I've known the feelings for years. I know how it feels for my soul to return to my body and I know how it feels to wake up screaming from a nightmare. It's always one or the other. But what happens when both happen at the same time. What happens when I wake up screaming with the feeling of my soul returning to my body. What happens when I wake up from battles and hell on earth and the one person that I've ever loved to my own screams because of the horror that I've seen.

I wish that I never knew you.

I wish that I didn't remember how your voice sounds when you're worried, or happy, or anxious.

I wish that I had never memorized your eyes, the little ripples in the sea of infinity.

I wish that I could forget how it feels for your eyes to be staring into my very soul.

I wish that you hadn't teased me and treated me like your best friend.

I wish that I never had the chance to memorize your grin.

I wish that I had never watched your heart break when you heard why I was quiet in class when you knew better.

I wish that I forgot how relieved you were when you heard that I didn't like my guy friend.

I wish that I could forget it all and remember how you hurt me.

I wish I could just move on.

But you just keep pulling me back in every time I try.

I jolted awake to the sound of a tree branch banging against the window.  None of this was familiar to me.  The ornate furniture, the decadent paintings and rugs, and especially not the gossamer nightgown and silk sheets.

There was a not telling me to get dressed and meet someone in the bar downstairs.

I knew it was a bad idea, but curiosity got the best of me.

I walked downstairs to the musty bar filled with jazz music and the smell of smoke, women walking the room.

The server pointed me to a small table in the back corner where a young man in a trench coat was drinking.

"Next time you need a favor, just call and ask," I sat down across from the familiar man.  "Kidnapping someone is rude."

"I thought it best considering your line of work," He raised an eyebrow.  "Besides, sister, I needed to talk to you."

"I'm an only child," My jaw dropped.

"Your name is Lygeia Alexandreia Hanson, you're a notorious assassin," He leaned towards me.  "And my baby sister."

Helena is my mouthpiece to voice my opinions in a lot of things from "Every single woman that is remembered in history found a way to contort a man's system to suit her needs" to just being an outlet for my sarcasm. Little secret, the darker story ideas I come up with tend to have their roots in Mountain Dew, 3 AM speed typing, and Mr. Nightmare videos on YouTube. But her relationship with Coleman has it's roots scattered in my personal history. Her "I don't hate you, I hate the idea of you" line is something that I've used in my personal life, along with a lot of other elements of her love life. Corinne's personality is a mix of my three best friends, which includes her pushing Helena towards Coleman in the beginning of the book.

So I have just about realized how sick and twisted my friends and I can be, starting Renegade. We've almost accepted Corinne and Helena into our friend group honestly. Helena's sarcasm has been fun for me to write. Insert a quote of her describing the underworld here.

"And the long ominous hallway led to a place that honestly looked like a little kid's dream land, the type of place that served chicken nuggets and milkshakes that would ultimately give you cancer."

But back to the twisted parts, one of my best friends and I had a conversation earlier about how to properly torture Coleman with his belief that he was the cause of Helena's death since he doesn't know that she came back. Then there's the fact that the whole storyline centers around a girl dying and coming back to stop her evil mother, solve her own murder, as well as solving her father's.

"I know what you did."

That was all the caller said before hanging up and those five words were enough to wake from the blissbliss filled sleep that I had been clinging to. It was Saturday, I should not be waking up at eight in the morning.

But the idea that someone knew what I had done or who I really was pulled me from my sleep. The idea that someone could tell Coleman that Bridget Meadows was actually Helena Townsend scared me. The idea that someone could know that I had come back from the dead or that I had knowledge of a conspiracy predating my father's death. It was a threat that I had kept out of my head for weeks, but it had come to pass.

I've been stuck on my book and I love Helena too much to not use her right now.