And the bloody death of that horse…that was me. That was my humanity dying as Isaac’s blood coursed through my veins.

I pull slowly out of my deep thoughts, letting the images fade from my mind.

My eyes lock on his.

“I want you to leave,” I say.

His tortured face locks up with my words. I want to hold him, to let him hold me, but I can’t. Not this time.

“I mean it,” I say softly, looking toward the window. “I want you to go.”

I was wrong when I said it would hurt a thousand times worse whenever Isaac would disappoint or leave me.

There is no measure to this pain.

I can’t look Isaac in his eyes, but I feel them all over me, desperately trying to force my gaze up to see him. But I don’t look because it hurts too much. How could he have let me live like this for so long? How could he let me go through the transition and never let me drink from him?

I refuse to look at him even though his face is the only thing I want to see.

No one speaks. The room has become a permanent dwelling for silence and sorrow. Genna wants to speak, to say or do something to stop this from happening, but she doesn’t.

Isaac looks at me one more time and finally I let his eyes capture mine, let them bore into me with one last plea even though his face is solid and holds no emotion itself. All of the emotion is in his eyes and it’s devastating to me to witness it.

His gaze falls away and he walks out of the room.

Many long and quiet seconds pass and I don’t look away from the place he last stood. Genna stays as quiet as before, letting me find myself from being lost in this moment.

I wipe all of the tears from my face and look at her.

“Help me get out of here,” I say and I don’t even wait for her to do anything as I reach up and pull the IV from my arm and then the one from the top of my hand. Blood pours from the perforations, soaking the hospital sheet beneath me in a thin, steady stream of crimson.

Genna is at my side now, pressing a wash cloth over my skin to stop the bleeding.

I climb out of the bed, feeling perfectly healthy and see my clothes sitting next to my purse and duffle bag in a chair, tied up in a plastic drawstring linen bag with the hospital’s logo printed on it.

“Here,” Genna says, taking my arm into her hand, “to stop the bleeding.” She unwraps two Band-Aids and presses them firmly over the tiny bleeding holes.

After slipping on my clothes, I hoist my bags over my shoulder and swing open the door and leave the room, too.

I ride to my old house alone in the cab. I had left Genna standing at the front of the hospital. But I know she’ll find her way to me, whether I want her anywhere near me, or not. She isn’t human, after all. I doubt I could ever actually hide from someone like her.

I get out of the cab in front of my old house. It’s early morning and the sun has yet to fully wake up, leaving the grassy landscape of the field and of the dirt road leading to the house in a haze of gray and orange and pink. The gravel and dirt grind under my shoes as I pass the mailboxes and walk along the weather-worn rusted fence. I see Mrs. Willis standing outside on her front porch, sweeping. She stops to watch me as my figure comes up the drive and when she notices who I am she raises her skeletal hand to wave at me.

I just keep walking, pushing my way through the yard and up the drive until I make it to the front of the house. It hasn’t changed a bit. If anything, the dirty white paint has peeled away more and the rickety front steps look unsafe to walk on.

I gaze out at the field that surrounds the house and see how much taller the yellow grass has gotten. And then I see the lone tree in the distance, still full of leaves on its strong crawling branches that twist around the top to create a dome of protection. It’s the king of the field, that tree. Somehow, I envy it. I stand here in front of the house looking out at how alive and free it is, at how no matter what goes on in the world around it, no one cares enough about that tree to disrupt its peaceful life. No one is going to march out there and cut it down, or force it into some sort of submission.

I used to be like that. In a sense.

I was once a girl with a giant field around me, so vast and protective, yet insignificant to the rest of the world. No one could hurt me way out there. No one would bother to waste their time walking such a distance just to tear me down.

I was untouchable.

I couldn’t be hurt.

But not anymore.

I walk up the porch steps and drop my bags at the front door. Reaching out, I turn the knob and the door creaks open.

The house smells the same: that familiar scent of baby powder air freshener that my mom liked so much, the cigarette smoke lingering in Jeff’s ashtrays, the gassy smell that always seeped from the old oven. The air is thick with heat as I make my way inside. The summertime temperature smothers any breezes that try to slip their way through any of the half-opened windows.

I go through the living room and down the hall, feeling the old floors creak and sink in spots under my steps. I don’t go into Alex’s room. I decide to leave that alone entirely. I push open my bedroom door, having to shoulder it as something is on the other side blocking it. When I get the door to open enough, I twist around it at the waist to look inside. It’s no longer my room. I can’t even see my bed. There are boxes piled high against the walls with Trent written in Sharpie across the sides. Trent’s Shit. Trent’s Magazines. Trent’s Stuff – Keep Out.

My step-brother is as much of a bastard as Jeff.

I can’t tell if Trent actually lives here now, or if he’s just using my old room as a storage unit.

I leave the door half-open and go back into the living room where Jeff’s empty beer cans are more obvious than my mom’s knick-knacks. The DVD cabinet has been left open; DVD’s lie scattered around on the stained rust-colored carpet. The old couch looks very much lived on; the outline of Jeff’s head against the arm is still there from years and years of falling asleep on it and spending more hours out of the day on it than doing anything else.

Our pictures on the shelves are covered in dust. The one with me, my mom and Alex, taken at a portrait studio a year before Mom met Jeff, hangs crookedly.

But nothing about that is different, either.

I don’t know what I came here looking for. Yes I do…I wanted to find something else painful, some other harrowing memory to drown out the pain I feel for Isaac.

But it’s not working and I knew that it wouldn’t.

I push open the front door and run outside, down the worn steps and away from the house. I run to the edge of the field and don’t stop when the tall grass whips around my lower legs. I rush through it, forcing my trembling body out into the early morning light moving softly over the landscape. I run and run through the tall, wet grass and the tree gets closer. My chest heaves, searching for air not because I’m running so fast and so hard, but because the storm of tears is crushing my chest, suffocating all of my desperate breaths.

I trip once and almost fall, but catch myself and just keep running until I’m close enough to the tree to see the individual branches spreading out beneath the canopy of leaves.

And I let myself fall to my knees.

The legs of my jeans soak up water from the ground leaving my skin underneath to feel cool and grimy. I lean over, arching my back and press my opened hands against the earth, gripping whatever I can inside my crushing fists. My arms are mottled by dirt and brittle slivers of sun-ripened grass and moisture, but the only discomfort I feel is inside my chest, the uncontrollable sobs rattling every inch of my body.

My weight drops and I lurch forward, lying fully against the soaked ground. I can smell the dank moisture and water-soaked debris and I can feel something small and sharp poking me in the rib, but I don’t care.

I don’t look up at Genna when I feel her arm slip underneath me. And I don’t care enough about that, either, to refuse or be cautious of why she’s here and what she might want to do to me.

Genna pulls my trembling body against hers and she holds me there with her legs bent underneath, letting me cry softly into the thin fabric of her shirt. Her dainty fingers comb through my hair as I lay in her lap.

“It is a beautiful tree, isn’t it?” she says, her words as soft as powder. “Not the way it sits there, but the way you see it sitting there.”

She goes on:

“I have lived and witnessed others live a thousand lives, but the ones that I remember the most are the ones who chose to see the world in a different way.” I feel her fingertip brush across my eyebrow and there’s a smile in her voice when she says, “I’m a little disappointed that you aren’t my Charge. I would’ve enjoyed listening to your thoughts every day, seeing the beautiful things that you see.”

“I don’t see anything beautiful, not in the way you make it sound,” I say to myself, forgetting that she can actually hear my thoughts.

She brushes the backs of her fingers down the length of my cheekbone. “That’s where you’re wrong,” she says aloud. “You see everything beautifully.”

I don’t understand her words or the meaning behind them, but I don’t ask. They are completely ridiculous to me and I don’t want to offend her blind philosophies.

“Come with me,” she says going into a stand and helping me up with her. “I have a little more time to spend with you before I go back to my Charge.” She takes my hand. “And I want to make the most of it.”

I lay on my side against a comforter atop an incredibly hard hotel mattress, and I stare toward the giant window overlooking Athens. All I can see from the third floor is the gray sky covered by a blanket of thin clouds. The air conditioner hums to life under the window as the set seventy-degree temperature is threatened by the outside heat.

I don’t care that I’m still in wet, filthy clothes, or that the poor housekeeper who will have to clean this room in the morning will have to lug the heavy less-often-washed comforter out with her this time. It smells like it was washed just yesterday.

I don’t have the energy to worry about much anymore.

Genna is sitting at the little round table across from me with her legs pulled up onto the seat. The outside gray light leaves one side of her perfect oval face in a faint shadow, but always, her iridescent green eyes are obvious and brilliant and can never be obscured by anything dark.

“He has never been in love before,” she says, but I don’t look at her. “And I see that neither have you.”

“Please,” I say barely above a whisper, “I can’t talk about Isaac.” I shut my eyes softly for a moment because already they’re starting to tingle. I don’t want to cry anymore. I’ve cried so much that my head hurts and my sinuses feel abused.

“Okay,” she says softly, but I get the feeling that she hasn’t completely given in to my request. “Then let me tell you a little about me.”

I look at her now, searching her face and I remember the things that Malachi told me. Malachi. The moment his name enters my mind, I see Genna’s face shift from soft to wounded, and she raises her back, letting her shoulders fall slightly.