Series Book

2.2

Chapter 12: Unexpected Visit

Ava had her eyes closed, headphones on, laying on her bed.

She was listening to Remember the Rain? By 21st Century, and though she normally listened to songs of a completely random genre than her vibe, she continued to put the song on repeat. She felt emotions she had never felt before be suddenly reeled in by the careful construction of melodious sounds. For a girl whose life was run by focus and set goals, she had not been used to being so driven off course by turns of events she could not explain.

She believed there was a science to everything. She knew that if she tried hard enough, everything she had ever known could be solved with numbers and quiet genius. She had been a firm believer in the construct of everything she knew being just another number. Life was data. Everything she had ever committed herself to had been data. Her job, daily routines, and her whole life were just another algorithm she knew was solvable on pen and paper.

So why had a phone call suddenly thrown all her beliefs down a waterfall of madness?

She could have just been clinging to the one person in her life that had ever given a damn about her, but she felt something more. Amidst the impossibility and outlandish circumstances was an emotion that was formed simply by exchanging words on a device connected by a rip in the timeline. She wasn't going to run to a scientist to get an explanation, or post about the miracle that was this old telephone and show the world that she had discovered some sort of magic. It was almost like she wanted Phantom herself. That this bond was made strictly for them, and that the world wasn't meant to know.

Phantom's voice threw her logic down the drain, along with all her crap about scientific proof and algorithmic nonsense. She had been the magnetic pull that she needed to realized how much she had messed up her life, her relationships, and everything decision she had ever made, all to help herself.

So she lay there, wondering why the one entity in her life that had seemed to fix her was someone she couldn't have.

What she wanted Phantom as? She wasn't sure.

She had never had a friendship in which she'd find it safe to spill her inner demons in exchange for words of comfort and honest criticism.

Ava and Phantom had made a schedule in which Phantom would call. 8 PM every night, and even earlier on weekends. Ava glanced at the clock, squinting to see she thankfully had two more long minutes to wait before she's hear the saving grace that was the phone ringing.

Three minutes had gone by, and though Ava knew that not every call was going to be on the dot, she felt a little lonely and worried.

Ten minutes went on, then thirty, then an hour and a half.

She had heard a knock on her door just as she was about to give up waiting and make dinner.

She placed a small figurine on the phone, so if it rang the phone would shake and the figure would fall, and if Ava came back and the figure was on the floor he'd know if Phantom had called while she was gone.

She forced herself downstairs quickly, not wanting to miss the call in case one ever came. She opened the door to see Zaiden, with his usual pocket notebook in hand, and Megan holding a bottle of apple cider.

"Zaiden, Megan," Ava greeted, "what brings you here at 8 in the night." She gestured to their presence and the bottle of cider.

Zaiden wrote in his notebook and stuffed it into his pocket, "Well it's been a while since we had friends to have a chat and a drink with, so we figured to knock on the door of our fellow Brit to see if she's available."