⛔ Warning: Suicidal thoughts

Time, Twins, and Trash Bins on Fire

- One Month Later -

Screw whoever claimed that time has the capacity to heal. There are some scars that not even time can erase. I close my copy of After and I let my forehead rest against the cold front cover.

I take a deep breath, sniffing the book scent from it. Then, I sit up.

I open the book with my eyes pinched shut.

I wait.

Nothing happens. No one materializes.

A loud grumble escapes my lips, and I impatiently scan through the pages until my fingers stumble upon the selfie that Tessa took of us at Harry Styles' concert.

See? Time doesn't do shit. It just hurts so much to look at this. It's just that, I'll never see them again, and that breaks me a little every second that passes. I think I lost my heart that day, and I will never get it back. Looking at this picture hurts so much. Still, I will treasure it forever. It reminds me that everything that happened was real.

Going to university helps. And since fiction feels like a prision to me, I started dwelling in books filled with facts and theories. Cold, real facts don't hurt. Literary theory has helped me understand the twisted nature embedded in human nature. We don't write, we vomit feelings in the shape of words and commas, and the poor characters just juggle with the things we give them.

I let the picture on my bed. Then, I grab the copy of Pride and Prejudice that belonged to my mom, and I sit criss-cross on the carpeted floor of my bedroom. My black Vans overlap one over the other. I look at all the tape and staples this poor copy has; they are reminders of Jason's doings and me trying to fix them up. It's like from the very beginning I have been trying to fix books-literally. Fix Hardin. Fix Tessa. Fix Katniss. Fix Darcy. Change their stories. Make them better. Help them escape. Who was I kidding?

And they are still trapped in there. There is no way of changing the story now.

I burn the edges of the book and I watch as the corners of the thin pages recoil and fade into nothingness.

I guess this is what death feels like. You slowly desintengrate and just stop existing-and you just stop feeling so much.

Once I see the flames taking control of the book, I throw it into the can where the ashes of The Hunger Games and After lie.

It just hurts too much to read them. It's like I am forcing them to re-live their stories by reading them. So I promised myself not to read them again. They don't deserve that. No one deserves to be stuck in chapter one for eternity. I am certain that these copies bear no charm, so I know I am not hurting them at all.

The first week after the fire, I opened my own copies of the books over and over again. I cried, I begged them to appear just one more time.

But nothing.

They are gone. So...why keep them in here? These books are really just ink and paper. A nightmare trapped from cover to cover, and locked with tiny, unescapable full stops.

I tried reaching out to Mrs. Woolf but she claims that the books are in a safe storage room now...away from fires and other destroying forces like myself.

"Sunset!"

I hear Raiden calling me.

I start looking around me in a rush to hide the can. We made peace after everything that happened. The books needed to be taken away, with or without his help, it would have happened anyway.

"Are you making a fire again?" He peers down the contents.

Too late. He already saw me and the bin with fire inside.

"It's under control. I promise." I point at the small flames before me.

"I know." He smiles and sits down mirroring my own position. "So you didn't break up with anyone this time?"

"No." My eyes roll, and I press my lips hard so as not to laugh.

"Aww. My sister is all grown up." He rubs the top of my head for a brief second and I push him away from me. Then, he spots some loose pages of Pride and Prejudice and he throws them into the fire. "These have no magic, right?" he asks, showing me the pages.

I shake my head, and when I do he throws them into the bin.

"I'm here for you if you need me, you know?"

I smile at him. "Thanks, Raiden."

"I know they won't come back, but I am here for you. Always."

My head tilts until it finds rest in his shoulder. "I know bro. You did some growing up too."

"Well. I'm trying. I'm trying to see beyond human eye-sight. I'm so sorry I undermined your mental health." He kisses the top of my head. "I wonder why we care so little for the things we cannot see, you know?"

His question echoes in my skull. After the fire, and after seeing that those characters were real, he finally realized that I was not as dramatic as he claimed that I was.

"Hey, I was looking for you." Dean knocks at the parted door, and he slides it further open. "What's that smell?" he waves his right hand in front of his nose. "Who did you break up with this time?"

"Raiden!" I smack him hard because he must have told Dean about it. "Stop spreading rumors about me."

Dean chuckles and sits on the floor, opposite us. The small fire in the trash bin sits among us. It looks like a small bonfire in my bedroom. Except that, instead of burning wooden logs, I'm burning stereotypes and prisons made of ink and paper. I can almost feel Elizabeth Bennet patting my shoulder.

"So..." He looks at me with expectation. "Who did you break up with?" he insists.

I squint my eyes at him in disbelief. "I broke up with hope, expectations in men outside the boundaries of fiction, and the hypocrisy of the real world."

They both gape at me. I grab the lapels of my jacket and close them over my chest, to cover my sports bra. Or maybe they are just staring at me because of what I said.

"That was supposed to be a joke, people, you should laugh out of respect." I fold my arms in front of me.

"Oh..." Dean chuckles. "Sorry, I don't speak fluent university language."

We all start laughing when someone knocks at the door. "Raiden!" my dad's head peeps behind it.

I launch myself in front of the trash bin before he gets to see it. My arms and chest land on Dean's lap, and Raiden is holding my Vans for some reason while I lay splayed on the floor. I turn my torso and let my cheek rest on my palm. This is my best attempt to hide my actions which may be very well misunderstood, considering my criminal records.

Dean instantly puts his hands behind him on the carpeted floor of my bedroom.

"Everything okay?" My dad puzzles his eyebrows as he talks to us.

"Perfectly," Raiden adds, shrugging the corners of his lips downwards. I simply smile widely.

"Oh...kay..ummm-," he stutters, "Raiden, Skyler has just arrived. She is with Lukah downstairs." My dad throws us a puzzled look and then he leaves.

"L- Lukah is here?" My voice trembles. We saw each other a couple of times after the fire, but that night marked me, and he was the one holding me. He held me for so long, just like Hardin asked him to. I practically had to beg him to leave me. My brother's presence helped since Lukah is still out of boundaries for me, and the same goes for him. So Raiden was all like 'I take it from here' and only then, Lukah decided to let go of me.

No one replies to my previous question, which is something that often happens. It's like I speak, but no one hears me sometimes. Hmm.

Raiden stands up and walks away from my room, leaving me with Dean.

Oh damn. I'm still all over him.

"Sorry," I mumble and I climb out of him.

"That's okay." He smiles kindly at me, but clearly avoids eye-contact.

"Is that the picture of Tessa and Hardin with you at the concert?" he asks, stretching his hand to it until he holds it before us. The both of us are sitting crossed-leg on the floor.

"Yeah...' I sigh.

"Does it hurt to look at it?"

"Yes." I nod my head.

"I'm sorry I was a jerk that day. I really was so high. I barely remember what I did and what I didn't."

I can't help but laugh. I know he was a jerk. I know he was high. I was too unfair to blame him for everything that happened that night.

"That's okay Dean. I mean... it's not. You were an asshole. And you were like 'I'm too high to care.'" I whine in a fake male's voice. "You shouldn't have been high. Why were you high in the first place?" I wonder.

"I didn't have the guts to break up with Camille." He throws me a sideways look.

"So, 'let's do it while I'm high', sounded like a good idea?" I turn towards him.

"Well." He also turns to me, so that we are facing each other. "It did," he replies with his eyes looking up, trying to find answers. "But most importantly, I just wanted to escape..." He pauses for a long second and then resumes, "for a little bit, you know? I just needed out." His voice shakes and I know he is about to cry.

His words hit me hard because that is exactly how I have felt in the past. Or even now. My arms fly around his neck, and I hug him so strongly and unexpectedly that he falls on his back, pulling me with him-God, I just tackled a guy in my bedroom.

I snort and let my face fall so he doesn't see my-most probably- blazing red face, my forehead pressed against his chest. "I'm so sorry that was supposed to be a hug."

He snorts louder than before and we both start cackling our hearts out.

The door whines open.

"Raiden, I swear I was-" My words cut off as I lock eyes with Lukah.

"Hey..." His eyes blink several times.

I crawl off of Dean, and sit on my knees.

"I was looking for Raiden," he states, taken aback.

Dean sits up. "Oh. He is not here, he-"

"I see," Lukah bluntly interjects. "I'll look for him somewhere else."

The door starts closing behind him and I quickly stand up and reach for him. My hand clutches at his arm. His green eyes drag from there until they lock with mine.

"Are you okay?" I ask Lukah.

I swallow hard as his eyes find ways of warming things inside me that I didn't know of their existance.

"Yeah. Sure." He breaks eye-contact with me. "I have to go now."

"Hey, Lukah." Raiden is holding hands with Skyler when they reach us.

Lukah, instinctively, takes three steps away from me.

"Hi Sun, you okay?" Skyler greets me.

I just nod my head.

"Let's start working bro, we have a bunch of things to do." Raiden lets go Skyler's hand and pats Lukah on his shoulder.

"Dean, come on!" Raiden calls him and he passes by me, brushing my shoulder.

I close the door behind me and I lean against it. I look down towards my bare stomach, and my denim capri pants. Why didn't I wear a regular t-shirt today? Ugh.

A big sigh escapes my lips.

The door knocks and I just know Lukah is on the other side. I swear I'll kiss the hell out of him, screw my brother, the narrative, and the f*cking repetitive cycles in my life.

I inhale deeply, and I open the door with the biggest and silliest smile on my face.

"Sister," Dawn beams with the brightest smile ever. "We have to talk," her words come out in staccatos.

"What happened?" I ask, intrigued.

She takes a deep breath, and then another. It's as if she were struggling to form sentences. She keeps taking breaths and I am losing my mind.

"Just speak!" I yell.

"It's the Wattpad publication. It has 10k views. All the characters are getting changes. And people are asking for more. My phone won't stop annoying me with all the damn notifications."