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The Falling

Summary:
In the action itself, she is weightless and free. The flight is not to be feared, only the impact. A story on the life of Esme Cullen. Image Hosted by ImageShack.us Banner By incredible Iris!

Notes:
I may submit this to the official site. What do you think?

49. Chapter 49

Rating 5/5   Word Count 553   Review this Chapter

Just close your eyes and give in,

I head home alone. It is difficult, maybe the hardest part yet, to walk slowly and solemnly like the weight of the world is on my shoulders, when in truth it has just lifted.

I am a good actress. For years now I’ve worn this mask (can it really have been years? It seems much shorter… and yet so much longer, an eternity. Maybe it’s because the time before pretending was so real, so vivid, and the days since cannot be distinguished one from the next.)

And yet this is the hardest game of all, this last make-believe.

It may last forever.

I am just now facing the fact that Charles may die. He may just plain not come home.

That would be fine with me. It would, really- but I don’t know how I can mourn someone I would murder willingly.

Well, if it’s that or living with him, I’d take this any time.

I release the tears I pent up, held in, all this time. One slides down my cheek, and I see Mother and Father and Charles’ parents eyes follow me.

I walk, standing upright, very, very alone. Everyone is watching me, gaze solemn as I am, straight and sober as any tree, my bearing perfect, my mask impossible to disturb.

Two honks of a train horn wind into the silence of the muggy afternoon. The watching mothers and fathers and children and lovers weep and embrace one another and watch.

They watch the train depart.

They watch each other, trying to determine the acceptable levels of grief (am I an outsider if I weep, do dry eyes make me brave or heartless) because even like this people need to be just like one another.

And they watch me… because I don’t.

I am all alone in a time of grief, because I don’t share the complicity of anguish. My closest family is going off to kill, probably die, and my tears are all lies.

And bad ones at that.

The air is hot and muggy, so thick it strangles me. I am wearing a white linen dress, a nonsensical private joke. White, like the sheets in the hospital, white, like the clouds the day I fell, white like a wedding dress…

It’s another lie. Another joke, another dress-up, wearing someone else’s shape and calling it my own.

I hold my hands in front of me and snap my spine into an even more rigid alignment. My head, though heavy from the weight of my hair, stays perfectly tall and still.

I smile to myself, once I’m safely turned away, at the perfection of my illusion. The slight breeze carries their whispers to me.

“Poor dear.”

“And they’re just married too.”

“And Charles, such a nice, respectable man.”

“The girl must be heartbroken.”

“Look at her. Walks like a queen. She is a lovely child.”

“Shame, though.”

“Shame.”

I grin.

The wind dies. So do the whispers.

I walk home, about a mile, with no company but my own.

Freedom is a beautiful feeling.

If you must, enjoy the fall…