Forever Blue

by Abby Wilder

  "Who's there?" Cara called out hesitantly, and it struck me as odd to think of her as scared. Cara didn't do fear.

  "It's me." And then I added, "Lennon."

  She yanked the door open and stood in a camisole and short pyjama bottoms. "Where have you been?" she asked angrily. "Your mother called and I had to lie and say you were at the library." She left the door open and walked back over to her messy bed. "I don't even know if you go to the stupid library, but what else was I supposed to do? Tell your mum that you had run off, and ruin their honeymoon?"

  "I need to know what happened that night."

  Cara frowned and pulled the duvet close to her chin, snuggling back down in the blankets. "What night?" She yawned.

  "The night Ruben died."

  "Why don't you ask him?" she said sarcastically, and then she sat up. "Is he here?" she whispered.

  "You believe me?"

  She flopped back down. "No. And you need to ask Judah, not me. He was there that night. He's the only one that knows what really happened. Now go away and leave me alone."

  "Come with me?"

  Cara groaned. "Where?"

  "To see Judah."

  "Now? It's three o'clock in the morning."

  "Please," I begged.

  I'm not sure what made Cara relent, but we were soon walking up the long driveway to the Mitchells' house having left Elmo parked on the side of the road, not wanting to startle Judah's parents.

  "Follow me," Cara said, grabbing hold of a rung hidden in the ivy creeping over the walls of the house.

  The ladder went all the way to the window of Judah's room. A faint glow of pulsating light flashed from his window and Cara rapped on the glass. Judah poked his head out and shock passed over his face when he saw Cara hanging off the ladder, me underneath.

  "Are you going to let us in, or not?" she asked grumpily.

  Judah stood back and swung the window open wide. I climbed through just as he muted the sound on the TV.

  "What are you doing here?" he asked. He was still dressed in his school uniform and grease was smeared across his shirt. A beer bottle sat open on the floor beside the bean bag placed directly in front of the TV screen.

  "She wants to ask you something," Cara said, jerking her thumb in my direction. "This was not my idea."

  A hesitant smile spread over Judah's face. "But you're here."

  Cara narrowed her eyes and smirked before flopping down on the bean bag, crushing the imprint left behind by Judah.

  "I need to know what happened the night Ruben died," I blurted out.

  Judah's shoulders slumped in defeat before he responded. "Does it matter?"

  "Yes," I said quietly. He didn't say any more but crossed his arms and waited for me to explain. I sighed. "I need to know, because Grams thinks that Ruben is—" I paused, knowing how unbelievable it was what I was about to say, but then I considered everything I had already told them and decided it couldn't get any worse. I took a deep breath and let the words spill.

  When I finished, Judah blinked. He sunk down to the bed and sat staring at his feet, occasionally looking out the window at the fountain of the boy peeing into the water. "He drove himself off that cliff," he said finally.

  Cara looked up sharply. "He wouldn't do that."

  "The guilt over Lana was too much," Judah said.

  "But it was an accident." I thought of what Ruben had said. "He didn't know."

  The pain on Judah's face almost broke him. "He knew. Whose hand do you think it was that he drew over and over? When we hit something that night, he got out of the car and he saw her. He told me it was a sheep, but I knew it wasn't. I could tell from the way he was acting, but I never said anything and we woke up Monday morning to the news that Lana had been killed. Everyone thought it was me, and I couldn't tell the truth."

  Cara got up from the bean bag and sat beside Judah on the bed, close, but not close enough to be touching. "Why didn't you say something?" She had said those words earlier when Ruben first revealed that he was the one who drove the car that hit Lana, but they were an accusation made in anger. This time, they were the gentle, pleading words of a girl realising that she had believed a lie.

  "I did. I went to your house and told you, but you wouldn't believe me. And then it was too late. I couldn't do that to him. I may have hated him, but he was my brother. I loved him. It got to him in the end, though, drove him crazy. He was convinced that she was watching him. He kept seeing her everywhere."

  As Cara reached over and took Judah's hand in hers, something struck me. Had Ruben been haunted too?

  Chapter Forty

  Ruben – the previous year

  After seeing Judah, battered and beaten, sitting at the kitchen table while Mum fussed over him and the doctor tended to his wounds, I wanted to confess. I couldn't put him through this. I couldn't leave him to face the blame, whether implied or confirmed, while I carried on as though nothing was different. But the consequences of that confession kept me silent. I despised who I was becoming. And everything was different, no matter how much I tried to convince myself otherwise.

  I don't know how Judah bore it. The hatred. The whispering behind his back. The shouts in the corridor. He stopped driving the Fairlane to school, because every time he did the tyres got slashed or a window was broken.

  I was dealing with a different kind of torment, one that only existed in my mind. I couldn't close my eyes without seeing her. At first, it was only her hand, the nails chipped and broken, and the trail of blood running down her fingers. The walls of my hideout were covered in the image. I drew it countless times in order to erase it from my mind, but it just grew stronger, the colours more vivid, the blood thicker. Soon, it wasn't just her hand. The vision changed and showed more of her. The rip in her tee shirt. The graze on her chin. Her eyes watching me, unblinking as the water rose. Judah had told me how she wasn't killed by the force of the accident, but she drowned, waiting for someone to rescue her. When I fell asleep, I no longer saw her. I was her. My chest tightened as the water lapped at my lips. The first few trickles I was able to swallow, but as the water rose it covered my mouth and my nostrils, the panic flaring them as the water started to bubble beneath with the effort of my breath. The end never came, though. I never found that release in my dreams. When my face would dip under the water and my vision blurred, I would wake with a pounding head, erratic breath and skin wet with sweat.

  She haunted my dreams, so I stopped sleeping. During class, I would find myself wondering if the panic I felt during those nightmares mimicked hers. And then my days would melt into my dreams until I couldn't tell the difference. I began to see her watching me, waiting for me. She would try to speak but I couldn't understand the words because they were spoken as if travelling through water, mumbled and distorted. And her touch was torture. She was taking the very essence of my life.

  Everywhere I turned she was there, waiting for me, beckoning me. She wanted me to be like her.

  And her pull was strong.

  Chapter Forty One

  Judah - the previous year

  I woke to a knock on my door. It was dark, but a pale glow flickered in the corner. I had left the TV on. The clock in my room glowed red numbers that blurred together and I couldn't make out the time.

  "I can't sleep," Ruben said. The bed dipped when he sat down on the edge.

  "I don't care," I mumbled into my pillow.

  "No, you're not listening. I can't sleep. I want to sleep. I've tried to sleep. But every time I do, she's there."

  "Try going to bed and lying really still with your eyes shut." The mattress wobbled as Ruben got up, and then the light came on, blinding me. I pulled the covers over my head.

  "I need help, Judah," Ruben said. His voice held fear, but I ignored it and wiggled down further in the bed, willing him to leave.

  "Piss off," was my muffled reply.

  Ruben started pacing the strip of carpet beside my bed. It was the only patch of floor clear from the mess of c
lothes strewn over the room. "Every time I close my eyes, she's there. Sometimes I'm not sure if I'm awake or asleep. She's just there. Staring at me. Only, there are times when she's not there. I'm there. I'm her, and maybe she's me." He crouched down and held his head in his hands, mumbling and muttering, and not making any sense. "I just don't know anymore."

  I gave up on sleep and sat up, rubbing my eyes and trying to will the slumber away. Ruben's skin was pale in the light from the TV. Dark bruises formed under his eyes which were sunk into the sockets.

  "How can you sleep?" Ruben said, looking at me as though I could accomplish the impossible. "Is she not in your dreams, too?"

  "What are you talking about?" It was taking my brain a little longer to wake than my body.

  Ruben was rocking and hugging his knees to his chest. "Lana. She's everywhere."

  I yawned and stretched into the air. "Maybe it's your guilty conscience. I've got enough to deal with without you waking me up because of a stupid nightmare. Go away. Leave me be. Live with your nightmares. You deserve them."

  Ruben jumped onto the bed and clutched my arm. "But she's always there. Watching. Waiting."

  I shoved Ruben away. "Seriously, piss off!"

  "But you've got to help me!" he pleaded. His eyes darted around the room, unfocussed and terror-ridden. "I've got no one else I can talk to." I began to doubt whether he was awake at all. He walked over to the window and yanked the curtain open. "Look," he said, pointing.

  I flopped down on the bed again and rolled over. A blast of cold whistled through the air as Ruben opened the window. "Look!" he insisted. I threw off the covers and stormed over to the window which was letting in streams of rain.

  "What?" I looked out. There was nothing but the rain, the howling wind and the fountain.

  "She's watching," he whispered. He pointed towards the statue.

  "There's nothing there," I said, turning away.

  Ruben grabbed my arm and pulled me back to the window. "Look again." He pointed, and once again, nothing but the statue met the line at the end of his finger.

  "Go to bed," I said gruffly. "You're overtired. Just get some sleep."

  "I can't," he insisted, and then lowered his voice to a whisper. "I think I'm going insane. Can't you see her? She's pointing right at me with those broken nails. Can't you see the blood?"

  "Well, what did you expect? You killed someone, Ruben. You ran her over and left her for dead. Did you think your brain wouldn't play tricks on you with that little fact? Go wake Mum or Dad. I'm going back to sleep."

  He didn't leave. He sat in a chair, looking out the window with the cold wind and rain blowing over him.

  When I woke the next morning the rain was gone and so was Ruben. The only thing left to remind me it wasn't a dream was the damp imprints from where he had sat on the chair.

  I don't know how many nights he sat there while I slept. I would wake to find him staring out the open window, the curtains fluttering in the breeze, his knees pressed to his chest and arms wrapped around them. Gradually, he was becoming undone. At school, he somehow managed to pull things together, smile when he was supposed to, answer the questions required by the teacher, or catch the ball when it was thrown, but other than those times, he retreated to some place I didn't want to follow. I should have helped him, but the truth was I took comfort in his torment. Only, I didn't know where it would lead.

  Days passed before I plucked up the courage to face Cara again. Sure, I saw her at school, but she avoided me and would storm off if I tried to approach her. There was no one on my side, no one to plead my case, and my life became even lonelier than it was before. I didn't mind the solitude. Unlike Ruben, I'd never be uncomfortable in my own company. But losing Cara was more than I could bear. If she was to believe me, I'd have to make her. I waited until I knew she would be alone in the house, well, not completely alone, her mother was there, but she was shut away in her room, blocking herself off from the world.

  The door was unlocked so I let myself inside, like I had done a million times before, and wandered down the hallway until I faced the closed door to her room. Music blasted from inside and the scrawled 'piss off' seemed like it was a forewarning. I took a deep breath, attempting to calm the nauseating dread that had settled in my stomach, and knocked.

  "What?" Cara shouted angrily. The door flew open and she stood before me. The anger fell from her face for a moment, replaced with shock, before the mask of hatred slipped back. "Go away," she said and slammed the door.

  I knocked again and waited. I waited and I waited, my knuckles and forehead pressed to the door in a silent petition, but she did not open. Slowly, I turned and leaned against the closed door, sinking to the ground and tilting my head against the hard wood. I imagined her doing the same on the other side and hoped that somehow my intentions would seep through the door and into her mind. The music got louder. For two hours I sat there, watching the seconds of my watch tick painfully by. When the door finally opened, I had to catch myself from falling to the ground.

  "What are you doing?" Cara crossed her arms and leaned against the doorway, her eyes mustering all the hatred she could manage in her glare.

  "Waiting for you."

  She rolled her eyes and stepped over me. "Don't bother."

  I gathered myself from off the ground and followed her down the narrow hallway, until she stopped in front of the door to her mother's bedroom and held it open. "Mum?" she asked quietly.

  Her mother lifted her head from the pillow and smiled sadly. "Lana, dear." She patted the bed and let her head fall back to the pillow. "Come cuddle with me, Lana."

  "It's not Lana, Mum. It's me, Cara." Her voice was weary, and her mother's eyes had already closed again. "I'm calling the police, Mum, okay?" Her voice darkened. "Lana's killer is here."

  "That's nice, dear," her mother's voice wafted out from the bed.

  Cara shut the door and walked into the lounge, picking up the phone.

  "Cara please," I begged. "Just listen to me. I'm here to tell you the truth."

  Cara ignored me and held the phone to her ear. I could hear the ring tone and I reached towards her, but she recoiled. With that motion, realisation dropped to the pit of my stomach. She was scared of me.

  "Please," I said again, swallowing the pain I felt. "Just five minutes, Cara, that's all I'm asking."

  Cara rolled her eyes dramatically but hung up the phone and flopped down on the couch. "You'll leave me alone after?"

  "I promise," I said. "Just listen to me, that's all I ask."

  "How's Ruben?" she asked, and my heart broke a little bit more.

  "He's fine."

  She bit the edge of her fingernail. "He doesn't look fine. He looks like shit at the moment and he won't return my calls."

  "He's not sleeping well."

  "It's the guilt," she said. "The guilt of what you did is killing him."

  I took a deep breath. "I didn't come here to talk about Ruben."

  "Fine. Say what you came to say."

  I hated the way she looked at me, such hatred, such anger and pain. I wished I could take it all away, but I couldn't if I was the source of it. It was time she heard the truth.

  "It wasn't me," I began.

  "You've said that already. I don't believe you."

  The ball of dread was still lodged in my chest, twisting and turning, wrapping its tendrils around my heart and squeezing the life out. "The night Lana died, I wasn't driving, Ruben was." I swallowed again and peered down at Cara, but she kept her face emotionless. "We were fighting, not over you, I didn't even want to talk about that. We were fighting over the night I lost my license."

  "No one forced you to get behind the wheel, not me, and certainly not Ruben," she said coldly.

  "I know," I said quietly and hung my head. I couldn't watch the way she looked at me. "But we were fighting about it anyway. It was raining."

  Cara suddenly got up from the couch and stood, arms crossed, glaring at me. "I know all of this, Juda
h, and I have no desire to relive it all with you."

  "You promised to hear me out," I pleaded.

  "I don't know if I can." She turned away and looked out the window at the abandoned and rusted cars in the paddock. "Every time I see you, every time I think of you, all I can see is Lana lying there in the ditch." She turned around to look at me, her words desperate and pleading and filled with venom. "Do you get that, Judah? Do you get how just looking at you brings back all the guilt and the pain? That seeing you makes me physically want to be sick? You used to be my comfort and I worried why I couldn't fall for you. Why was it that Ruben made my heart race, and you made my heart still? But now, I know. It's because despite all the times you've comforted me, despite the times that you've been there, the fun we've had, the good and the bad, I knew deep down that you were a bad person."

  "Cara, stop. That's not true. You know that's not true. I'm not that person." Tears threatened at the back of my eyes and I willed them away. I had never been a crier. It was something Cara used to admire, something she said we had in common, our ability to face the world head on and not crumble under the scrutiny of others.

  "But it's true, Judah. I just didn't know it back then. But there must have been some reason, somewhere deep inside of me that knew what you would do."

  I closed my eyes. "It was raining," I said louder. "It was pouring down and it was hard to see. We were fighting and then we hit something." I opened my eyes again to find her studying me, searching for the lies that she was convinced I was telling. I swallowed. "Ruben was driving, not me. We stopped and Ruben told me to get out and see what we had hit. I thought it was just a sheep, you know they are always getting out on that road, but it was raining, and although I was already wet from walking in the rain, I wasn't about to get out when it was Ruben who had hit something." I let the words tumble out of me, giving her no chance to reply, no chance to interrupt my story. "I should have got out. I should have been the one to check, but I didn't. I thought it was a sheep. I swear I thought it was a sheep. When Ruben got back in, I knew something was wrong. He told me it was a sheep, but I knew it wasn't. That's what I'm guilty of, of not speaking up, of not telling the truth, but not of killing her. You've got to believe me."