THE CREATOR
"The unconscious doesn't dream to escape reality. It dreams to remember what reality was supposed to feel like."
Death welcomed Cali better than life ever did. Her mind has been her worst enemy since childhood — abandoned by a celebrity mother she has no identity of, knowing her only through envelopes of child support that held a different address and sender every month. Oscillating between abused and abuser, her sins and scars built a life on the edge. And just as the world rejects the one dream she had left — her manuscript returned with another rejection letter — she lets it push her off.
So she takes her own life.
But nothing in Cali's life ever went smoothly. Why would death be any different?
She wakes up on the other side of the planet, her small grey town in the woods replaced by the seaside city of Santa Monica. Her sickly house replaced by a mansion by the coast. She's still Cali, but without scars.
A Cali with a family and an amazing pre-made best friend. She's a girl who just moved to a new state and is about to become the new student at a prestigious private high school.
But something is deeply wrong, she can feel it. Some people are…strange, her dreams are petrifying, and some eyes are a shade darker than they should be.
And someone has noticed she doesn't belong here. He moves like he knows what happens next, a shadow — tall, broad, foreign to this narrative just like her. Charged with warnings she doesn't yet understand. With eyes that could raise hell and send heaven crashing down to earth.
Or maybe she’s just paranoid, who knows?
This book contains explicit imagery of self-harm, suicide, emotional abuse, trauma, violence and bullying. While these themes are present, this book is not meant to glorify pain. It is a reminder that even in the darkest moments, survival is possible, and healing, however slow or imperfect, can begin. Depression episodes are depicted as they are, drawn from the journals of my own best friend, a real survivor of this battle. If any part of this story feels overwhelming, it’s okay to pause, skip sections, or set the book down. Your well-being comes first. You are not weak for struggling, and you are not alone
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Context: this takes place the next day after Cali and Matt went on the beach and kissed. Iris never picked her up and they never had the argument on the rooftop. Matt and Cali met at the park and he invited her at a themed charity party as a plus-one. This is unedited, might contain errors since I removed it completely. Enjoy :)
PS: for a better experience listen to Once upon a December, I don’t want to talk about it.