Where Do You Go...?

[Eli]

Type of story: Short/Medium Fiction

Rating: A

Main Characters: Jade Sutherland

Genre: Angst

Warnings: Hard to use the official warnings, please read below.

Is Story being proof read: No

Summary: Jade finds it hard to deal with her changing life, but finds comfort in a new addiction...

I was in the writing mood, and just got an idea for a new fic (not as long as the two other ones I have up at the moment).

I should probably warn you: I writing whatever falls into my head, and it's not at all planned. I just really felt like some spontanious writing!

The fic is basically about Nick and Jade, right after Jade found out she wasn't Shelley and Rhys' daughter (Nick never left for LA, but has an offer about going to the City to do some commercials on TV.

I'm not sure if it deserves a warning, but just to be sure no one feels offended: this fic WILL deal with some adult (not in a sexual way) themes (can't tell to much, I don't want to spoil the ending), so if you are easily offended by dark thoughts (or whatever I should call it) and self destruction you should probably not read it.

I hope you will find it as fun as I do to see where this goes

Chapter 1

Waves, ocean, salt water and dark clouds. This was how she liked the Bay.

No one outside their houses, everyone sleeping peacefully in their beds, resting their minds from worrying about smalltown drama all day.

Down at the beach she could clear her mind, think, and don't have to worry about how she looked or if she started crying.

The ocean didn't care how she looked, and the tears would be washed away by the waves as soon as they hit the ground, blending with the salt water and making her a part of the big, lonely ocean.

No one here to tell her how she should feel, and no one here to take the things she loved more than anything away from her.

The great thing about the ocean and the beach at night was that the salt water would never think of offering Nick a job in the City or removing her identity with a piece of paper telling her she wasn't who she thought she was.

In a world where everything could take anything away from her anytime it was comforting to know that if the ocean chose to take anything away from her, she would be able jump right into its cold, dark blue arms, drown herself in its refreshing water and follow the thing she had lost into eternety.

She had tried talking to Nick about how she felt, but it didn't work. Nick tried (and Jade felt pretty sure he did it because her family had told him to) to convince her everything would be the same.

"Where do you go when you're lonely?" Dani had asked her, and Jade was pretty sure she hadn't been thinking about "When the stars go blue" at all, she just said it.

"You go home of course!"

She hadn't even waited five seconds for Jade to answer. Not that it would have helped, Jade hadn't been ready to answer that question.

Because when Dani said "Home, of course," she couldn't help thinking, "What if home is the reason why you feel so lonely?"

It was dark, and it wasn't exactly warm. She didn't care, right now she just wanted to stand there, feel the water wash over her feet, and breathe in the cool and cleansing air, brought to her by the thousands of lonely winds from the Pacific ocean.

Please review and tell me what you think so I know whether to keep writing it or not!

[Eli]

Chapter 2

Have you ever tried to Google ”lonely”?

It gives you 51 400 000 hits in 0,13 seconds. It makes you wonder; if you could Google all the lonely people in the world, how many hits would you get in 0,13 seconds?

And why are all these people putting ”lonely” on their websites? Is it because they are all lonely, or because the word is overused?

Jade closed her diary, she should be sleeping, but she couldn’t. Last night she had stayed down at the beach until three o’clock in the morning, and she had been so tired in the morning her so-called family had been suspicious. They couldn’t find out about her trips down to the water at night, somehow Jade felt that it had to be a secret between her and the ocean.

When Rhys had frowned and asked if sh had slept at all Jade had decided not to og down to the beach tonight. It was too risky, she didn’t want anyone to know about it.

There was something so wonderfully addictive about the beach at night, and every time she closed her eyes and tried to sleep now she heard the waves in her head.

After moving around in her bed for half an hour she finally fell asleep.

Jade had only been sleeping for a fifteen minutes when she woke up, panicing and not able to breathe.

She needed air so desperately, it hurt so bad!

Trying to get more oxygen she placed the pillow under her neck so her head was lower than her chest, and her neck was fully stretched, but it didn’t work.

She got out of bed and ran over to the window, gasping for fresh air.

Tears ran down her face because she was exhausted from panicing and the feeling of not being able to breathe.

She could finally breathe again, but she had to be silent, trying to catch her breath. It wasn’t easy, but it was necessary. She had to be silent, because she knew that if she got back in bed she wouldn’t be able to breathe again. She had to get down to the beach.

It was raining outside, but it didn’t matter to her. As long as she got her dark, silent and cold nighthours down by the water there could be a thunderstorm, and she wouldn’t care.

She could breathe here, and she could be all alone. Lately she felt more lonely among people than she did being alone on a dark and cold beach in the middle of the night.

It was a depressing thought, it needed to be washed away!

So she started running, out in the water, away from her thoughts. She didn’t stop until the water was covering her shoulders, then she turned around and started walking back to the beach.

Since she hadn’t taken her clothes off when she ran into the water it was freezing to stand at the beach. But she didn’t care, she just needed to stare at the endless ocean.

Tonight she wasn’t going back at all.

Somewhere out there there was a light. It was probably from a boat, far out there.

"Please don't let that light disappear," she whispered to the ocean. She had a feeling that light needed to be there for everything to be all right.

She didn't feel stupid when she talked to the ocean anymore.

She used to feel stupid, especially the first time. But now it felt natural, the ocean kept her secrets. It was even better than writing in her diary, because no one could ever read her secrets from the dark water.

It was just like when she cried. Her tears fell into the water, and the ocean kept it, but no one would ever be able to track them down and find them in all the water.

The light was still there, and she kept watching it.

No, tonight she was definitely not going back at all.

[Eli]

No need to wait to post a new chapter. I felt like writing, so here we go again, not planned at all and not even re-read (except for a quick spelling check) before posting!

Chapter 3

The light was there all night, and didn't disappear before it was drowned by the bright sunlight of the dawn.

She kept her promise to the water and the light; she didn't go home, didn't sleep and didn't sit down. She just stood there in the dark, feeling the water washing over her feet and legs.

When she finally decided to go home in the morning her legs felt numb from standing in the cold water, and she had to sit down and let the sunlight warm them up before she could walk.

"Where have you been, we have been so worried!" Rhys said when she entered the kitchen. Uh-oh, he knew she hadn't been in her bed. She could lie and tell him she went out early, but what if he knew she had been gone all night?

All the Hunters were gathering around Rhys, and they were all waiting for an answer.

"I," Jade began, deciding to go out on a limb, "I just went for an early swim."

"Your hair isn't wet," Robbie pointed out. Damn that smart boy!

"After swimming I sat at the beach and watched the sunrise," she said. She even surprised herself by sounding so cold and nonchalant.

Usually she wouldn't use a tone like that at all, but answer in a polite and nice way.

"Oh, sorry then," Robbie said.

Rhys looked at her, and for a second Jade thought he didn't believe her.

"It's true!" she almost shouted, again surprising herself with this different way of talking to her family.

"I believe you, sweetheart," Rhys said quickly. Jade could see from the look on his face that he was in the supportive mood. He wanted to sit down, maybe have a nice father-daughter conversation over a cup of coffee. Jade didn't want that, so she escaped from the kitchen and up the stairs to her room.

She was still high on the fresh air from the beach, and falling asleep wasn't a problem at all.

They had discussed it so many times, and they all agreed. Jade could live wherever she wanted. If she wanted to stay in Summer Bay Rhys and Beth would be more than happy to have her there, and if she wanted to move to the City and live with Shelley that was fine too.

”But you probably want to know whether Nick is moving to the City or not before you make up your mind,” Rhys said, as he always did when they had this conversation.

Jade didn’t really join in when the subject was brought up. It seemed like they cared more about it than she did. They seemed to think this was a problem that needed to be solved.

But what if she could just stop the time somehow? No, not stop the time, just keep on living and don’t think about this stuff. Even though it was a part of her now, it could be possible to live on like they used to?

All this stuff, was there really any need to find a solution to everything when it hadn’t been a problem before?

When she didn’t join the conversation they became worried. They started looking at her, asking questions, demanding answers.

Jade didn’t have answers, and she didn’t like the questions nor the looks they gave her. So she joined in, mumbeled some answers, muttered ”yes”, and ”sure” every once in a while, and told Rhys she would decide what to do when Nick had made up his mind.

To get rid of the lonely and dark feeling these conversations, and just being in the house in general gave her, she escaped down to the beach as soon as she could get out.

”They gave me a better offer,” Nick said. Jade turned around. She had no idea how long she had been at the beach. It could be five minutes, an hour or a week. Time disappeared when the seagulls screamed and the waves sang about secrets and loneliness.

”So are you moving to the city then?” she replied, trying to get rid of the hollow and distant voice her silent conersations with the ocean gave her.

”Yes, I think so,” he said and sat down next to her in the sand.

”Are you going with me?”

Jade started out from the coast and in to eternity again.

”I don’t know,” she said.

”So are you moving in with mum now that Nick is going to the City?” Dani asked, making a cup of tea for Jade.

Jade had been wandering around with no destination after the conversation with Nick, and ended up at the Palace.

”If I move to the City,” she said, for the first time speaking her mind about the subject to anyone but the waves, ”The who am I?”

Dani sat down, ”What do you mean?” she said, trying to get eye contact with her sister.

”It’s just,” Jade began, it felt so scary to talk about this, exposing herself for the danger opening up to people could be, ”I’m still me if I stick to my old life in Summer Bay.”

”You will always be,” Dani said, ”Even if you want to become more close to the DeGroots you will still be you. You will always be Jade!”

Jade took a sip of the tea. It tasted like bitter wine. She didn’t answer, the only thing she could think about was the next thing she was going to ask the ocean;

”Maybe I’ll always be Jade, the question is Jade Who?"

[Eli]

Chapter 4

The fried potatoes on the plate wasn’t tempting at all. Jade was the last one left at the table because she had been late for dinner, and now she was trying to figure out whether to finish the meal or not.

Even though it never was brought up anymore Jade knew her family still watched her when she was eating, trying to prevent her from going back to the days with eating disorders.

She had felt Rhys’ piercing look when she was shoving the food around on the plate, and she didn’t like it.

She tried to think about something else, and moved so she could see out of the window. The she realized the reflection of Rhys sitting in the kivingroom. He wasn’t just sitting there, he was watching her plate and every piece she ate, using the reflection in the window to see her without looking directly at her.

How long had he been doing that? Did he do it every time she was eating alone? Had he been doing it for two years without her noticing.

Suddenly Jade felt angry. There was no need for him to watch her like that, things were a lot different now than they were!

She remembered the voice in her head when she had bulimia. A voice splitting into two and telling her different things. First it would tell her that all the pain she felt would go away if she just ate something she liked. If she grabbed a candy bar or a piece of cake she would feel so much better.

But as soon as she started eating it changed. It whispered in her ear that she was a fat girl. She was a fat, weak girl who gained weight to feel better. She needed to throw up and get rid of the food! It made her a fat looser!

Jade swallowed, and moved closer to the window before she finished her dinner, just to show her father that it really wasn’t about the food anymore.

The voice wasn’t talking about eating, food and fat girls anymore, it was talking about the important things in life. And it no longer came from her head like she was crazy; it came from the Pacific Ocean.

The ocean was silent tonight, it didn’t have anything new or important to tell her. Instead it was Dani’s voice she heard in her head.

”Where do you go when you’re lonely?” she sang.

”Home!” Jade wanted to answer, but it didn’t feel right.

It was getting darker, and a chilly wind made her shiver for a second.

If it really was true that she would go home when she felt lonely, then where would home be when she moved to the City?

She had told Nick and everyone else she was moving in with Shelley during the Easter break.

Was Summer Bay or the City that would be her home then? Or maybe none of them? After all she hadn’t been living in the Bay for that long. But still she felt more like home here than anywhere else.

Would that change? Because even though she was still living here, the feeling of home was slowly slipping away from her.

The couch used to be so comfortable, but now it was just weird. It felt harder and bumpier, not so soft and relaxing as it had been. And she didn’t feel like she belonged in the family anymore.

The light she had been watching the other night was there again. She hadn’t noticed it earlier, but now it was there again. It made her feel a little bit better.

But not even the light could take her mind off the situation. What if it was her fault? What if she was making it so hard?

She remembered yelling at Robbie the other day, and having a real attitude when she was talking to him.

She had to smile, remembering how much she used to hate him, and how annoying he was when he first came.

Robbie could still be annoying, but Jade had to admit she loved him like a brother now. He was so funny and different, but at the same time so deep and real. So vulnerable and human.

Jade took one last look at the light, as if she was just making sure it was okay with what she was about to do. Then she turned around and ran.

The pieces was starting to fit in to the puzzle now. She had ran home and apologised to Robbie for her behaviour yesterday, and he had laughed, smiled and said it was okay.

So nice and understanding.

”And hey,” he had said after he had forgiven her and she was about to leave the room, ”I know you’re having a tough time with all that’s going on...”

Jade had turned around, afraid of what might come next. Robbie had smiled. Not a big, happy smile, just a small, friendly and supportive smile.

”It will get better, just... just hang in there, okay?”

She had just smiled back and promised him she would.

The only thing that made her feel captured and frightened now was Dani’s question.

”Where do you go when you’re lonely?”

Jade still didn’t know, and she didn’t know if she would ever find the answer.

Maybe talking to Robbie would help?

She want downstairs, looking for him, but Mattie told her he was with Tasha.

That made Jade feel more lonely than she could remember having felt ever. That was when it hit her, the answer!

Dani was right, and without explaining anything to the others, Jade ran off to get rid of the loneliness.

She didn’t slow down before she felt the familiar feeling of sand under her shoes. She was home.

This addiction was so beautiful. Dani was right, she wanted to go home when she felt lonely! Only, home wasn’t a house, it was a feeling.

She had been staring at the waves for more than an hour before she climbed out on the rocks in the water. It was getting darker, and from here she could see the light again.

It was a bit weird, before she could see the light from the beach itself.

Jade went back to the beach, but she couldn’t see the lights from there. Maybe they were drifting away?

She paniced again, couldn’t breathe! She remembered the loneliness she felt when the feeling of Summer Bay as her home was drifing away from her, and now this was drifting away from her too!

Where would she go when she was lonely if home disappeared?

If home disappeared she would have to deal with reality, who she was and wasn’t and everything else again. She knew who she wanted to be, but would it be possible if home left her?

If I can’t be Jade Sutherland, I want to be nobody!” she shouted, feeling tears running down her face. They fell into the salt water and disappeared.

Jade took a deep breath, and made up her mind.

Without looking back she dived in to the deep water, thinking of a song:

”Where do you go when you’re lonely?

Where do you go when you're blue?

Where do you go when you're lonely?

- I follow you...”

--END--

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