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Melody
My breath chokes,gasping as I bolt upright.
“Easy, hang on.”
Hands touch me and grab me. Hands try to push me back down.
I scream.
“Melody!”
I blink through the panic and the terror, and my vision starts to clear. My eyes blink again, and I realize, and remember, where I am. And when I frown up at the shape hover near me, it materializes into Jackson.
I swallow, feeling my pulse begin to slow. Jackson looks at me with concern, his brow furrowed deeply, his jaw set tight. Behind him, the fireplace crackles, but…I frown as I glance around us.
“Why is it dark?”
And it is. Aside from the fireplace, the house is pitch black. No lights on in the kitchen like they were before. No lights down the hall, as they were before. The only light comes from the flames licking hungrily at the logs in front of me.
“The power went out just as you…”
He frowns, leaning closer to me, his eyes narrowing.
“What was that?”
“Nothing.”
I swallow as I sit up again, hugging my knees to my chest. I take a breath, looking away from him as I chew on my lip.
“Melody—”
“It was nothing, okay?”
The marked silence from him has me glance out of the corner of my eye to see him looking at me with cold suspicion.
“Are you epileptic?”
“What? No.”
“Diabetic?”
“No,” I sigh. “No, I just…” I shrug. “I guess I need some food?”
I’m not going there with him. Or anyone. I’m not prying that nailed down, padlocked, cemented door deep in the recesses of my mind open. Not ever.
The therapists I saw years after what happened explained that in some ways, it would be easier to talk about it then, at eighteen, rather than when it initially happened. But in other ways, they said, it was harder.
Trauma calcifies. It heals in unpredictable ways, leaving scar tissue mosaics you might not be able to explain. So, by the time I did open-up to trained professionals, a lot of what had happened was just…locked away already.
Buried. Covered in a mile of mud.
Jackson eyes me.
“So that’s a no on playing guitar, then?”
I laugh, loudly. Which is weird because it should make me flinch, or angry, or ball in on myself again. But it’sjustthe right level of dark humor given the situation to bring a smile to my face.
“Think I’ll pass for now.”
