They had Haulani and then Kei. I think Haulani is fifteen or sixteen now”

                I looked at him and watched as his jaw chewed the food without even thinking. He looked at me, but let me just stare at him. He was so amazingly gorgeous. It was hard not to look away. He just smiled and continued to eat. His grey eyes looked ahead of his body toward the ocean. My stomach turned and I wanted to reach out and touch him, I tried to resist with great pain. He noticed and rubbed his soft hand over mine. A shock poured through me and both our hands snapped away.

                We both looked in different places not acknowledging what happened. He was the first one to say anything after the shock. “Are you ready for today?” He asked quietly.

                   I really was. I ate as much as I could as fast as I could without losing it all. Rylan had dressed to work out again, but this time he wore shorts and no shirt. I dressed in shorts and a white tee. I met Rylan out on the beach. He was looking out to the ocean in his military stance once again. He turned when he heard me, “let’s sit.” He sat down cross legged in the white sand. He set a plastic bottle down next to him.

                I sat in front of him and crossed my legs just like he did. His dark eye lids shut slowly over his perfect pools of grey. “Listen to the ocean�"just relax.” My eyes closed also and I listened to the wave’s crash back and forth. The waves weren’t too large today. Not enough to surf on, but enough to help me relax.

                My hands sat on my folded knees and I felt the energy running through my body. “You’re amazing.” Said Rylan, My eyes shot open and he was staring right at me, “Close your eyes.” He smiled and I closed my eyes. “You can do anything if you want.” This was weird I thought to myself, was this just a self help thing, or did he really want to tell me this? “Now completely let go of yourself. Forget everything that you’ve ever known. Restart your life. Become something new and different.”

My mind first went to black walls. I was standing alone in a white room. There were lights hanging above my head streaming down over me. The room started to spin around me in giant white streaks, but I didn’t feel dizzy. As if a tornado was ripping through the room it just spun with me standing directly in the center of it. My body lifted up and hovered above the spinning ground. I watched the blank walls spin until they couldn’t hold on anymore. The walls broke apart and shattered, sending debris all around. My hands came up and covered my face from the mess coming toward me, but it all disappeared before it hit me.    

                I opened my eyes to see a silver pond gleaming in front of me. The moon was out and shining perfectly on the still water illuminating the liquid in the darkness around it. Slowly I picked up my feet, one step at a time, and walked to the edge of the pond. Crickets rang in the background and frogs croaked loudly. I kneeled down, at the edge of the pond, into the long thin grass that surrounded me. My hands went in front of me and sunk into the mud. The warm dough oozed up between each of my fingers, and I leaned forward to look at myself in the reflection.

                I still wasn’t used to the new me. When I looked in I was prepared to not see myself. But when I looked in it wasn’t me�"it really wasn’t me�"it was Phoenix. Strangely I didn’t turn away. He looked straight up at me with his perfect silver eyes. All I wanted was to reach out and touch him. His hand went up first and he stroked a strand of hair away from his face, and right there before my eyes he transformed. Now looking up at me was Rylan. He stared straight up at me and I just watched. His eyes closed and then he disappeared. Now it was just me, looking down at my new self. Everything about me had changed, not just my appearance. From where I was now compared to the beginning of the year is actually amazing.

But, I knew that I still hadn’t found my true self. I was still searching for that. I looked into my now silver eyes and searched through them. I only saw the usual things, pain, fear, love that was now gone. Nowhere did I see happiness. Images flashed before my eyes, Jo with Ryder, my mother’s funeral, my dad crying. Everything was flooding my mind and it all became too much. My body shook and I coughed trying to take my mind off them. The images came faster and faster. They poured out from everywhere. Me as a baby the way my mom held me. The first time I rode a bike. My whole life was literally flashing before me, but I wasn’t dying.

                The images began to sink back into my mind and slowly disappear. Only what I wanted to remember I did, I began to choose my memories, I took out most of my elementary, middle, and high school years. I soon realized a lot of the bad things I wanted to keep. They are what made me and I got through them. They were proof that I could do anything. Then I got to it, the last night I spent with Phoenix. Our bodies meshed together again, so passionate so heated. The sweat rippled from our bodies and melted into each other. The pain of rejection shot through me. ‘Was he faking it the whole time?’ I thought quietly in my mind.       

                I panicked and pushed away from the pond. The illusion passed from my eyes. I looked out and I was floating about two hundred feet off the ground. A scream broke from my mouth and I began to fall straight to the earth. My legs and arms kicked as the air began to whiz past me. It howled over the holes in my ears creating a deafening screech. This time falling wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted to live and now I was clawing at the air trying to catch something, anything so I could live at least one day longer.

                Where was Rylan? Why wasn’t he helping me? I rolled over so my back was flying towards the ground. I couldn’t watch it come closer anymore. I took a deep breath as the trees once again appeared. I knew that within seconds I’d be dead. My eyes closed and I waited. My body hit something hard and I knew I was dead.

                Everything was black and swirling around me. Something soft was stroking the side of my face, I could still feel, even in death. The black totally surrounded me and I found myself engulfing it. The darkness filled me and I felt stronger as it absorbed through me. The warm hands dropped me and I opened my eyes to see Rylan standing above me, “Why hello there.”                

                I floated with my back still to the ground in front of Rylan, “You saved me.” I gasped.

                “Nope, you did.”

                I looked down. There were no hands under my body and yet I was floating feet off the ground. I thought that, just like all dreams, when I looked down I’d fall, but I didn’t. “I’m doing this?” I asked carefully trying not to scare it away.

                “Soon it will become natural, after I teach you how to make it. It’ll be just like breathing.”

                I stared at him, “what if I didn’t catch myself?”

                He licked his lips and smiled brightly. “Do you actually think I’d let you fall?” My hands shook at my sides as I stared at his flawless face. “I was here the whole time.”