Why Won't You Fall Into My Arms?

Evening was upon us before I even had a chance to fully comprehend that it was no longer morning. The sun fell into the horizon so we were bathed in a dim orange glow as night took hold. It was beautiful, this precious exchange of sky that made up twilight. I would have enjoyed it more if there weren’t so many thoughts crammed into my mind, all fighting for my immediate attention.

Jack, trying his best to be repentant, had stayed to his end of the bed while I had mine. I hated the way that he expected me to be grateful for this small deed, as if it had been excruciatingly painful or terribly difficult for him to keep his sarcastic comments to himself. All he did was not move for God’s sake.

So, really, it was unfounded as to why I found myself watching him throughout the rest of the movie. As he smiled absentmindedly every time something funny happened or when things seemed to be taking a turn for the better. He’d caught me staring once but I had simply glared before returning to the film, pretending I’d been paying attention to it all along. I was still mad at him for being so forward earlier and there was no way I was going to forgive him that easily.

“Bed time,” Jack chimed after the third Harry Potter’s credits rolled and the bedroom window was overlooking an inky black sky.

When the first movie had ended we discovered that neither of us had the heart or energy to go out into the deserted real world. It was lucky really that Jack had the whole Harry Potter collection because otherwise we wouldn’t have had such an easy excuse to remain where we were.

However, this meant that I had nothing with me. No clothes. No fluffy pink pillow. No toothbrush. My entire nightly routine was ruined – as if it hadn’t been already by the worlds’ disappearance – and I was stuck in Jack’s house.

“Can I borrow something to sleep in?” I asked sheepishly, trying to still be mad at him.

“Sure, my Mom is bound to have someth-.”

“I couldn’t borrow anything of your Mother's,” I exclaimed in horror.

“Why not?”

“Because that is rude.”

“So is denying my offer.”

“Couldn’t I just borrow something of yours?”

“Oh, so you’re fine with borrowing from me.”

“Well yes because, now this may come as a surprise, I don’t like or respect you. Your mother is a perfect stranger and I’m already spending the night in her house, the last thing I want is for you to go raid her drawers for me.”

“You’re right Soph, that revelation was a complete shock,” Jack drawled, shooting me a bored look. “And in case you haven’t noticed, I’m not a girl so I don’t have some nice little pyjamas for you to wear.”

This back and forth bickering carried on for some time and resulted in me standing at his doorway draped in his baggy baseball shirt and loose bed shorts. He stared at me stupidly for a few minutes before I had the nerve to bark a “what are you looking at?”

I was glad that his room was dim; my burning cheeks could go unnoticed.

He snapped out of his dopey-eyed daydream and averted all attention to the wall opposite from me. I pulled uncomfortably on the loose shorts which reached my knees, the two white cords hanging far too low as the waistband sagged.

He cleared his throat. I watched him in amusement, aware that he was very uncomfortable with me standing before him in his clothes. Only his clothes. While I was pretty embarrassed his reaction was by far the more uneasy. If I hadn’t known any better, I would have thought there was something wrong with him; this boy who made it is mission to see as many girls naked as possible.

Well here I was. In all of his glory. And he couldn’t even look at me.

It was very difficult to control the overpowering sobs of laughter I wanted to double over to. Something about Jack Adams being vulnerable and shy made me want to cry in mirth. Perhaps at the irony, or maybe at the amusing knowledge that I had at least some power over him.

“I’ll show you a room you can sleep in,” he finally managed to get out, standing up straight.

I followed him, sly smile and all, as he led me next door to another bedroom. A switch was flicked all before glorious light appeared, showing me the oestrogen atrocity I was expected to sleep in, lit up like a stage. It was large, like Jack’s, but was filled with children’s toys. The walls were tarnished in pink and the bed was draped in princess sheets. It was too much then. And I burst out laughing.

“You have to be kidding me,” I half choked.

Jack frowned “why would I be?”

“This is a little girls’ bedroom. I’m not going to be sleeping in a little girls’ room. Under Sleeping Beauty’s face no less,” I brandished to the smiling Disney princesses covering the bed.

Jack’s face darkened terribly in less than ten seconds. The whiplash of it had me reeling, but not as much as the dangerous glare in his blue eyes. I got the feeling I had said something very wrong then.

“Have some fucking respect and shut your mouth. Letting you in here was not a decision I took lightly, believe me, and the least you can do is keep your opinions to yourself,” he said through gritted teeth. I hadn’t managed to get him this angry before. It was quite a thrill.

“What? Scared I’m going to start playing with the Barbies here or mess up the My Little Ponies shrine?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he hissed.

I was almost scared then. But I was stupid. I didn’t take the hint Jack was subtly giving me to shut up.

“I never took you for a Disney Princess kind of guy.”

“Sophia!” he roared, a fist finding its way firmly into a fluorescent pink wall.

I jumped back, cringing, at both his punch and his exclamation. He hadn’t called me by my full name since we stopped being friends, and he’d certainly never said it in that voice before.

“What is your problem?” I asked, my own voice quavering.

“You! You are my fucking problem! You’re so disrespectful and self-absorbed and me-me-me, everything’s always fucking about me! Well guess what Sophia, this here, this room, isn’t just something dreamed up to give you a bad nights sleep or something to laugh about. This is my dead sister’s room. This has been kept exactly the same way for ten years after her death and I’m only letting you stay here because I know you’re too stubborn to sleep in my room.

“So laugh it up and joke around like it’s all about you. That’s what you always make it about anyway, sweetheart,” he spat.

The disgust in his tone and his face had me feeling two feet tall but his words… they broke my heart. And had me more ashamed than I had ever been in my life.

He stormed out of the room and slammed the door shut with so much force the thing nearly rocketed out of its hinges. I was shaking, shivering, just standing there with a horrified feeling falling solidly in the pit of my stomach. It was as if Jack’s angry punch had been aimed at me. And the blows kept on coming.

So the beautiful little girl in the family photographs had been her, Jack’s dead sister. Just saying the word dead was like a direct stab to my chest. I had dealt with grief but only in early, plain stages. There had never been the shock of my parents’ deaths because they had been gone since before I could remember.

Everything Jack had said was true. I was selfish and self-centred. I had walked into his sister’s room and insulted it and him, as if he wasn’t giving me a place to stay and in probably the most precious room to him. I wanted to cry. I deserved to cry.

Instead, I slipped awkwardly under the covers to curl up into a ball. I was a terrible person. I was scared and alone and horrible. I was all that the world had to offer of humanity and I was the worst specimen.

And it felt awful laying in her bed. It felt awful being away from home. It felt awful knowing not knowing what was going on. But it felt ten times worse knowing that a seething Jack was in the room next door, hating me with every fibre of his being.

Somehow my brain managed to shut down amid my tornado of thoughts long enough for sleep to find me. It would have been safe to assume that I would have no dreams, stuck in the kind of sleep so deep it bordered on death. However, my conscience wouldn’t let me escape for even a second.

I was drowning. The invisible waters closed me in and trapped all oxygen from my dying body. It was slow. Death was always slowest in dreams. All my eyes could see was darkness, the endless pit of nothingness which was my prison. I was a prisoner not only in my own body but within something else, something like water but only thicker. Nobody was there to plunge a hand in to save me and nobody was there to say goodbye. And it felt like that was what I deserved. I deserved to die like this, all alone and so horrifyingly scared.

I woke under torrents of cold sweat to the thudding of tree branches against the window. I lay rigid in the foreign bed, remembering my dream and the terror which still felt embedded in my very being. My eyes subconsciously took in the glaring toys encircling me, and I could imagine them poised and ready to come for me. They belonged to a dead girl. I was sleeping in a dead girl’s bed.

A cry of horror worked its way up and then died in my throat as the real world hit me like a ton of bricks. Everybody had disappeared. Jack hated me. I really was alone. I couldn’t bear to be alone any longer. Especially not in a bed I had no right being in.

Stiffly, lethargically, I moved the sheets off of my sticky body. I crept silently along the hallway and into Jack’s bedroom where he was sound asleep. A stab of guilt pierced me through like an arrow’s head. His last words echoed around my brain just as awfully as that siren had.

What was I doing? I had no right to be anywhere near Jack Adams after what I had said and made him feel. Forced him to feel. I was self centred, and I selfishly didn’t want to go back next door or be alone for another second.

I watched him for a few seconds, wondering absentmindedly how it was that he could look beautiful when he was sleeping. Then the thudding of tree branches from Jack’s sister’s room started me again and, whimpering, I slipped in beside him. My decision made.

As far away as was physically possible from Jack, I finally felt my muscles relax into the sheets. It was bliss just to know that somebody was there beside me, even though it happened to be my worst enemy. In that moment I was glad he was here with me. It didn’t matter that we couldn’t help but insult each other because at least we had each other.

I curled my arms around myself and fell asleep to, mercifully, no dreams.