5 Chapter 4 - Remorse

The denial immediately set in. It was too much to handle. Clarity began repeatedly shouting "I love you too!" but her subconscious knew she had replied to him too late for him to hear, but that didn't stop her, she had to get him to hear it, she had to get him to forgive her for - what she felt like - she did to him. Even when the doctors dragged her away and pulled the deathly black curtain over his hospital bed, she continued to yell, tears streaming down her distraught face.

She escaped in to the night, residing in an alleyway. She sat there and stared blankly at the feeble brick wall opposite to her for a matter of hours. When night fell felt as if she deserved the unpleasant atmosphere enough to bear anyway.

The next few days passed by like they were just skipped over. She eventually went back to the apartment and savoured her time there because now she had no legal guardian, she would definitely be forced back in to her foster home. There was already a search party out for her and although they must have already checked here it was only a matter of time before they would check again.

As expected, they did. She was back in the depressing bungalow she spent a lot of her childhood in. Being back there brought back the several nights both her foster parents were out, when her and Ethan had to look after each other and not speak a word of it.

They would sometimes be gone for weeks, which is exactly what they did just days after she was back. Clarity concluded that if they didn't care, she wouldn't vice versa. So she would buy groceries from the money they left, attend school, and attempt to make her existence as normal as possible.

There came a time when she found the locket in one of Ethan's varsity jacket pockets, she wore it that night and hadn't worn it since, it still smelled of him.

She undid the clasp and put it round her neck.

From that moment on. She felt different. Just different.