Glass House, Amberlynn

Chapter 6

I sat across from Daniel and eyed him curiously. Something wasn’t right. He seemed…Sad, out of place, distant. When he rushed towards me near the strip mall I could have sworn that he wasn’t Daniel, but looks don’t lie. They hadn’t lied so far.

“Do you want another coffee?” I asked him in a soft voice, afraid that if I were normal he would break.

                It was weird and unnerving. The Daniel I knew wasn’t such a shell of a man. I didn’t feel the need to coddle him. I knew from living with him that he was stronger than the one that sat in front of me. I was afraid that the real Daniel would break me, not the other way around.

“Yeah,” he replied after several moments, “Thanks.”

                With a slight nod, I picked up his empty cup and went to the register to get him another coffee. He liked it black. The real Daniel would have asked for six sugars and three packets of cream. When the cup was handed back to me, I paid the cashier and walked back to the table. With each step I took I thought about how the two Daniel’s were different and if I should confront the one I had been sitting with.

“Thanks,” he muttered as I sat the cup in front of him.

                Slowly, I walked around to my seat and sat down. I refused to pull the chair towards the table in case I needed to make a fast getaway. It wasn’t like I was ever on the run, but Daniel told me that it was sometimes helpful to be careful. I felt like that sometime was now.

“So,” I began to say, weaving my fingers together, “I want to apologize about earlier.”

                He raised his head slowly and met his eyes with mine. They looked tired and yet he somehow managed to get them to smile. Telling me that it was okay, I tensed. He was just proving how much he wasn’t the Daniel I had grown to know. The real Daniel would have made some snide remark or shouted at me. He might have even scowled, but this Daniel just smiled and said it was alright.

                Seconds turned into minutes as we sat across from each other. Neither of us spoke a word. I was trying to think of my chances of getting away and he was thinking of god knows what. For someone so fragile looking, he gave me the creeps.

“Amy,” he said, grabbing my attention, “I think we should go for a walk.”

“Where to?” I asked, noting the comfort he had taken in the past few minutes. I supposed that the three cups of coffee did the overall trick.

“New Hampshire.”

                My eyes widened slightly at how easily he had begun to move around and speak. He was surer of himself and yet he was transitioning slowly. It was a ploy to get me comfortable. I had seen something similar in an episode of NCIS I saw a few months back.

“What year?” I asked, playing along. We got up from our chairs quietly and walked to the door.

“Eighteen-seventy-two.”

                Once he stated the year I had to force myself to relax. He wanted to go back to before my father died. That year I had turned twelve… That year I made promises.

                Just as we left the coffee shop, ‘Fake’ Daniel took my hand and we took a step backwards. Unlike the first time I time traveled, this was different. Everything rewound itself as we back tracked to the destination the imposter wanted. I kept my mind off the fact that I was forced to hold his hand by staring at the ever-changing surroundings.

“Bingo,” He said in a sing song voice, stopping us in our tracks.

                Our surroundings bounced in place before finally meshing into the place FD (Fake Daniel) wanted. We were hidden behind the closet door in my parents’ room. My father, looking as though he could have been Daniel’s sibling, paced back and forth at the end of the bed he used to share with my mother. He looked worried, but I couldn’t remember why. Part of me wanted to leave the closet and console him.