Pieces of a Mending Heart (19 page)

             
“I’m going to keep this brief, because it isn’t something I share with strangers, okay? I need you to believe me when I tell you that I’m not lying. This won’t make any sense to you if you don’t trust me,” I say, voice taking on a serious tone.

             
“I’m pretty sure I’ll believe anything at this point, Kath,” she says, laughing once.

             
So I tell her
the very basics of my story, hoping it will be enough to calm her a bit.

             
“Let me make sure I got everything: you died, you
somehow came back to life
. But what does Tristan have to do with that?” she asks the one question I don’t want to answer.

             
“Tristan and I… have a history together,” which isn’t all together untrue. It’s very vague, yes, but not untrue.

             
She scoffs. “I’ve known that boy since we were in diapers and he’s never said a word about you before. I’ve been in New York for t
he past two weeks, I come home
and here you are, staple gunned to his side and he’s nothing like he was before he left. I don’t know exactly what there is between you two, but I think you need to tell me.”

             
I feel a surge of defiance and the words are out of my mouth before I can stop them. “Look, I don’t need to tell you anything I don’t want to tell you. You think I have your answers but I don’t have them all, and some you have no right knowing!”

             
Sorren looks somewhat impressed. “I took you as the pushover type, Kath. Looks like nothing is impossible,” she laughs to herself.

             
“So you think God had something to do with what we saw today?” Sorren continues, sounding skeptical.

             
“Well… yeah. He has something to do with everything, but what we saw gave me the same feeling that I had when I”- I was going to say “when I saw Tristan in my vision,” but I caught myself.

             
“When you what?”

             
“When I
came back to life
,” I fill in, absentmindedly touching my wrists. Remembering.

             
“I’ll be honest here, sweetheart, I’m not feelin’ it,” she says, sipping her iced coffee.

             
“You don’t believe
me
?
Or you don’t believe in God?
” I ask, feeling uncomfortable.

             
“I don’t know what I believe in anymore. But I can’t deny that our little vision thing freaked me
the hell out
.”

             
“Do you think it was real? Like Him showing us something that happened to us in the past? Maybe they were our relatives or something,” I say, my inquisitive side becoming frustrated and even more curious.

             
“Now I’m second guessing if you saw what I did. If you think for a second that it wasn’t us in that vision, you’re insane. They’d have to be our twins,” she says, pulling onto the somewhat busy street.

             
“I’m just taking a shot in the dark here, Sorren! What do you think it was?” I exclaim, exasperated.

             
“How the hell should I know? You’re the friggin’ prodigy over there!”

             
I roll my eyes, but strangely feel the urge to laugh.
Really
laugh. I feel calm about the entire situation, which leads me to believe that God is telling me not to fret over it. But why would he show us that if we weren’t meant to figure it out? Maybe the answer is right in front of us, and we just don’t see it. Maybe we’re too blind to know what and who we truly are, which is a major fault of humanity. Divine intervention opened my eyes, but we should all be able to see our true potential on our own.

             
“Hello? You awake over there?” a sarcastic voice asks, shocked to see that we were parked in front of Rachel’s house.

             
“How did you know where I live?” I ask, shocked.

             
She winks. “I have my ways. But gossip gets around and believe me when I say the rumor mill spun when it heard that Miss. Rachel was gettin’ a kid.”

             
I felt the sudden temptation to ask her to come in, to hang out like any normal teenagers skipping school would. Sure, Rachel might be pissed if she found out, but then again she may be happy to see me “adjusting.”

             
“Do you want to come inside?” I ask, my voice hitching at the end, embarrassingly enough.

             
“It depends if you have a bathroom, because I really need to use one,” she laughs.

             
I roll my eyes jokingly. “No, Sorren. We pee in the woods.”

             
She laughs, snorting as she does so. “I think you and I are gonna be great friends,” she says, slamming the car door behind her.

Chapter 11

             
Sorren and I spent the rest of the day chatting in the living room about seemingly insignificant things. However, our conversation was anything but. It was like I could feel my wounds being sewed together again; the veins that were ripped apart by betrayal and abuse had already been patched up thanks to Tristan and Aunt Rachel, in an astounding amount of time. But with Sorren, I had the one thing I’ve always dreamed of but never been good enough to have. A friend.

             
Sure, lots of therapists and doctors have used the word to cajole me into a happier state of mind, but I’ve never known the meaning of the word until today. It’s as if our souls are connected, helping us bond and forget about everything but petty teenage drama. I never in a million years thought that my scars and wounds could be healed so quickly, but it goes to show you that anything is possible when you’re surrounded by people who so obviously care about you.

             
When my phone chimes
at twelve o’clock, just after the fourth period bell would have rang, I would have ignored it if not for the contact name on the little glowing screen.

             
“Hi,” I say, wiping the tears from underneath my eyes. We had been laughing at a story Sorren told, but my tears are filled with many different emotions, all of which are just as they should be.

             
“Katie, w
here are you? Are you alright?” Tristan asked, sounding disturbed.

             
I frown, the bubble of ignorance that had surrounded me popping. It was nice to ignore my problems for one afterno
on, but a mystery still remains
and it’s as haunting as ever.

             
“Tristan, I’m fine. Sorren and I are at my house, just talking. I think that, maybe, you should come over instead of me having to explain this over the phone,” I say, headache ensuing.

             
“Your house with
Sorren?”
He says, sounding baffled.

             
I smile, but when I remember that he can’t see me, I stop, feeling stupid. “Yeah, she’s right next to me.”

             
He took that as a cue to not say anything deprecating, and instead of asking further questions like I predicted he would, he informs me that he’ll be over in ten minutes.

             
“You ever heard of the word ‘codependent?’” Sorren asks,
dead serious.

             
“Yeah, and it doesn’t apply to Tristan and I so don’t even say so,” I refute.

             
“You two are the talk of the school right now. How you never go anywhere without the other, how you spend every second of every day together, yadda yadda yadda,” she makes hand gestures as she speaks, trying to prove her point.

             
“First of all, basically the entire student body has been overseas for the entire time I’ve known Tristan. How would they know how we act outside of school? Which, by the way, we aren’t with each other ‘every second of every day,’” I say, which is true. Minus the past few days, we’ve only ever seen one another in school.

             
“Okay. I believe you over those gossiping lemmings I’ve had to tolerate for almost my entire life. I have a question, though. How did you meet him?”

             
That’s an easy one. “The first day of school. I didn’t see you that day.”

             
She nods, seemingly thinking about something. “You met the first day of school and you’re already this serious about
him?” she asks,
raising
one pierced eyebrow.
“Do you even know about his life? What he’s been through?”

             
This makes my temper flare, which is ridiculous because there’s no way she could possibly understand our situation. “Our relationship isn’t serious. I don’t even know what to call it; we haven’t put a name to what we are. And yes, I do know about his life, actually. Where have you been for the past two years?” I ask the last question carefully, with just enough venom to let her know I want a serious, legit answer.

             
“Yeah, Sorren. Where have you been for the past two years?” asks a beautiful voice from behind me.

             
The atmosphere seems to buzz with electricity, but not the awkward kind. Not the normal kind you’d feel in a situation like this. It’s a whirring that you can almost physically see rippling across the stale air of the air conditioned house, and it feels almost supernatural.

             
Sorren’s eyes widen before she regains her composure. “Where should I have been, Trist? You weren’t you anymore,” she says, voice devoid of any hostility or anger. In fact, she sounds desperate.

             
“If you had answered my letters you’d have known that I
was
myself again!” he exclaims, and it’s the first time I’ve ever heard him raise his voice.

             
I sit on the couch, sinking into the cushions as they stare at one another, each one refusing to break the heavy silence. I’m about to draw attention to the buzzing atmosphere when suddenly, Sorren stands up and runs across the tiny room to Tristan, hugging him the way a little girl would hug her father after a bad day at school.

             
Tristan looks directly into my eyes before returning the hug. I look at my hands, playing with my fingers in my lap, tracing the ugly scars on my wrists that seem to fade a little more each day. I’d
be lying if I didn’t say I feel
a twinge of jealousy and subtle defensiveness towards Sorren for so blatantly embracing Tristan, but I shake off the ridiculous feeling.

             
“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry I wasn’t there for you. You were just so… mean,” Sorren says, and I realize she’s crying. She’s a thick-skinned person, not the crying type; for her to break down twice in one day must be a record.

             
“I’m sorry. I told you that in every letter I sent you, but I just stopped writing after a while. I feel like everything I did, everything I said, never happened,” he says in a quiet voice.

             
“Well it did. And you were a dick for a long time,” Sorren says, pulling away. “But I miss you.
You
, not that other guy who wigged out before disappearing for two years.”

             
“Why didn’t you open my letters? You were that angry with me?” he asks.

             
Sorren wipes her nose, and I stand before walking down the hallway into the bathroom. I feel like I was seriously encroaching on a heart-to-heart conversation between two long lost friends, and I used any excuse I could to leave the room. Dampening a cloth with cool water, I take it and a handful of tissues to Sorren, handing them to her before going into the kitchen. Everything seems to be moving in slow motion.

             
Tristan grabs my hand as I pass, preventing me from leaving. He must see something in my expression, because his face turns shocked.

             
“Katherine? Katherine?” he says, shaking my shoulders gently but firmly.

             
My head starts swaying, and the buzzing in the atmosphere becomes annoyingly loud. My vision blurs
and I can tell I’m about to lose consciousness. Tristan scoops me up with ease and carries me over to the couch, laying my head in his lap, pushing my hair back and pressing the damp cloth I had gotten for
Sorren to my forehead. She stands over me with a frightened expression.

             
“Shit, is she gonna pass out?” Sorren asks, her voice echoing in my head like she yelled her words into the Grand Canyon.

             
“She better not
. Can you grab her some water?” the words reverberate, crashing against my skull in a painful cadence.