Chapter One
I stood outside her window in the
dark, my heart filled with angst. I considered her my everything,
and I was certain that I was hers. But we hadn’t told each other
how we felt. Neither of us knew quite how to say it. Loving each
other was dangerous. Someday we would be separated, and we might
never find our way back together again.
I fanned my hand against the pane of
glass. Was she asleep? Was she nestled in her bed, the covers drawn
tight?
Her name was Abby Winston, and she was
nineteen years old. Currently, she lived in a treatment center
called The Manor, and I paid secret visits to her.
They claimed that she had
been schizophrenic for most of her life, and that I was one of her
hallucinations. According to the rest of the world, I didn’t exist.
But to her, I was real. As much as I hated to admit it, I knew she
was mentally ill and that I was a component of her disease. But I
would never, ever tell her that. It was my job to keep her warm and safe, to
let her believe in me.
She’d created me when she was a child,
several years after her parents died in a devastating car crash.
She imagined me, and I appeared to her. I was a kid then, too, just
a few years older than she was.
These days I was a man: tall, dark,
and leanly muscled. I was known as Smiling Seven. An odd name, but
she’d given it to me, so I’d always treasured it just the same.
Besides, mostly I was called Seven, and that suited me
fine.
On this Southern California evening, I
was one with the night, pressing my hand gently against her window.
I liked being part of the darkness, the moon scattering its silvery
beams down on me.
But I wasn’t going to stand out here
until morning. I longed to see her, to be near her.
My sweet Abby.
I didn’t try to open the window. It
wasn’t necessary. I could simply pop into her room, sort of like
the “Beam me up, Scotty” thing, only I wasn’t from outer
space.
Then again, I wasn’t from this world,
either. I hailed from a meta-universe called Room 105. According to
Abby, everything and everyone in it had been created by people like
her, who were prone to using their imaginations. It was where I
lived when I wasn’t with Abby.
105 was a bizarre place. To me, it was
like Oz on crack or maybe the Mad Hatter ingesting molly. You never
really knew what to expect. Of course, Room 105 wasn’t any more
real than I was, but that didn’t make it any less my
home.
Anxious to see Abby, I beamed into her
room and stood in the golden-hued shadows. She’d left a nightlight
on. She’d always been afraid of the dark. I moved closer. She was
asleep, but the covers weren’t tightly drawn. At some point, she’d
kicked them away.
She looked like a troubled princess,
locked in a twisted fairy tale. She wore her white-blonde hair
short and choppy, and she was small and frail. Sometimes I had to
remind her to take care of herself, to wash her pretty face, to
shower, to wear clean clothes. Her crappy grooming habits were a
symptom of her illness.
Sometimes I was a bit of a mess
myself. My medium-length brown hair looked as if it had been styled
with an eggbeater, and I always had a dusting of beard stubble on
my chin. I favored black clothes, leather accessories, and rugged
boots. On top of that, I had a pierced tongue, my left ear was
decorated with silver studs, and both of my arms were inked with
full-sleeve tattoos, the artwork a hodgepodge of random
shit.
But what could I say? I was a
musician, and my creation and the development of my persona was
inspired by a young Nikki Sixx. He was the co-founder and bass
player for Mötley Crüe. He was also a brilliant songwriter, author,
photographer, and radio host. Abby had chosen him because her mom
had harbored a crush on Sixx back in the day. I didn’t look like
him, but I had his bad-boy vibe, I supposed, with a schizophrenic
dose of romantic hero tossed in.
Abby thought I was as hot as fucking
sin and ridiculously handsome. She’d always
I stood outside her window in the
dark, my heart filled with angst. I considered her my everything,
and I was certain that I was hers. But we hadn’t told each other
how we felt. Neither of us knew quite how to say it. Loving each
other was dangerous. Someday we would be separated, and we might
never find our way back together again.
I fanned my hand against the pane of
glass. Was she asleep? Was she nestled in her bed, the covers drawn
tight?
Her name was Abby Winston, and she was
nineteen years old. Currently, she lived in a treatment center
called The Manor, and I paid secret visits to her.
They claimed that she had
been schizophrenic for most of her life, and that I was one of her
hallucinations. According to the rest of the world, I didn’t exist.
But to her, I was real. As much as I hated to admit it, I knew she
was mentally ill and that I was a component of her disease. But I
would never, ever tell her that. It was my job to keep her warm and safe, to
let her believe in me.
She’d created me when she was a child,
several years after her parents died in a devastating car crash.
She imagined me, and I appeared to her. I was a kid then, too, just
a few years older than she was.
These days I was a man: tall, dark,
and leanly muscled. I was known as Smiling Seven. An odd name, but
she’d given it to me, so I’d always treasured it just the same.
Besides, mostly I was called Seven, and that suited me
fine.
On this Southern California evening, I
was one with the night, pressing my hand gently against her window.
I liked being part of the darkness, the moon scattering its silvery
beams down on me.
But I wasn’t going to stand out here
until morning. I longed to see her, to be near her.
My sweet Abby.
I didn’t try to open the window. It
wasn’t necessary. I could simply pop into her room, sort of like
the “Beam me up, Scotty” thing, only I wasn’t from outer
space.
Then again, I wasn’t from this world,
either. I hailed from a meta-universe called Room 105. According to
Abby, everything and everyone in it had been created by people like
her, who were prone to using their imaginations. It was where I
lived when I wasn’t with Abby.
105 was a bizarre place. To me, it was
like Oz on crack or maybe the Mad Hatter ingesting molly. You never
really knew what to expect. Of course, Room 105 wasn’t any more
real than I was, but that didn’t make it any less my
home.
Anxious to see Abby, I beamed into her
room and stood in the golden-hued shadows. She’d left a nightlight
on. She’d always been afraid of the dark. I moved closer. She was
asleep, but the covers weren’t tightly drawn. At some point, she’d
kicked them away.
She looked like a troubled princess,
locked in a twisted fairy tale. She wore her white-blonde hair
short and choppy, and she was small and frail. Sometimes I had to
remind her to take care of herself, to wash her pretty face, to
shower, to wear clean clothes. Her crappy grooming habits were a
symptom of her illness.
Sometimes I was a bit of a mess
myself. My medium-length brown hair looked as if it had been styled
with an eggbeater, and I always had a dusting of beard stubble on
my chin. I favored black clothes, leather accessories, and rugged
boots. On top of that, I had a pierced tongue, my left ear was
decorated with silver studs, and both of my arms were inked with
full-sleeve tattoos, the artwork a hodgepodge of random
shit.
But what could I say? I was a
musician, and my creation and the development of my persona was
inspired by a young Nikki Sixx. He was the co-founder and bass
player for Mötley Crüe. He was also a brilliant songwriter, author,
photographer, and radio host. Abby had chosen him because her mom
had harbored a crush on Sixx back in the day. I didn’t look like
him, but I had his bad-boy vibe, I supposed, with a schizophrenic
dose of romantic hero tossed in.
Abby thought I was as hot as fucking
sin and ridiculously handsome. She’d always
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