Pure Illusion (19 page)

Birthday Christmas

Holding
the puppy close to my chest, I glare at Hunter as I stuff huge forkfuls of chocolate
chip pancakes in my mouth. Hunter, Candy and I all sit at the bar. Candy sits
on the left of me and Hunter sits on the right. I’m stuck in the middle, and
after I witnessed them going at it like wild animals, I can’t help but
feel…uncomfortable. I don’t know why I’m here. Hunter clearly has company. He
should have dropped me off at Falcon’s house.

“She’s
just the cutest thing ever,” Candy coos, caressing
my
puppy. “Have you
named her yet?”

“No,”
I mutter hastily.

“What
about Daisy? That’s good name, right?”

“No,”
I reply just as quickly and irritably.

“What
about Tootsie?” Her jolly tone is annoying me beyond belief.

“No.
That’s a stupid name, just like Daisy,” I snap, feeling childish and
overwhelmed with anxiety.

Candy
flinches as if I threw scolding grease on her and drops her hands, turning to
pick over her pancakes. I risk a glance at her and she looks like she’s about
to cry, but as I examine her face, I notice that actual tears are pooling in
her eyes.  

Damn
.

I
feel bad. Knowing Candy is not the type of person to
ever
retaliate
makes me feel worse. She’s too abnormally kind to ever be a bitch.

I
didn’t want to make her cry. She’s too sweet and too…
innocent
in some
weird inexperienced way.

Hunter’s
arctic eyes narrow at me. “Isabel, I need to speak to you.
My
room.
Now.”

Gliding
off the stool with puppy in hand, I stroll up the spiral staircase, down the
corridor to Hunter’s room.

He
shuts the door behind us and turns to face me; his eyebrows snapped together
and his forehead creasing. “What’s your problem?”

I
cradle my puppy close to my side, reaching up with my free hand to smooth the
wrinkles between in his brows. A face like his should not be twisted with any
kind of stress. Most of the anger leeches from his expression. “That’s rhetorical,
right?”

He
advances closer. “Why are you acting like that? The dead look in your eyes has
vanished only for fury to take its place. Something’s up. What’s wrong?”

Everything.

“Nothing,”
I lie.

His
studies me with a critical eye for a moment and then tilts his head. “I thought
we were friends.”

“We
were friends, once upon a time,” I agree, “before you made it crystal clear we
weren’t.”

He
shuts his eyes, tipping his head down.

“Look,
Hunter. I don’t know what you want from me. You said we can never happen and
I’m cool with that. But what I’m not cool with is, you being a jerk to me and
you demanding to know my whereabouts like I belong to you. Newsflash, I don’t.
I think it is best we stay away from one another.”

He
straightens his pose and gazes intensely into my eyes, then cups my jaw, his
thumb moving over my bottom lip. “I can’t do that, Isabel.”

“It’s
not your duty to take of me.”

His
hand shifts to my neck and glides down. “But it is,” he whispers.

My
heart thuds heavily in my chest as I stare into pure blue eyes that shoot right
through me. “Hunter.”

He
moves closer and circles his arms around me, careful not to crush the puppy.
“It’s been my duty from the very beginning, Isabel.”

Every
muscle in my body seizes from being so close to him. He embraces me tighter and
lovingly strokes my back. It takes no time at all for me to lose this battle
and melt completely into him and hold him closer, so our beating hearts pound
against one another.

We
stay silent in a monumental moment, until Hunter speaks. “What are you going to
name her?”

“I
don’t know. She’s beautiful. Thank you.”

“I
thought you’d like her. What’s beautiful to you? Maybe I can help you with a
name.”

Taking
a moment, I ponder this over. What’s beautiful to me? Tyler was beautiful to
me. My mom was beautiful to me. My dad was beautiful to me. They all didn’t
live long enough to celebrate the joyous things life has to offer. They didn’t
live long enough to celebrate the rest of my birthdays like we once did.

“Birthdays
are beautiful to me,” I whisper into Hunter’s shirt.

“I
love the name Birthday.”

“Me, too.
What were you
thinking?”

“Christmas.”

“I
love Christmas.”

Hunter
squeezes me before he drops his arms. “Birthday Christmas it is then.”

I
glance down at the content puppy in the nook of my arm.
“Maybe
just Birthday.”

He
nods.
“Birthday.”

“Though,
Christmas can be her last name.”

“That’s
a great last name,” he says, smiling and scratching Birthday behind her ears.
She is completely lost in Hunter’s touch, wagging her little tail and shutting
her eyes into small slits, her tiny tongue hanging out her mouth. “I know Candy
isn’t your favorite person in the world right now, but I need you to be at
least respectful towards her. Like you, she’s going through some rough shit,”
his eyes drift from Birthday to me, “shit she wish wasn’t going through
at
all
.”

My
brows frown. “What? Did she try to…?” I trail off horrified that someone like
Candy would even consider suicide an option. I mean, she’s so ridiculously
happy and animated. What dreadful matter occurred that made her feel such
despair and that made her feel like she had no other choice?

“Can
you manage to be nice? I can take your witty sarcasm, in fact, I love it. But
Candy, she’s…breakable.”

Understanding
what he means, I nod. “Yeah, I can manage that.”

Hunter’s
fingers curl at the back of my neck. He leans in and places a chaste kiss on my
forehead. “I know you can. You can do anything. You have no idea how strong and
precious you really are.”

His
words penetrate and pierce right through my shield, sinking into the core of my
heart. “Can we go back and eat pancakes now?” I ask his throat.

“Yeah,
we can go back and eat pancakes.”

When
Hunter and I make our way back down to the kitchen, I introduce Candy to
Birthday. After witnessing that calamitous scene with Hunter and Candy, never
in a billion years would I imagine myself sitting comfortably between the two,
contently eating Hunter’s chocolate chip pancakes.

Freefalling

It’s
been two weeks since Hunter gave me Birthday. Falcon, Vic, and Harmony fell in
love instantly when they saw her. How could they not when she is the loveliest
puppy in the world? Hunter hasn’t called, but that’s not anything unusual. Max
has called. We talked just about every day. I’ve really grown to like him, a
lot. He hasn’t seen me since our burnt taco dinner date, though. He said his
father needed him to work extra hours at the Gabai’s Security Industry base on top
of his shifts as a police officer, so he didn’t have free time available. Two
Fridays have passed and I have not had any contact with GreenFrog whatsoever.
Since I don’t know much about GreenFrog, I don’t know what to make of this.

I
flex my fingers, trying to get more blood to circulate through my frozen veins.
My wounded hand has completely healed and didn’t even leave a scar.

A
cold silver flake sticks to my heated cheek and dissolves on impact. I tip my
head back and stare at the vast, dark gray sky as chunky snowflakes begin to
fall all around me. I stand at the very top of Cherry Cliff: a sheer cliff
facing the deep riverbank below me. I’ve ignored the black and yellow
reflective caution signs with crumbling rock images that’s rooted into the earth
and wandered to the very edge of the cliff. Falcon dropped me off. I’ll call
Harmony to come and get me when I’m ready to leave. They all wanted to stay,
but I need to be up here alone to gather my thoughts and objectives.

My
father, Ivan, took me and Tyler here all the time. In the summer, we would sit
up here on a blanket and eat ham and cheese sandwiches and talk for hours. My
mother, Isabelle, was terrified to ever leave the house. She could come
outside, around the grounds of the house. But when it came to leave and go
beyond the area, she couldn’t. My mother was struck with severe anxiety and
panic attacks when it came to the simplest thing, like going to the grocery
store. My mom didn’t have the strength and that put more pressure on my dad,
who loved to travel.

He
told us he gave up his career in the military as a communications equipment
technologist. He told us that he’s been all over the world. Everyplace Tyler
and I blurted out my dad would nod and tell us his favorite memory of that
exact place. He said he gave it up for my mom and didn’t regret doing it. My
father said he would do it again, in a heartbeat if he had the chance. My
parents met in high school, here in the small-town of Cherry Creek. They grew
up together and were high school sweethearts. She was meek and quiet and he was
lively and outgoing. Opposites played in their favor, until they graduated high
school. My dad wanted to experience the world while my mom was satisfied and
content with living and staying in town. So, he made her a promise, a promise
to come back to her in four years. The rest is history.

The
howling wind up here is bone-chilling, so cold that the moisture at the seam of
my lips is frozen. My breath is stuck in my throat and I can’t keep my fingers
warm. I should walk away and leave now, but the scenery of the wide, dark
shimmering river and overcast sky is too captivating to turn my back on. This
place is just too beautiful.

Inhaling
deeply, I take in a lungful of crisp, fidget wintery air. Then, suddenly, I’m violently
shoved off the edge of the cliff. There are three stages my mind automatically
goes:

The
first is pure and undulated fear. I’m free-falling. I’m going to die and I’m
scared to die, I’m also terrified of the pain of the impact and the unknown. What
happens after death?

The
second is acceptance. There is nothing I can do about it. The push off the
ledge was so sudden that I didn’t have time to struggle or catch a breath to
scream.

The
third is self-preservation. I don’t want my life to end here, it can’t end
here. I have so much to live for…

The
impact of the crash is instant. I suck back icy water as I release a
bloodcurdling scream. Pain radiates from every fiber of my being. It feels like
I plunged straight into a sea of razor-sharp frozen needles that ruthlessly
tear at my flesh and rips and snaps at every warm thing within my body. A
million mesmerizing oxygen bubbles do an elegant dance as they race each other
up to the surface. My long hair is a dark mass that spreads around me like
ghostly smoke. My clothes are like heavy iron that only weighs me down.
Fighting with everything I have, I mindlessly claw at the dark water, hoping
that something or someone hears my prayer and saves me, hoping that I am
miraculously delivered from my doomed fate. The blaze of holding my breath so
long is scolding my lungs and frying my brain. It’s excruciating.

I
didn’t want you to go out like this
, Tyler whispers to me.

I
wanted better for you.

You
deserve so much better.

But
I’m here.

I’ve
been waiting…

Sinking
into a dark and bottomless pit, I take my final breath—a small gasp—releasing
the blistering inferno inside my body and allowing the icy water in. It erases the
memories, erases every thought, whether it’s pleasant or not. I don’t have any
say in the matter. I’m left without anything…my mind is just blank. 

***

Hero

Fuck,
it’s cold out here. My teeth can’t stop chattering together. I toss a rock in
the river and watch it sink in the black water. Tyler used to beg me to come up
here. We would climb the cliff and stargaze at night. I didn’t mind doing that
when he was alive. It took me away from my problems at home. I didn’t have to
worry about my mother beating the shit out of me and my little sister, Naya. I
didn’t have to care or understand me and Naya’s complex relationship, how she
slept in my bed every night since I can remember and how she now rubs up
against me, crushing her tits to my back and how hard I get every single time
she does that. I didn’t have to be concerned about my father’s AA meetings and
him falling off the wagon. I didn’t have to care about my parents’ catastrophic
divorce. I didn’t have to feel bad about lying to Hunter when he asked me if
everything was okay. I didn’t have to worry about Taylor’s home life and
safety. I didn’t have give a fuck about anything. It was just the luminous dead
stars and Tyler and I. But now, standing here alone at the edge of the
riverbank pisses me off. It’s no longer a place of tranquility. I can’t even
make it up the fucking cliff without him next me—my legs started to shake and
gave up on me not even halfway up the trail.

I
hurl another rock in the water and turn my back, heading to my car. Then
something heavy splashes into the river. It could really be anything. But
something about that sound makes me stall. I dig the heels in the wet gravel,
considering the possibility of turning around. Annoyed and frustrated, I sigh
and swing my torso in the direction of the river. Many air bubbles and ripples
break the surface of the water. Fear settles in the pit of my stomach. Without
another thought I’m racing into the frosty river with arms wide open. The
temperature of the freezing water shocks my system. But that isn’t enough to
deter me. I inhale a deep breath and plunge deeper, following the last traces
of shimmering bubbles. The further I dive, the darker it gets until it is
complete and total blackness. My eyes have no use for me here. I swing my arms
out in front of me, blindly searching for something to pull up. My fingers curl
around strands of something soft. It may be a plant, but whatever it is, I tug
harshly and yank whatever’s attached to it up to the surface with me. My oxygen
is depleting. Shooting up and breaking through the surface, I realize its
Isabel.

I
wrap an arm around her waist and haul her along the water until we reach the
gravelly bank. I lay her cold, limp body gingerly down. My fingers fumble to
the side of her neck. No pulse. Panic sets in and I press my lips to her icy
blue ones and begin CPR while my hands frantically pump over her heart.

This
can’t end like this.

Tyler
died and I couldn’t help him.

I
was not there to help him.

Isabel
can’t die like this.

She
can’t, not while I’m here and I can do something about it.

NO!

NO!

NO!

“Isabel,
breathe,” I say in a strained plea before blowing air into her mouth.

She’s
unresponsive. 

“Come
back Isabel!” I order, before I force another breath down her throat. My tears
drop from my chin and roll down her wet face. 

My
hands are demanding and relentless over her heart. “Do you hear me? Come back.
We need you!” I yell, pressing down over her heart again.

Pump.

Blow.

Pump.

Blow.

Pump.

Blow.

How
long have I been pumping her heart and breathing for her?

Seconds?

Minutes?

It
feels like forever.

She’s
still unresponsive; the only movement is the false rise and fall of her chest
as I force more oxygen into her still lungs.

She’s
not responding but I continue to breathe for her relentlessly.
                         

Pump.

Blow.

Pump.

Blow.

I
drop to my knees and crawl up to the cold body; her skin is too pale and blue
against the ground. I do the only thing I can: hold the lifeless girl that Tyler
loved beyond reason in my arms.

“I’m
sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” I whisper
desperately as I rock her back and forth, wishing she’d wakeup.

Her
body convulses in my arms. Almost immediately she wakes. She turns her head to
the side and coughs up water. I smooth her inky hair away from her face as she
takes huge sustaining gasps, desperately trying to catch her breath.

Her
green-hazel eyes are wide and frantic, searching for something to grasp onto
until her eyes land on mine. “Hero?” she coughs. “I want to live.”