Truth of Dark Pasts by Serena Wood (free children's online books .TXT) 📖

 “River?” Zoey’s voice startles me out of the nightmare that I’ll probably never stop having. I gasp at the sound of my name, coming back into the real world in a panic. “Relax, sweetie. It’s just me.” when I realize who it is I end up crying into her shoulder, much like I use to do when I was smaller. She rubs my back and murmurs calming things to me for a few minutes before finally I stop crying. “You haven’t had nightmares like that in months. What happened?” She waits until the tears have stopped falling before she speaks up. “Nothing… I was just thinking…”

“Oh… It’s okay, I still think about it too. Every day almost.” She mumbles, tightening the hug. “It wasn’t your fault, you and Dad need to stop blaming yourselves.” She huffs when I say that. “I know, we both do. It’s just as hard for us to stop blaming ourselves as it is for you to stop having nightmares about it.” I pull away from the hug and glare at her mildly.

“I don’t have nightmares all the time.” I say it in an attempt to look less like a weakling but the tone that slips out only makes me seem more like a child.“Sure, sure. It’s getting pretty late, don’t you have somewhere to be?” She smiles, changing the subject because she knows how this conversation will go. “You’re right, I better go before I’m too late.” I mutter, rushing to find my shoes. “Have fun.” she calls out as I leave and even from the front door I can hear the mocking tone in her voice.

The walk to Ellie’s house is painfully shorter than I wanted it to be, I don’t have any time to think about what to say. Or to turn around and back out at the last minute. Before I know it I’m standing infront of her house. I walk carefully around the side of the house. There’s no way I’m letting Ellie’s mom know I’m here, the last thing I need is her talking about what happened this week or her finding out about what I came here to tell Ellie. I barely want Ellie to know, I couldn’t handle it if Addie knew.

I stare up at the window for a minute, the light’s still on. At least she’s still awake. I start climbing the ladder that’s been on the side of the house for years now and probably never will be moved back to the shed.

God, I feel like a kid again. I haven’t done this since that time I was grounded when I threw a slushie all over a water park when I was 15 and wasn’t allowed to go anywhere for a month.I make it to the little roof and find my way inside the window. I stand there for a minute to catch my breath. I scan the room and realize I don’t see Ellie. Just as my brain processes the room, she walks into the room with a glass of grape juice in her hand. She jumps at the sight of me, screaming in surprise. I jump at her reaction and not long after I hear her mom react to it downstairs.

“Ellie? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, mom… Just a spider.” After a minute her mom believes that and I hear her bedroom door shut again downstairs. Ellie shuts her door carefully before whirling around to growl at me. “What the fuck? You scared the hell out of me, I thought you were some kind of burglar.” somehow the expression on her face brings the old me back, the one that use to goof around and laugh with her. “I’m sorry, I just wanted to surprise you.” I snicker and she hits my arm, “Asshole.” She pouts.

Something in her expressions forces these emotions out of me that I haven’t felt since that summer that seems so far away now. Lately she’s been bringing those untrustworthy emotions out of me more and more each time I’m around her. And the more I realize it, the more I realize I’m losing the fight to keep my feelings for her under control.

The pout on her lips is quickly erased when the impulse to kiss her becomes too much. A muffled “mmph” leaves her as I nearly push her onto the bed in a familiar sense of haste. Shirts quickly fall to the ground, losing their importance and becoming a burden to our bodies. Soon bras join our shirts in the pile of forgotten things; suddenly leaving us with only our lower halves still covered.

I grab at the strings on her pajama pants impatiently, tugging the soft fabric off her legs like it’s important to get her undressed in a short matter of time. I try to pull her pink underwear off next but before I can, I find her hands blocking the path mine were taking.

Cautiously, she reaches for the button on my jeans, not as nearly as impatient about the act as I seem to be. Jesus, River, give the girl a chance to breathe. I try to slow my movements (along with the rate of my heart beat) to give her a chance to catch up. She manages to set me free of the jeans and I kick my way out of them, once again moving back to take off that barrier of pink cloth.

My hand moves to take it’s place and within seconds my fingers are where they’ve been itching to be for only a matter of minutes. I hadn’t intended on this happening again when I came here, not that I mind where I am now. But I certainly hadn’t meant to be so impatient about it, nearly tearing her clothes off like an abstinent teenage boy that finally crumbled at the chance of getting laid.

I’m going about this all wrong and I know it, but I’m too caught up in the moment to stop the movement in my fingers that’s already clearly set in rhythm.But something’s different about this time, not that I’d notice until after the fact; but a difference all the same.

Before I know what she’s doing, her hands have somehow moved down to my boxer briefs. I really should have seen it coming, of course she’d try something like this. This is Ellie after all, the girl was born with a heart of gold so I don’t know why I ever believed She’d let it go on like this forever without trying to even the playing field for me.

But still, I didn’t see it coming until her right hand is nearly all the way in my boxers and she’s just inches away from touching… In the blink of an eye I suddenly feel like I’m a child again and that awful man is reaching into my underwear. I shiver at the contact of skin, even though it’s Ellie and not the man I dread seeing in my nightmares.

“STOP!” My brain doesn’t register the touch as Ellie and I grab her hand, roughly pulling it away from my body before moving as far away on the other side of the bed as I can manage. For a brief moment my mind still thinks I’m in danger, somehow trapped in my childhood again and it takes me a few minutes to calm my breathing.

“I-I’m sorry… I should have known you wouldn’t want me touching you, I just thought… I’m sorry, River… Are you okay?” Ellie wraps a blanket around herself before staring at me with this unbelievable guilt in her eyes, like she did something wrong. “I… I’m fine.” I rush to cover myself with one of her covers, again feeling like the vulnerable child I once was.

A few minutes of silence passes as I calm my thoughts.“God… I must be the biggest screw up possible. I barely even touched you and I scared you nearly half to death. I must be pretty bad at this, huh?” she chuckles nervously and glances up at me for a second before staring down at her hands again. It takes a moment for the statement to fully sink in.

“Wha… No, no, that’s not it. It’s not you…”

“Right, is this the part where you do the whole ‘it’s not you, it’s me thing’?” If only she knew how much it actually is me. But she’s right, I can’t use that stupid, overused line. As much as it makes sense right now.

“It’s really not you though, you’re perfect. It’s just… A pass issue, I guess.” She stares at me thoughtfully when I say that and I can practically see her choosing from a line up of things to say. “Does it have to do with what you came over here to talk about? You know the thing we didn’t actually get around to because we somehow got too caught up in this.” She smiles at me when I manage to make eye contact and somehow that comment pulls a laugh out of me. Before I realize that this is the moment when I have to tell her.

“Yeah, actually…” It feels like it takes me centuries just to stutter and stumble through the whole back story. When the last of the story finally leaves me all I get in response is this stunned, silent expression. I look away from her to stare at the digital clock by her bed, finding anything but her to look at. Turns out it was only 30 minutes, not all the life times that it felt like.With my focus on the clock, I don’t see the hug coming until skin and a thin sheet press against me in this startlingly strong hug. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner? I’m your best friend, you should have told me… I’m so sorry, River. I feel horrible, I probably made matters worse just now.” She murmurs on for a bit before tightening the hug more.“It’s fine… Can you let go just a bit? I can’t breathe.” I mutter between gasps for air and before I can even finish the sentence she lets go. “Sorry…”

“Stop apologizing, you goob.” I try on a smile that somehow doesn’t seem as strained around her as it usually is around anyone else. “Right, sorry…” I can’t help but to chuckle at that, but I keep silent; hoping she’ll come up with something to say. Something that won’t involve the darker parts of me that somehow seem to keep coming back to haunt me.

“Soo… Wanna stay the night?” she asks suddenly with this hopeful tone in her voice like when we were younger and use to have sleep overs. Oddly enough, the sleep overs have a double meaning now. “Sure, El.”

“Great! I have a movie we can watch and I just bought some new pajamas today, I’ll lend you a pair.” She smiles excitedly and rushes to pull her clothes back on, nearly skipping out of the room to get something before I can get a word in inch wise. By the time I find pajamas to wear, she comes back with a dvd of some random movie. She starts the movie and moves back to sit beside me on the bed again.

We use to do this all the time, find a movie to watch and just lean against the headboard and talk about anything rather than watch