The Boy

the original story changed to a chapter...

She was extravagant, spontaneous, and nothing could ever stop her. No more bullies, no stupid girls prancing around in tank tops. The mean teachers were gone, and the jocks were gone. They wouldn't come back. She'd killed them all. Nothing would ever get to her. Now Tabitha Myune was invincible. She was running, down the street and out of her neighborhood. God, she loved to run. Sprinting, running as if the world would end soon, and she would have to stop. She wanted to keep on running, just for the sake of it. But she was too tired, too unfit, and sprang down the street, collapsed on her lawn, breathless and perspiring. The world blurred and spun around her, dizzy, satisfied and smiling. The world was just perfect.

That was the first time she saw him. He was lying there, apple in hand and she looked at him, studied him. He was still. 

"Who are you?" she asked him. "Where are you from?" He didn’t answer. He didn’t move. 

"Are you sleeping?" No answer. "You're dead, right?' He didn't breathe. No sound escaped from his cold lips. She thought she knew him. She wasn't scared. Not after what she did to the others, she could never be. 

"I can tell you have secrets." she told the dead boy. "I'm glad I don't. Secrets make you...different." she twirled a loose strand of her strawberry blond hair and looked down at the boy. The boy opened his eyes, and Tabitha Myune let out a piercing scream, falling off the tree while the boy took another bite of his apple. He wasn't dead. But he wished he was.

"Why were you pretending to be dead?" she asked the boy, after hyperventilating for a few minutes. 

"Sometimes being dead is easier than being alive. Dead people don't cry. Neither do I."

He shook the leaves off his chest, and then lay down again, this time looking up at the sky.  He could see that this girl had secrets. Deep, dark secrets that would last a lifetime. And he wanted to know every single one. 

That night, lying in bed Tabitha Myune thought about the mysterious boy on her lawn. She wondered who he was. In the heat of the moment, she'd forgotten his name. 

"What's yours?" he'd said. 

"Tabitha Myune." pause.

"Oh. Like clear water?"

"Yeah."

"Oh." And that was it. He'd said his name, but she'd forgotten. And then. Nothing. More. But of course, the dreams still came. The ones that drove her to insanity. The dreams that drove her to becoming what she thought she was not: A murderer.

Then the next day, Tabitha Myune waited and waited for the strange boy, and she wanted desperately to tell him something, anything about herself.  She wanted him to know her. And as Tabitha Myune turned towards her house, she saw him. 

"You're here."she whispered, and the boy looked deep into her eyes and she felt like she knew him, even if they'd just met the second time. She trusted him. 

"I forgot your name." she confessed. 

"I never told you." he replied, but he had. She turned away from his face, tears welling up in her eyes. She knew who he was now. But he couldn't be. Could he have risen from the grave and come back to haunt her? Could he? 

"Why didn't you tell me you weren't dead?" she cried. "Why didn't you come back for me?" But he did, didn't he? He was here wasn't he? She turned back. He wasn't.

Even worse, her dreams repeated over and over, the people she'd killed surrounding her, calling her name. He appeared and tried to help her, calling for her. His voice was lost among the dead. She didn't want him to be. She wished that she could avoid the truth, change him into someone that she hadn't wanted to kill. Someone that was not her brother. She awoke to the soft sound of whispering, and for a second thought that he was here. But instead she saw the kind, smiling face of her mom, and for a moment in time she felt normal. In that moment she was just a normal girl being woken up by her mom going to a normal school. But in a flash that feeling was gone, and she realized that she couldn't go to school if her teachers were dead. And her mom knew that. A sudden hatred welled up inside Tabitha Myune's heart, and her mom faded away, just like that. Then Tabitha Myune woke up for real, and realized that there was no one there to wake her. Of course. She felt a soft and warm feeling on her lips and licked them, only to find that they were coated with blood. It tasted bittersweet, just like her heart.