Apparently I was a masochist.
Sitting up against my headboard, I grabbed them, plugged them into my phone, and flipped into my music player. I went directly to my favorite Sunder album, the one that had the song I couldn’t help but listen to again and again. Typically, Lyrik was the one in the background, there only to accompany Sebastian.
But no.
This song was all Lyrik.
His voice was so different than the screaming, growling lyrics Sebastian was known for. Lyrik’s voice was deep and gravelly.
Yet somehow smooth.
Haunting and hypnotic.
It always made me feel as if I was being sucked into the song, mellower than their standard thrashing style, like a dark lullaby rocking me to sleep night after night.
I pressed the buds into my ears and let that voice wash over me, let it seep beneath my skin until it seemed as if the chords were played from somewhere within.
The first time I’d heard this song two years ago? I’d wondered what the man behind it was really like. If he actually was in the kind of pain the song bled. If the sorrow behind his voice was real. I wondered if he might feel the same way I did inside.
So full of regrets you didn’t know who you were anymore.
Somehow, I’d felt as if I knew that man. Intimately. Wholly. A bond shared between complete strangers.
That had been nothing more than a wicked dream.
Because Lyrik wasn’t anything like I’d imagined him to be.
Of course, at that time, I never believed we’d actually come face to face. Never thought he’d look at me and see something he wanted. Never thought he’d spark those old na?ve fantasies.
Tempt me and tease me and trip me.
I bet he’d laugh when he watched me fall.
Cruel.
Breathing in, I closed my eyes, praying for the exhaustion to drag me into sleep. But instead I found myself feeling antsy. More uncomfortable in my skin than I’d felt in a long, long time.
When I couldn’t force myself to sit still any longer, I slipped from beneath the covers and dropped to my knees in front of the chest at the base of my bed. Almost reluctantly, I lifted the lid, cautious of what waited inside.
I pulled out the black, leather-bound case. It felt heavy in my hands as I carried it to my bed and laid it on my crisscrossed legs.
It seemed like an hour passed while I just stared at it.
Finally, I conjured up enough courage to unzip the case and pull out the photos inside.
They were nothing controversial. Nothing obscene or secretive.
Just bright bursts of lightning slicing across each sheet.
There were hundreds of the black and white photos. Many had been photo-shopped with the splashes of colors I’d liked to add to them, changing the white strikes to purple and teal and any other color I could imagine, like colorful darts streaking through the sky and striking down against the parched ground.
These images? They represented me.
Before.
When I was so eager to look upon beauty. To chase it. To seek the thrill of being in danger. Putting myself in harm’s way to capture these absolutely awe-inspiring images.
That was when I believed the world was out there just waiting for me to capture everything it had to offer.
I’d taken my first picture of lightning when I was five years old. I’d stood at my grandpa’s side on our back porch while he pointed to the storm building over the mountains behind our house, explaining the stunning phenomenon.
That first crude image snapped with a cheap old camera soon developed into my passion. A representation of who I wanted to be.
Creative and bold. Positive and accepting. Sincere and honest and brave. Without skepticism or the deep-rooted chip now firmly embedded in my shoulder.
I’d captured my last at age twenty.
I’d thought they’d been an expression of what I found burning from within.
They were nothing but a lie.
After I’d come here? I’d convinced myself I wasn’t the crying type. Tears were evidence of weakness. So I’d dried them and put on this bravado I found wasn’t entirely false, tapped into this part of myself that I’d never known was there.
It was hard and brash and impenetrable.
Unbreakable.
Not like the unassuming girl who’d snapped these pictures.
Those tears I’d long denied pricked at my eyes, and a lump grew in my throat. It was a welling of emotion that my first response was to swallow down. But just for tonight, after the commotion of rioting emotions that had been stirred in me, I needed to set them free.
Just for a little while, I let myself remember who I once wanted to be.
I awoke resolved.
Last night had been a steppingstone instead of a stumbling block. A reminder I had to be careful or everything I’d worked so hard for would all have been in vain.
It was bad enough they’d tracked me down, asking questions about Cameron. Threatening the asylum I’d found in my new home. I refused to allow them to rip me from it.