A Price Worth Paying

Chapter One.

I looked around the kitchen at Nathan's house to make sure everything was clean, and dinner was simmering away gently. All the guys are busy tonight and tomorrow morning so Sean and Mr Blackbourne are having dinner here with me. Gulp. It's probably just as well as Sean confessed he is a far better doctor than he is a cook, which Luke and Gabriel confirmed with tales of him trying to poison everyone on more than one occasion. I'm more comfortable cooking here than Sean's place, so everyone is happy and hopefully no-one dies today from food I've prepared, and since all the boys made me promise to cook the biggest pot of Taco soup and to save some for them I think we're good.

I glance over at my box of books which came a few days ago and decide I have plenty of time for a good look through before anyone arrives. I didn't think the books I had been receiving every month since I was about nine had been forwarded from Illinois when we moved, so I was surprised when I had spotted them on the steps of my place when Kota and I drove past on the way home from school. I was even more shocked to find boxes of them in the shed when we went looking.

I don't know why it shocked me that someone hid them from me. Although they had kept me sane when I was grounded by my stepmother, I had to admit they sure did cause me a lot of grief too. Even though I frequently offered to share them with Marie she wasn't interested, and for some reason receiving them fueled her mother to punish me for any and every thing. I could never find out who sent them and I had given up asking several years earlier. I learnt early not to mention them to anyone if I wanted to keep receiving them, and that definitely included not mentioning what I learnt from them.

Turning on the radio, I perched myself on the table and opened the box with the familiar sense of excitement I always felt when I peeled the tape away. I loved all the books I received whether they were about math, science, computers, electronics, whatever. But, secretly, I was hoping there would be a new language for me to learn inside. I loved those the best. There were always dictionarys, a cookbook, textbooks, books on the culture and the history of the country I was to study and I wished I could thank whoever sent them.

If I was really lucky there would be a cd of someone speaking the language so I could practice. I had always had to be careful not to be caught practicing, or reading any of the text books, but I didn't have to worry about that now. There was always a novel included from a language I had already taught myself and even though several times there had been novels in languages I hadn't learnt included it didn't matter. There were always plenty to choose from and I could lose myself in a book. In a strange way I never seemed quite so lonely when I was reading. Those books were my friends. I smiled when the errant thought crossed my mind. I hadn't had a chance to miss my old friends since moving here. The boys and I were always too busy to read for fun, and I hadn't really given them a lot of thought.

An old song from the 70s starting playing which oddly caused tingles of remembrance in the back of my mind. Bopping my head to the tune I pulled out the first book which for some strange reason was a current popular novel written in English. Flicking the pages my eyes caught the dedication written "To Sweet Rose, who taught me the difference between life and living and the power of a positive attitude" and my mind froze.

I couldn't think there were suddenly so many strange images flashing behind my eyes. It was like an avalanche crushing my brain and I started gasping for breath. There was a little girl running and laughing, winching a small boy up a tree in a beautiful garden, fireworks on the fourth of July, listening to the symphony with an older couple, holding a bow, then a crossbow, learning to cook lots of different things with the same couple, another man falling in what was suddenly a recognisable room and pushing buttons on a strangely familiar box. So many more images caused so much pain when I tried to move everything started to go fuzzy and I fell into an abyss.