Right In Front of You: Short Stories

|Lead The Way, Part 1| Alstin

Mrs. Stark slid the salt shaker across the table when her daughter asked for it. On the dinner table were the Starks, enjoying their dinner-well, most of them.

"Mom, you put too much pepper in the brussel sprouts," groaned Alice Stark, their 17-year old daugher, "again."

"Well, if you're always going to comment on my cooking, maybe you should cook for yourself," her mother retorted, spooning more stringbeans into her plate.

"Your cooking is great, dear," mustered Mr. Stark with a mouth full of pasty mashed potatoes.

Alice put down the aluminium fork and rolled her eyes. "Good thing my birthday is tomorrow."

Her parents, obviously, took no notice to this statement because they were too busy dining on Mrs. Stark's specialties: boiled vegetables. Every year, they would forget their own daughter's birthday until Alice, herself, reminded them. It had been quite heartbreaking and annoying, but she had gotten used to the annual routine. She breathed out the cold air.

Heater must be busted, she thought. Again.

When she had finished half her plate (or if you might prefer "left half her plate") she excused herslef from the table and turned around the corner into her room.

She slammed the door and sighed. Alice only thought of herself as an accident. Her parents had hit it off in their mid-teens and when they figured out that her mother was pregnant with an accidental daughter, Mr and Mrs. Stark were forced into marriage in such youth.

"It was just a fling," her grandmother told her when she came to take care of Alice when her parents left for work, "but your parents rushed into it. Before they knew it, out came a miracle. You."

Alice loved her grandmother dearly and so did Mrs. Rowan Valentine. But it was such a rare occasion that she ever came to visit. Alice desperately needed her right about now; it was always her grandmother who remembered her birthday first.

However, she wasn't the only one.

Alice peered out upon the open window from her bed.

"I don't remember opening the window," she muttered softly to herself so that her parents wouldn't overhear.

She approached the window sill to find a prickly red rose wrapped in a fresh bundle of notebook paper.

Alice freed the rose from the paper and read note in its average handwriting:

Follow the roses to me.
You'll always find them along the way.
You are the one I need to see.
By the way, happy birthday.
Yours, A.B.J

She merely snickered at the corny rhyme but then traced longily at the initials scrawled at the bottom of the paper.

A.B.J

The name sounded familiar, like it was someone close to her the whole time. It couldn't possibly be her grandmother (her initials were R.L.V), neither could it be her parents (they were too stuck-up to remember her birthday). So, she figured it was one of her friends. But who?

"Maybe if I-" Alice's voice trailed. A cool gust swept the paper out of her hands and onto the pavement below.

Worried, she looked over her window and took a breath of relief when she found out it was safe. Albeit, she saw something else on the clean-shaven pathway.

"Follow the roses to me..." she recited, eyes twinkling.

Alice Stark rushed out the patio, hastily buttoning up her jacket in the process. She had grabbed a flashlight from the kitchen cupboard and sneaked out when her parents fell asleep on the sofa, watching a marathon of CSI. The note was crumpled inside her pocket as she treaded her way out on the pavement, a smile dancing on her lips.

She had a map in her satchel, in case the roses led her into a place she didn't know. Also in her satchel was her grandmother's emergency phone (she got her this for her sixth birthday), in case she needed to call 911.

Along the way, she found more red roses. As she walked eagerly down St. Benedict Street, Alice had a bouquet of roses in her right hand. The moon shone down at her for guidance when she spotted a rose.

Her mobile phone ringed to only indicate her that Cat Mizuneko was calling.

"Hey, C," she started off.

"Hey, Allie," Cat said from the other side of the line, "do you have a wrench with you?"

"No. Well, not now. Why?"

"Oh nothing," she muttered. " Austin Blake Johnson asked me for one, but I didn't have any. So, I told him I'd ask somebody. And I asked you."

A lightbulb flashed inside Alice's head. "Austin Blake Johnson?"

"Yeah, y'know... Austin, Damien's friend who came to visit a few months back?"

"Austin Blake Johnson?"

"Is the connection bad over at your place? Or do you just need hearing aids?"

Alice Stark's heart skipped a beat and butterflies fluttered in her stomach. She felt a giddy smile along with a shade of pink rise on her face.

"THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU!"

She hung up on Cat and excitedly grabbed the rose and skipped to her A.B.J.

A.B.J.

Austin Blake Johnson.

《to be continued》
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A/N: Hold yer horses readers, Part Two is coming. TBH, this one might be the best two-parter of all.

...

Well, maybe until I write a better one.

Cheerios!

-lunaticgoose