My Castles Are Falling

"Slow down!" Alex heard a voice call out to him as he ran as fast as he could toward the book store. He looked briefly over his should to see who it was. The voice sounded familiar but distant and muffled, almost as though he was under water and someone was talking to him. No one was there, however, so he shrugged it off as his imagination and kept going.

His destination seemed to get further away as he continued toward it. No matter how fast or how long he ran, he didn't feel like he was making progress. He nearly jumped out of his skin when he felt a hand grab his shoulder and immediately stopped dead in his tracks.

"Where are you going?" the voice questioned. He turned around to see who had grabbed him but found no one. More than a little spooked, he got ready to take off again but his legs wouldn't move. They suddenly felt heavy, weighted down. He looked to his feet but there was nothing restraining him. "Why the rush?" it asked again, still distant. Still muffled.

Feeling completely out of his mind as it was, he figured there was no harm in responding. "I'm just trying to get to the book store," he answered, not stating his reason for wanting to be there. The part about hoping to see Grace was left completely unsaid.

"But why?" the voice asked. It was feminine, he could tell, but masked as though the person to whom it belonged did not what him to know who she was. It also was starting to sound sad. And for some reason he couldn't understand, it broke his heart.

"What do you mean, why?" he asked. "Who are you?" The more strange this situation became, the more curious he was. He didn't like not knowing and he never had.

Within seconds the voice became clear and he felt a chill run down his spine as her words hit his ears. "Have you forgotten me already?" she asked. Alex slowly turned around and faced the beautiful brunette who had appeared out of nowhere. Her bright green eyes pierced his heart as they met his with a look of sadness in them. There was no trace of the smile she had always worn when he was around.

His breath caught in his throat and his heart nearly stopped. "Raynie Day," he said softly when he finally found his voice. "I could never forget you." His brown eyes clung to her gaze as though they were his lifeline. And in that moment he didn't know how he would ever be able to live without them.

As her mouth turned downward, her entire face darkened and for the first time ever, Alex was afraid of her. "Then why are you looking for her? Why aren't you looking for me?" she asked.

Before he had any idea what was going on, the sky, which had been blue a moment before, had turned dark and opened up with a flash of lighting and a crack of thunder, immediately followed by a downpour of torrential rain, soaking the confused young man to the bone. "You're dead, Raynie Day," he said. His stomach twisted into knots and his lungs felt ready to cave in as the words passed his lips. "Even if I went looking for you, I don't think I could find you," he explained through the physical pain he had suddenly begun to endure. "You're gone. You left me." Tears fell from his eyes as the pain continued to stab at his insides. He wanted to fall to the ground and beg for her to stop being angry but he couldn't. The words eluded him.

"I'm right here, Alex. Right where I've always been," she argued and lightning flashed behind her once again. Her voice contained no malice, only a sadness that caused the pain Alex felt to worsen. "I may have left the earth," she said, the sharpness of the words stabbing the broken young man. "But I never left you." Tears fell from her own eyes as she continued to speak to him. "It hasn't even been that long. Don't you miss me anymore?" The question was asked with innocence, yet desperation dripped heavily from each syllable.

Alex completely lost any composure he had managed to maintain until that moment. He felt as though he had let her down, broken her heart. And she was the one person he would never forgive himself for hurting. "Of course I still miss you, Raynie Day. It hurts like hell every time I think about the fact that I'll never see you again, which is more often than anyone could imagine. But you don't understand, when I look at her, all I see is you. And it hurts a little less. This isn't about her. It's about you. Just like everything else. It's always been about you," he said, wanting nothing more than to reach out and touch the girl he loved with his entire being. He wanted to hug her. And more than anything he wanted her to be real.

She said nothing in response to him. The eye contact they had made when she first appeared had yet to be broken. The rain had yet to stop pouring down on them. And the tension between the two had yet to fall away. Alex wanted to talk to her forever, and he searched for the right words to say, anything to make her stop being angry with him.

"I loved you, Rayne Alessandra, with every particle of my being" he said. The use of her full name was foreign to both of them, but it seemed the only way to help get the point across. "I wanted to grow old with you and spend our entire lives together. I wanted to spend the rest of my life doing whatever it took to keep that beautiful smile spread across your face." Lightning lit up the sky. The desperation in his voice scared him. But he felt the need to tell her now what he had never had the guts to tell her before. "I still love you. And I wish you were still alive. Because I just want to be with you, even now, wherever you are."

The rain began to let up a little. Thunder crashed but it was more distant than before. The darkness that had fallen across Rayne's face started to fade away. And the knots in Alex's stomach loosened the slightest bit. His lungs regained their strength. But still, Rayne said nothing. She just stared at him.

Alex reached out to touch her face and what was left of his heart dropped into his stomach when his hand swept right through her. Reality hit him like a ton of bricks. His eyes now rained harder than the sky above them and the girl he loved faded into the air that surrounded him. Though she was everywhere, he had never felt so alone before.

The book store, his original destination, was in his view, but he stood frozen in place and never wanted to move again. He wanted to break down and waste away to nothing so he could find her once more. Suddenly, the book store meant nothing to him and neither did Grace. All that mattered was the voice he would never be able to get out of his head.

"I never left you."

Alex awoke with a start. Tears were streaming down his face and had completely soaked his pillow. A cold sweat covered his body. His hand shook as he reached to the corner of his king sized bed and pulled the gray teddy bear toward him. Lauren had given it to him, insisting that her daughter would have wanted him to have it. He hugged it to his chest and cried into it. The smell of Rayne, still embedded deep in the stuffed animal, hit his nose and filled his head with memories he tried so hard to push away.

Their entire friendship flashed through his mind, some parts in slow motion while others sped by too fast for comfort. He wanted to go back to when they were young. When their other friends thought it was weird that they seemed to have an understanding of each other than no one else did. He longed for the summers when they were teenagers and they would spend entire days together, pulling all nighters that were filled with conversations about anything any everything. He wished with all the pieces of his shattered heart for the times they weren't talking because he had done something stupid that pissed her off.

But lying there in the dark in the middle of the night, cold sweat clinging to his skin while he clutched her most beloved inanimate object for dear life, Rayne being dead was more real than ever before.