I messed everything up.
A steady stream of water, coming from the bathtub, warms me up on the outside as I soak. I haven't had a bath in ages. It's been showers and cold water for a while now. But this warm water, even though it reminds me of good memories, doesn't do much for my mind. By now, even as I think this, my mind has finished tying itself into knots. My head sinks under the water as I slump down even more, exhausted by everything that's happened today. I don't know why this day had to happen. It could have come after I revealed myself to Min, right?
I killed a guy. I KILLED A GUY. My subconscious is killing me right now, telling me all the ways I could have neutralized him without killing him. But I was just trying to protect Min! I didn't know what I had done until the white screen on rage in my eyes dissolved and I saw him lying face down on the ground with a knife buried in his heart and dark red blood around him. And Min. Her pale face, the way her hands trembled when I came to patch her up. I'm so tired of this. I want to die right now. I wish I told her before all this happened.
I slip under the ripples of the water again, watch the greenish-blue herbs float across the surface. And I hold my breath. One minute passes, and then two. Memories pass through my mind: the times when I was little, and I pretended that I was Ariel from The Little Mermaid. I would stay under the surface for what felt like ages but was only seconds, and then leap into the air and come crashing down into the giant bathtub, making water splash everywhere. When that fond memory comes back to me, I smile, and then everything goes black.
Bubbles surround this dark space I'm in, and a pair of eyes that look like Min's look at me questioningly. "Why did you do that?" Her musical voice rings out in my ears.
I try to move my mouth, to tell her everything in my head, but it seems to be clamped shut. Can I not talk? I can't move either. I start to panic, trying to flail my arms but not being able to. And that panic is what propels me out of unconsciousness, gasping for air that has suddenly appeared in front of me.
I sit up so quickly I get vertigo and fall back down, dizzy. Curls of brown hair hang above my head and a familiar pair of eyes blink, seemingly relieved. Min. I sigh and flop on the bed that I was on. I'm going to get yelled at for this, I know it. As soon as I think about that, Min's eyes flare dangerously, and her cheeks go red. Her voice starts off normal, then gets higher and louder until she's speaking with a chibi voice. Really cute actually! I raise one of my hands and poke her cheek.
She blushes even more and tries to swat me away, but I grab onto her cheeks and pull. "Let me goooooo!" she says with a chipmunk-like voice! "I don't like this! I don't like it at all!" She pulls my hands off and rubs her cheeks, which now have large pinch marks on them. Oops. "Lyra you're so mean!" She's acting like a kid! This is kinda abnormal... Wait- I'm not dreaming am I? I try to pinch myself, and feel nothing. Welp- this is a dream after all. That sucks honestly. And an incessant beeping finally wakes me up to what I hope is reality.
Beep. Beep. Beep. A heart monitor sits next to my bed, dutifully reporting my heart rate. Wait- heart monitor? I sit up and see that I'm in a hospital room, Min sleeping in one of the visitor's chairs. I slip the needle out of my skin, hoping that nothing happens. But the heart monitor flatlines, and summons a troop of doctors who immediately yell at me for getting rid of the needle. But because I'm good now, they can't force the heart monitor on me again, no matter how many false excuses they try to feed me. And then my heart almost does stop when one of the doctors' tongue slips and says:
"We need to keep you here for now because your parental guardian isn't here yet!"
At those words, I grab Min's hand and run, because that's yet another of my pieces of hell returning to me. I never thought my family would get here so fast. I never thought they'd want me. Because they don't. They just want something from me. They'll take it and leave me just like last time, so I run. I run, hoping that I'll get away from them before they drag me away. Hoping that they won't chase after me, because there's not even a snowball's chance in hell that I will let them take me back to my former home.
Just as we run out of the hospital's front doors, Min drags me to her car and locks the door. She turns to me. "Explain, Lyra." There's no sign of that resentment or hurt I felt from her before, just a steely determination to figure out whatever the hell provoked my panic attack.
"They- they can't take me back. No matter what they want from me. Don't let them take me back to them." I can't stop babbling. "They can't just abandon me and then try to fix things. They can't do that! I might have what they want but I don't want to give it up!
Min stares at me. "What do you have that they could possibly want? That they would track you down to try and take it from you? You were left with nothing!"
I shudder. "They want my little sister back. They want Katie back."