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Chapter 2: The missing copies
Knock Knock
“Come in.”
“Katie, I need you to edit this copy by today”, said my secretary Lina with a sorry look on her face.
“ Why can't Melissa do it? Isn't she back already?”, I asked.
“ She still has her break until the end of this week. She just came here yesterday to have the party for her new baby.”
I sigh. Melissa had a new baby a year ago, and so while she's gone, I have to do my work and hers at the same time. Well, at least this job pays enough for us to be able to pay the house rent.
“Fine. Put it right there.” Lina turns to leave, and just before she exits the room she adds, “ I know you have a lot going on with your sister right now, so if you need anyone to talk to, maybe we could go get coffee sometime.”
I smile at her. Lina's always thinking about others. But right now, I know, and I think she knows somewhere in her heart that she has to fix her own life first before helping others. “Thanks, but I'll be okay.”
She smiles back and shuts the door quietly.
Sometimes I wish that I could go back to that time when Jonathan and I had just graduated and had felt like nothing could stop us. We would go around in his Portia, and go from place to place, always asking for help. But we were always happy. Cause we had each other. Then after a while, reality struck us. Money was needed. Food that we could afford was getting hard to get. Sometimes, I thought that everything was just about to fall apart. That we were standing on the edge of a cliff. And yet, we managed. We knew that we always had each other. No matter what happened. And even though we didn't always show it, I both knew.
I grabbed the copy that was on my desk, hoping that it was another one of Alice's wonderful creations. Alice was one of my favorite writers of them all, and her romances glued my eyeballs to her copy. It was. I knew it was my lucky day. I started to read her copy:
The Game of Life
Alice Lincey
I let the cool water softly pass my face as I swam deeper into the night sea. It was unusual for the water to be this cold on a summer night like this one. My ears popped as I pushed myself deeper and deeper, and it felt like I was swimming into a large black hole. A black hole that seemed to lead into the unknown. I was frightened. But I shouldn't have been. I always swim around The Cliff during the day time. I wanted to be strong, and keep going. But my lungs were screaming for air. I quickly pushed back up to the surface, took a deep breath and went back down. But this time I couldn't go so far down. I was too afraid. I looked up. And I saw all the brilliant stars above reflecting on the surface of the ocean. It was if I was truly in space. Getting pulled in by a black hole. Into the forever darkness of the unknown. Just when I thought about going back to the surface, something.. something large bit me. At first I didn't know what had happened. Then I noticed that
it
I turned the page over to continue on reading. But the paper was blank. I thought that it must have been the crappy printer again, so I turned over to another page, but that one was empty as well. There were 12 pages in all for the first couple chapters, but they were all found empty.. except for the first page. For a second I stared at the copy confused. Then I stood up calmly trying to control my self from the urge of sprinting through the office and screaming at Lina to get the rest of the first few chapters (cause I really really wanted to know what bit her). I walked over to the door and called for Lina. She came into my office looking confused.
