章 13: Under the oak tree

The low pitch of the melody up the hill still finds my ears at this late hour of the night.

Tempting me.

Shattering my drowsiness.

With sharpened ears and wide eyes, I lay on my bed. A soft breeze keeps slithering inside through the slight gap in the curtains. Cooling down my blazing nerves with its soft touch.

When the time needle eventually struck twelve, I spring up from the bed and put on the best of the dresses I own. I chose a blue one, blue like the ocean. A blue that my eyes are soon gonna turn into.

I gaze at the mirror. It tells me I'm not so bad to look at. It tells me I am worth a second glance. It tells me the things no one bothered to notice in me. It tells me I shouldn't have been an outcast.

With a final touch on my hair strands flowing down my shoulder, I quit gawking at my reflection. Instead, I find my eyes searching for a familiar figure in the darkness of night. But I find no traces of him.

I feel the anxiety crawling under my skin all over again. The uncertainty oozes out of every pore of my body. Am I doing it wrong? What will my parents say if they know about their daughter sneaking out at midnight with a boy to the fair she wasn't even allowed to by faking her identity?

Will they be mad? Will they despise me for it? But I wanna feel something too. I want to feel alive too. I wanna live before I die. I crave that feeling of being set free.

My legs carry me toward the staircase ever so smoothly. In a way that won't kill the tranquility of the darkness. I find no movements downstairs, the door to my parent's room is closed just as it is with Lilly's.

The sound of my heart thudding against my ribcage rings in my head. Holding my breath, I move back to my room on my tip toes and close the door behind me. It makes a tiny creaking sound and it almost gives me a heart attack.

With my palm placed on my chest, afraid that my heart might jump out of my chest just like I'm gonna jump out of the window, I search for the rope that I made with my old clothes.

I grasp it in my shaky arms. I don't know why I'm doing this when I'm clearly scared to death. But a voice in my head screams for me to just do it. A yearning for that something I thought I would never have.

I walk to the window with the rope. When I try to drop one end of the string down the window it slips down my fingers completely. It stares up at me with its invisible eyes from where it lays on the lawn of our garden. I can barely see it from the darkness but the light that the moon pours down helps me a little.

I drag a hand down my face with a curse, a frustrated sigh rumbling beneath my rib cage and finally slipping out of my mouth.

I stand there and stare down at the window for a while. Knitting a plan in my head. It took all the courage in me to finally move my limbs and sit at the window and sneak down.

After God knows how long, I'm down in the garden. Huffing out long puffs of breath with burning lungs. I gasp for some air. Heart like a wild creature trying to break free from its cage.

I take the rope from the lawn and hide it in the bushes. In case I come back late or sleepy I don't want this thing to be the reason for my death.

The silver moonlight illuminates the garden in a pale glow. Enough for me to watch out. I move out of the garden like a shadow. Ears sharpened, scouring for any skeptical sound.

I walk past all of my neighboring houses at a listening speed. I don't even dare to breathe. When I stand at the Oak tree where Arlo and I planned to meet, I already expect him to be there, waiting for me. But there's no sign of anyone. No Arlo.

As I stand there all alone, I feel the panic rise in my throat but I forcefully gulp it down. I can see the lights up the hill from here. I'm so close to having a taste of it, I can't give up yet. I'm brave. I'm doing this. I can do this. He will come.

Seconds turn into minutes and I don't dare to think it already might be half an hour that I'm standing at the root of a random oak tree in the middle of the night like a ghost.

Fear crawls on me like some creepy insects that I can't smack away. I close my eyes and try to calm down my frantic breathing. Arlo will come, won't he? He won't shatter my fantasies like that. He would not.

My eyes shoot open at the sound of leaves cracking underfoot. A scream caught in my throat, choking me.

My heart drops down to the knots in my stomach when my wide eyes land on the huge figure of a wolf approaching me.

My blood turns into ice on my nerves.

Its fur is white with gray streaks scattered across. Its huge paw crashes the green grass as it moves toward me.

The space between us is dying just like the air in my lungs.

Maybe this is how I die.