Okay -- its only been 54 days this time... I'm sorry! I'll try and get the next one up faster! As always, review Thanks to: Imagine Nation, Gaia-x-Goddess and Scarlett Starlet for their wonderfully sweet reviews. Thanks guys!

11. Laura

Harder to Breath – Maroon 5

I stared at the text Rayne had sent me. My heart hurt knowing simply she had written it to me. I still wanted to reply, I still wanted to tell her that I never wanted to see her again, and yet I couldn't. I couldn't make myself reject her, even though I knew I should. However, I couldn't tell her that I liked her, needed her and thought about her either. I just couldn't make the decision Catherine pointed out I really should do before I hurt someone.

"You should go to school today." Catherine's voice wasn't commanding or angry as she came into my room, but rather concerned. I looked at the time. She had woken me in more than enough time to go to school.

"I can't." I murmured, rasping my voice for more effect.

Catherine scoffed, walked to the window and opened my curtains, allowing the east facing windows to shine brightly with the sun. She looked across the park that was situated directly behind the graveyard. Even from my position on the bed I could see the mist there, as well as the church being surrounded with an almost eerie glittering light as the mist reflected the early morning rays. I closed my eyes against the sun, whimpering slightly.

"Laura." Catherine's voice was forceful enough that I opened my eyes. "You can't hide. Life isn't a game of Hide and Seek you know: you can't go around hiding, waiting for the right thing to find you."

"You have to seek it." I remembered those words from the mouth of Rayne. Life is a game of hide and seek, she had said. I had spent time hiding. Now it was my time to seek. I got up in one fluid motion, having to stabilize myself against the bedpost as I became dizzy. Catherine smiled, offering me a hand. I took it, blinking several times until I decided to get dressed. I picked up my mobile. "I need to see Carol before I go to school." I said decidedly, flicking through the contacts before I found Carol.

"It's seven in the morning." Catherine pointed out, perplexed.

"I know." I said, clicking her name and holding the phone to my ear. First time it went to answer phone; she only picked up the second time I called.

"Laura?" She asked. I had obviously awoken her.

"I was wondering whether you felt like having breakfast." This wasn't me. I realised as she agreed to meet somewhere in half an hour. Rayne's attitude had obviously rubbed off on me. I was becoming confident enough to call up my therapist, who I was getting on very well with, but who was still a stranger to some extent.

I put my phone down and grinned at Catherine, who looked at me like I was some extra terrestrial. "What?" I asked, as I cheerfully pranced to my closet and started selecting an outfit.

"Are you the same person who was complaining about even getting out of bed three minutes ago?"

I shrugged. "You made me realised the whole situation needed some closure, so Carol and I are going to give it some closure."

"And how are you going to do that?" Catherine asked sceptically.

I shrugged, choosing some boring jeans. "I'll find a way." I assured her.

* * *

"I have only ever had one patient ever ask to see me outside of my clinic hours and I have never, ever, in my career been asked out to breakfast by an anorexic." Carol told me as she sat down, her makeup still too excessive and glasses still hanging by a string around her neck. I held up my cup of coffee to her.

"I'm not an anorexic." I corrected, before grinning and adding. "I never said I would eat." I told her quickly. I pointed at the one kiwi on my plate. "But I can make exceptions."

"That's always good." Carol agreed as she signalled to the waiter for a coffee. She quickly ordered before she turned back to me. "Now, how can I help you this morning? You seem in very good cheer even though you've missed your last session due to, what your step-mother called, a physiological illness. She refused to explain it though, so how about we start at the beginning?"

I took a deep breath. I closed my eyes, my warm coffee clenched between my palms as I tried to rationally explain to the situation to Carol. There was a risk she wouldn't understand I suddenly was aware of which I hadn't realised before. What if she was like the rest of the world and would disapprove of me?

"I like a girl." I said quickly. It felt good. I repeated it. "I like her."

"Rayne?" My eyes snapped open.

"How did you know?" I demanded, seriously worried about my own transparency. Carol just smiled.

"Don't you remember the first session you ever had with me?" I blinked. That wasn't that long a time ago: a fortnight at most. I remembered if vaguely. "You immediately told me you weren't a lesbian when I asked the innocent question of whether you liked her?" I smiled.

"That gave me away." I agreed, cutting open my kiwi and slowly beginning to gut the fruit, eating small spoon full and watching with a mixture of fascination and jealousy as Carol's scrambled eggs were served to her, reeking of calories and fat. She didn't look put off at all by the calorific toast that was served with it, smiling happily as she dug in.

"I like this place." She told me, biting into a piece of toast heaped high with egg. I watched in fascination as half of the content spilt back on her plate, with one or two small clusters sticking to the paper napkin which she had stuck under her chin. Remembering Rayne sitting in this same café, eating something equally or even more fat filled made me smile.

"Rayne recommended it to me." I told Carol, gesturing around the place. "Her friend owns it."

Carol nodded thoughtfully, looking around. She turned back to me. "So, other than liking Rayne, I hope there is more to this meeting than discussing your affection, be it mutual or one-sided." She said, putting her food down and looking at me seriously. "Whatever you tell me Laura, you know I will always value you as a patient."

"We kissed." I said it quickly in the hopes that the speed of the confession would soften the blow. Carol just looked confused.

"Weakest?" she asked, repeating what she heard. I would have smiled at any other time, but this time it was crucial she understood. I slowed down my speaking marginally.

"We kissed." I repeated. Carol didn't look surprised.

"Did you enjoy it?" I nodded mutely. "Then what's the issue then?" I couldn't help but stare at Carol. She didn't see the issue there? Was she blind? Seeing my incredulous Carol nodded, as if a confirmation to herself. "Is the issue really that simple?" I didn't have enough energy or will power to argue the wording of her question, but understanding her gist I nodded.

Carol pushed her half full plate to the side and spread her hands on the table. "The issue, Laura, is quite simply, what you believe." She said. "I'm not a philosopher or a well known atheist, so I'm not going to use all those arguments against the Bible that are out there. All I'm going to say is that the New and the Old Testament contradict itself: 'an eye for an eye' turns into 'love your neighbour'. So it depends what you want to believe: do you believe in a merciless and violent God who distributes the complicated idea of justice across the ancient world, or do you believe in a merciful and kind God who sacrificed his life for our salvation and gave you a moral compass to decide your sins on?"

"It's not that simple." I argued.

"Fine." Carol agreed. "I'm only Church of England, not catholic so perhaps I'm interpreting something wrong here. Let me take it out of the context of religion and it quite simply for you. Do you believe that something that was written even a century ago should be viewed in the same respect today? I'm talking about things like the 'separate but equal' laws, the segregation laws in 20th century America and other such political injustices which the world has rectified, and yet there are places which still believe they're right and there are still people who think they should be followed. Moreover, there is also written proof of their existence. Does that make them right?"

"It's still different." I attempted, earning a glare from Carol.

"How is it different, Laura? Simply because you don't understand it?" I shrugged. Carol paused for one moment and then smiled. "Okay, let's start at the beginning. What else is bothering you other than your religious belief on this matter?"

"Nothing!" I exclaimed. Carol just held my eye contact. Immediately I looked down. "I'm scared." I admitted.

"Of what?" Carol's voice was sympathetic, and I looked up.

"Being hurt." I admitted. "I don't want her to leave me, and I know she will. Happy endings are only for fairytales, not real life. Even in fairytales, they simply stop at the convenient point, where we children don't need to hear that Cinderella will die one day and that her prince won't always be spurting romantic phrases and recognising her on the size of her feet."

"That's bleak." Carol said.

"But true." I added glumly.

"Not necessarily." Carol contradicted me. "You see, you think that Cinderella dying would ruin the whole fairytale. But see, it wouldn't. She would be happy up to that point, having achieved what she wanted and having pulled through. You need to stop worrying about the future and stop allowing the past to plague you like flies. You need to live in the moment, Laura. Carpe Diem."

"Seize the day." I translated thoughtfully. "But you see, people who don't plan ahead are the ones with big debts and a tattoo they don't want."

"No, that's people who don't have control. People who live in the moment still save their money for when they have a family and have responsible lives. They just make sure they don't waste their lives in a job they don't adore or with a partner they no longer love." Carol corrected me.

"Carpe Diem." I repeated, testing the world on my tongue. I liked it. Seeing some sort of resolve or some other emotion flash across my face, Carol grinned at me happily.

"Is it no longer different?" she asked. I nodded again thoughtfully.

"It's no longer different." I agreed, getting up.

"Wait." Carol cautioned me, and I glanced at her, surprised.

"One thing I want you to remember is that you always need to love a person for who they are, not who you or they think they should be." I stared at her in confusion. "All I'm saying is that your Rayne sounds fragile, so you need to make sure that what you like about her, is really who she is."

"You make no sense." I jokingly told Carol. She rolled her eyes, but dismissed me with a wave of her hand.

I quickly put the money Catherine had lent me (I really should get a summer job somewhere) on the table and grinned a goodbye at Carol before I left, just in time to be the usual lateness for the meeting Rayne had set up for us.

* * *

The playground was empty when I got there, the swings creaking in the summer morning. I glanced at my watch. It had just gone eight thirty in the morning. School would start in fifteen minutes.

I knew that I neither needed nor wanted to go, and yet a nagging in my stomach made me worry that perhaps I was missing something important. What if my politics teacher returned to give me and Rayne the last hint on our exams, or I missed a key point in my Philosophy or English essay which I had written last week and I wasn't there to hear it?

"Stop worrying." The voice surprised me to an extent I was sure I jumped a few metres. Behind me, sitting in her car and grinning at me through her window, sat Rayne. The grin didn't quite reach her eyes though, which betrayed that she was as worried as I was about this meeting.

"Hey." I whispered, feeling no need to raise my voice; I knew Rayne could hear me. Her smile softened and reached her eyes.

"Heya." She answered. "I want to show you something." I looked around, as if the something she wanted to show me was going to appear somewhere. Rayne snorted. "Not here." She corrected herself, smiling at my mistake before she gestured around. "Get in."

I obediently got in on the passenger side, remembering the last time I got into the car it was on an equally brusk invitation. I didn't mind though as I grinned at Rayne, somehow relieved to be seeing her. The silence between us was slightly awkward, but I didn't mind as we left town. I didn't know where Rayne was taking me, but I assumed it was somewhere interesting.

"I want to show you something." Rayne repeated as she took an unexpected turn. "I want to show you this, because that's the real me. The me that I'm afraid to show so many people."

"Why?" The question seemed the only logical one in the circumstances. Rayne glanced at me.

Rayne kept her eyes on the road rather than make eye contact with me, though to be honest this could be because she was a careful driver. "I hide in the same way you do, Laura. It's human nature to hide. We want to fool the world, try and make them believe that we are something different. You and I both succeeded in our own ways. But I don't want to hide from you."

"Why?" I repeated the question, feeling like a ten year old, though I didn't mean to. Rayne smiled, though her eyes were still trained on the road.

"I don't know." She admitted. "I suppose because you're the only one who's ever…" Rayne paused, at a loss of what to say "never believed me?" She glanced at me to check it made sense.

"Elaborate." I asked, confused.

"I don't know." Rayne admitted with a sigh, running her hands through her hair. "It was just that most people either liked or believed my disguise. You did neither." Rayne laughed. "I was so annoyed that you didn't hate me or love me. You were so neutral about me."

"Actually, I vehemently disliked you." I pointed out with a grin.

"But not like the others that hate me." Rayne pointed out. "They hate me because I've given them a reason to. You hated me because I was the only person you felt any powerful emotion about."

"That's not true." I tried to argue

"Of course it is." Rayne said sharply, glancing at me. "Be honest Laura. Your hate for me burned so powerfully you began to feel alive. Except you were afraid of life, so you avoided it by not eating and hating me even more for the life I enthused in you." Rayne suddenly braked again in the middle of the road. No one was behind us this time though. She turned to me and stared into my eyes with firey conviction. "Tell me honestly," she demanded, "that I don't make you feel alive." I didn't say anything. "see?" She prompted, starting the car again. "I'm your drug Laura, in the same way that nicotine is mine. You need me because one way or another, I make you who you are."

"No you don't." It wasn't true. I didn't need Rayne. I could be whatever I wanted without her. I used to hate her for Pete's sake! Rayne was silent, and I could see a smile curling at her lips. "If you're my drug," I slowly countered, formulating an argument quickly, "then why did you care about making me like you?"

Rayne snorted. "You're an enigma." She admitted. "You have no idea how annoying it is to have someone like you, who so obviously hates herself, but who plays such a committed role of the happy person, dancing around your thoughts. So I did the easy thing: I tried to solve you, like I solve all those math questions they put in front of me."

"Did you succeed?" I asked, intrigued. Rayne's lips quirked up in the slight half smile that always inspired some emotion, one I couldn't quite name, in me.

"I don't know." Rayne admitted, glancing at me. "I've kind of stopped solving the puzzle; I've started looking at it in a different way, admitting perhaps that like in a quadratic equation, there are two different outcomes."

"There are?" I glanced at Rayne confused. "I always thought that one math question can only have one answer."

"That's incorrect." Rayne told me. "You should have learnt that at GCSE."

"GCSE math is the only one I failed in my father's opinion, achieving what I thought was a lovely capital B." I admitted sheepishly. I still remember that 'B' which my father just couldn't get over. Somehow that enraged him, however much I argued that I'd gotten full marks in my theology and other 'important' subjects, my father just kept muttering that a 'B' in maths just wasn't good enough.

My face must have obviously fallen in melancholy of the memory because Rayne smiled at me, before raising an eyebrow. "Seriously? I think that if I told people that at college they wouldn't believe me. You just look the part of the perfect, all A* student." Rayne teased me, to which I lightly punched her in the shoulder.

"Shut up." I threatened, laughing with her. "Or I'll make you!"

"You can never shut me up." Rayne laughed. She suddenly took a sharp turn along a road which was signposted as the way to the cemetery.

"We're going to a cemetery?" I asked, surprised. I had considered enough places in our short drive, and I had had a fleeting thought of a cemetery, but I quickly waved it off, regarding the notion as silly.

"Yes." Rayne said evenly.

"Why?" I asked carefully.

"I'll show you when we get there." Rayne warned, her expression neutral again. I suddenly wished I hadn't asked. She was no longer up for talking. We drove the last ten minutes in silence until we parked in the dreary parking lot.

The cemetery itself was quite pretty with blossoming cherry trees and large weeping willows around the outside while the few mourners that walked among the graves did so in a tranquil step. Everything and everybody looked at peace, with the large grey headstones with beautiful dark gates at the entrance glittering with the care people had taken in maintaining their beauty.

"It looks prettiest in the autumn." Rayne told me, taking a bunch of wildflowers from the boot, which were obviously handpicked before we entered the cemetery.

"I'm not surprised." I answered quietly, following her, apprehensive to ruin the nice atmosphere by raising my voice over a whisper.

"That weeping willow becomes the nicest shad of yellow." Rayne told me, her voice lowered too, as we entered the large gates. I nodded soundlessly and followed her, curiosity getting more pronounced. Why were we here?

We walked towards the weeping willow, Rayne taking an obscure route through the headstones, nodding at some of them and clearing the leaves from the others, as if she knew the people. She read them quietly to herself as she went past. "Mary Flint, A beloved wife and a sister. She will be missed." "Anthony Harris, The riches in Heaven that await him make our mourning easier" and "Sally Thompson, A beloved mother, sorely missed."

"Do you know them?" I asked all of a sudden, my curiosity as to why Rayne was reading foreign people's name overpowering me. She looks up at me with a sad smile.

"Not in life." She admitted cryptically before walking to the tombstone right under the weeping willow. It was a tombstone in the form of a white angel, its wings spread wide, as if it's about to take off and fly away.

This time I read the inscription on the tombstone. "Elizabeth Hope Hatton-Smith. 23rd July 1992 – 4th October 1996. The good die young." The epitaph wasn't appropriate. This girl didn't die young. She died as an infant. She was four. I glanced at Rayne, wondering what this tombstone had to do with anything. And then it hit me.

This girl had exactly the same birthday as Rayne. She was born in the same year as we were. This girl was her sister, and judging by her birthday date it was her twin sister. "What happened?" I whispered my voice hoarse all of a sudden when I realised what happened to Rayne.

"She got hit by a car." Rayne said, placing her wildflowers in the wilting daffodils around the grave. She carefully started picking the wilted Daffodil's head off, ensuring that they would flower next April. "She and I were playing outside, the ball rolled in the street, Hope followed it and the car hit her. She was dead almost instantly; the car hit her temple."

As I stood there in horror, Rayne looked up at me with a completely neutral expression. "We were identical twins, which meant not only did my parents see her whenever they looked at me, it also meant that suddenly I was sharing my body with who my parents wish I was." She sighed, getting up.

"Suddenly, having a dead sister meant that Hope had never done anything wrong. She was the person I should become, now that I was living my life for both of us. My parents stopped interacting with me in anyway other than to bring me to a physiatrist. My dad tried, in the beginning, to talk to me, but I wouldn't listen. They'd lost a daughter; I'd lost my better half."

"So, here I am today, what my parents made me. My mother still can't look me in the eyes and my father is rarely home to do so, but when he does he's disappointed. He's disappointed that there's only one pair of eyes looking back at him rather than two."

"I'm sorry, Rayne." I whispered, a tear pricking at my eye. Rayne just straightened up and walked towards the trunk of the weeping willow before sitting against it. I followed her, standing awkwardly there before she gestured I should sit down. I did.

"No need to be sorry. It happened a long time ago." Rayne said. "Fourteen years ago, to be exact, in October." She looked up at me. "Don't you see, Laura?" She asked after a moment. "I suffered from severe depression and post-traumatic schizophrenia. I saw Hope everywhere and she was there for me. I saw her until I was about nine. Then she started fading, but this time I could deal with her absence, because I learnt to become her. I started inhabiting the skin I thought she owned and became she was so much more confident. I didn't like my parents, and yet somehow I wanted their attention, so I acted up. It didn't help though, so I acted up until being me meant being confidant and, most of the time, illegal."

She looked up at me, her eyes boring into mine. I felt uncomfortable and yet couldn't look down. "See, that's why I don't believe in God. Not because there is enough evidence for or against it; I don't believe in God because I believe that the tears of one child aren't worth our existence. I understand we need free will and knowledge and therefore that suffering is inevitable, but I just don't think this world is worth it."

"But what about all the good things?" I asked, curious about her argument.

"What good things? The things you spend your life searching for like happiness and acceptance? They're not real." Rayne scoffed. "There is no such thing as happiness."

"Really?" I demanded in surprise, trying to challenge her bleak view. "So what do you feel when you're loved?"

"You feel happy." Rayne argues. "But a moment of fleeting happiness is not happiness in the sense people search for. It's a matter of time until the love becomes stale and people loose faith in humanity."

"I disagree." I said decidedly. "Rayne I understand you suffered and you were alone through your suffering. But the truth is that only you lose faith in people. People always have faith in you. Me for example."

"You only have faith in me because you need to." Rayne scoffed.

"What do you mean? I don't need to have faith in anyone. I have a God who I have faith in and who loves me. I just know that you are a real person, who loves a challenge and really just wants to be herself, but she spent all her life being someone else that she's forgotten who that girl is."

Rayne stared at me in surprise. "I haven't forgotten who I am." She muttered, though her argument faltered that.

"Well, you seemed to have blurred the boundaries between yourself and your twin, so which person of the two you are is you? Are you the couch potato or the hard worker?"

"Do I have to choose?" Rayne's voice was no longer angry or demanding. It was almost pleading.

"No, but you have to decide." I admitted. "Decide whether you mind being a mix between the two or whether you want to be just yourself, because the pressure of living for the both of you is too much for you."

Rayne sighed. "I want her to be alive." She said quietly. "She would have known."

I smiled sadly. "That's what I used to think about my mother too. If she were alive none of my issues and problems would have occurred. If my mother would have been there we would have stayed in Rio and I would have become a normal person. That's not God's plan though. His plan was different, for both you and me, for better or for worse."

"But how could a God do this to her?" Rayne asked. "How could He do it to me?"

"I don't know." I sighed, snaking my hand into Rayne's. "I don't have all the answers, but the one thing I can tell you is that He can empathize with your suffering. He knows your pain and feels with and for you."

"I wish you did." She whispered, turning to me. "I wish you had all the answers and then could tell me what's right and wrong."

"I don't even know that anymore." I whispered, dangerously aware how close my face was to that of Rayne. Her breath and mine were interchangeable again and I sighed into it. Rayne bent down and kissed me tenderly. This kiss wasn't like the other one. Instead of searching for passion, we were simply searching for each other. My hand went around Rayne's waist, wanting to hold her there and minimizing the distance between our bodies as she ran her tongue down my lips. We were both surprised when I opened my mouth to the kiss, but Rayne simply laced her fingers through my hair, making me almost purr in delight.

We broke apart smiling. Somehow Rayne gave me hope. She made it hard for me to breathe when I was near her, but made my chest constrict and my heart to refuse to beat properly when I was away from her. And right now, she looked so vulnerable and alone I never wanted to leave her.