Matt saw Alana's flashlight bobble between trees like it had one too many jello shots, the light glowing brighter as she approached like a train's eye in a dark underpass. She looked like a bagwoman, one leather bag was slung across her shoulder and the other with the weight of a thousand rocks disobediently crawled beside her on a vinyl leesh. Waves of hair sliced in front of her angry, determined eyes.

"Have I miss something?" Matt asked cautiously, directing his flashlight and eyes toward the bags.

"A lot, actually," Alana replied curtly, her blood broiling under her pallid skin, crossing her arms in front of her chest and plopping down on the log, the log finally cracking, like Alana's tolerance, under the pressure simmering inside Alana. She let out a hurtful sob, tears jumping into her eyes like robbers stalking victums in Central Park.

Matt kneeled down on bended knee, his knee being swallowed by sticky mud as he touched Alana's tourtered face soothingly, her eyes softening through the fire sparkling in her eyes. "Tell me what's wrong."

"Do you have a year?" she joked, casually swipping the tears from falling farther down her face, the joking unintentionally stabbing her soul more than her mother's announcement.

"I got all the time in the world," Matt responded, his voice tender and fluent with concern, his thin lips pushing into a smile, his fatherly hands patting at her back, sedating her stress and racked nerves to a peaceful sleep.

"As you know, I was grounded." Matt nodded, his eyes grabbing at the residue of her fallen tears. "Well, my mother came into my room and announced we were going back to Leichtenstein in a few days. I threw a fit, saying I could not leave because of you...She just yelled back and said we are going if I like it or not. This is so terrible!"

Matt's mouth plunged to the floor, his eyes expanding with disbelief as if she told him the world was flat. The blood surfing through his veins morphed into glacial water, freezing all of his organs in an afflictive abnormalty of biology study. The trees stopped moaning, the wind stopped singing, the frogs stopped croaking, he stopped breathing, everything stopped except the sobs escaping Alana's throat like there was no tomorrow. And for Alana, there wasn't.

"A few days?" Matt asked almost inaudibly in incredulity, his hand clamped on her knee, his mouth slowly climbing into its natural position.

"Yes!" Alana exasperated, blanketing her hands over her irritated eyes with unforseen force. Matt didn't know how to stop her tears. He just gazed at her blankly, the wind trying to protect them from the outside world like a shield. But the outside world had transgressed its way unlawfully into their place of serenity, chopping without stop at Alana's broken heart until nothing was left but a love that was immortal.

"What are the bags for?" Matt implored innocently, his right hand skidding over the material of the leather bag.

"I cannot stay there any more," Alana stated sternly, her eyes spearing like darts in the direction of her house. "I just cannot. I am going to leave."

Matt's interest peaked, his right hands caressing the arm of her black corderoy jacket, "And go where?"

"To the city," she sighed, almost happily, her eyes fluttering to his, his heart beginning to gain proper function as her brain concoted a proposal she thought he'd never turn down. "I want you to come with me."

"Go with you?" Matt asked, as if the wind had plugged his hearing. Alana nodded energetically, her eyes lighting up hopefully, a smile cracking on her face. "I can't go with you, Alana."

Another downfall. "What do you mean?" Alana questioned aggressively, pulling away from Matt like he had betrayed her, and in a sense, he had. She was willing to leave this world, enter another to be with him, the one she loves, and he wasn't willing to make the same commitment? "Don't you see? This is the only way we can be together."

"There has..." Alana jolted from the dead log and briskly strolled to the waterside, linking her arms around her stomach and staring into the distance, her eyes glowing red. "There has to be another way." Matt rose from the ground and joined her by the waterfront, his arm feeling like a razor against Alana's fragile skin.

"There is not," Alana informed him, backing away from him and stumbling back over a trap of greenery. Matt gazed at her, someone he thought he knew. "Do you see what my mother is doing? I do not need to be back there so soon. I have only been in the United States for 6 months. She is trying to tear us apart. She is a monster. I need you! I cannot imagine my life back home without you in it!!!" Her voice lashed at his heart like a whip, her whimpers and cries softening its tough exterior.

"I have obligations here. I have Aaron Carter tour rehersals all this week," Matt shouted back, his veins prickling into mountains against his leather jacket. "I just can't pick up and leave like that ."

Alana pressed her palms into her chest as if being scolded for stealing something, shoving her heart back behind her rib cage. Her face was etched painfully with a frown and crystallized eyes. "I guess I do not mean what I...thought I meant to you."

"It's not like that at all!" Matt retaliated with forlong power, cradeling her in his arms like in a dramatic movie. She tried to fight her way from his embrace, from his crippling statement, but that was like fighting her way out a cold, locked cell. His fingers attached onto her like ten skinny, light leeches, unable to pry off, his nails like tinty teeth tearing through her skin. He gave her a gentle shake as if to shuffle her mind back into a reasonable, stable state. "You mean the world to me! I thought you knew that. And I guess you didn't."

"And I guess Dream Street means the universe?" Alana questioned meekly, the words seemingly exploding in her heart more potently than in his, her hands lingering by his hips.

He didn't know if that was true; you could tell in his befuddled face. He was looking at someone he'd been unintendedly searching for all his life, his princess, a real princess, and now she wanted to run away from herself and him. "You're making me choose," he whispered, his fingers buring deeper into her flesh, his eyes glistening with hurt and reality.

"No," Alana disagreed calmly, ripping her right arm from his claw-like grip, his stabs to her arm not registering on her emotions, rubbing his tear-streaked cheek with her knuckes. "I'm asking, pleading for you to come with me. We will not be gone forever, just long enough to think of a more tangible solution."

To Matt, the world was tilting on a tall ledge, the balance of love, sacrafices and normalcy hanging like wet clothes on a line in the stars, this decision affecting his life and everything around him. He may turn the sun black, the water green and Chris's hair red and he didn't know which was the right choice, which was more important. That gutted him inside, made him sick and disguisted. Tell her what she has to here, Matt's brain demanded. Tell her the truth. Tell her what you're afraid to say. Tell her you love her. Keep her here. Close to your heart. Don't let her slip away. You need her. Don't deny it.

"I'm...I'm sorry," he finally said in defeat, his brain shutting down, not caring what he did anymore. Matt hung his head down in shame, confusion cluttered up his already overpacked mind. "I can't"

"And I love you!" Alana screetched involuntarily, screetched so loud napping birds rose in a startled ball of feathers against the midnight moon, her angelic face contorted with such rage, she could easily land the next role in Scream as the psychotic killer. She wrenched her hands around her 2 bags, thrusting them onto her back and bumbled away from Matt, her breath simulating a dog's snarl. Matt stood there as if casted in stone, having no power to move or advance toward his Cinderella escaping from their Ball of a relationship. Matt felt so worthless to cause Alana and himself so much grief, he wanted to shrink, drown with little struggle in the shallow water of the pool and become prey for fat bullfrogs and love's curse.