Crash of Hearts

Chapter Four

Chapter Four

“Time to eat,” my mother yelled at me from our kitchen doorway. The sand clung to my legs and hands as little bugs crawled over my skin. Sammy’s little hands grabbed for a hose, holding on to it with all his strength as the water gushed out onto the ground. I offered my hands to him as he pulled the hose to let the water rinse off the sand.

The water pressure was too great for him though. The hose escaped out of his grasp, flapping around like a snake and spraying us both. Our squeals of laughter filled the air as our mother shouted for us again. The water sprayed in the air, creating a small rainbow as the sun beat down on us.

Mother was at the doorway, mouth gaping as she saw the two of us, drenched to the skin in water. I was afraid that she would become angry so I grabbed the thrashing hose, squeezing it near the top so the water would stop. Sammy stopped smiling and it almost looked like he was about to cry.

When my mother saw this, a huge grin spread across her face as she whisked Sammy into her arms, swinging him around in circles as he giggled again. The smile returned to my lips as I released the hose, pointing the nozzle at my mother and brother.

“Ari,” I heard my little brother call out between fits of laughter. His five year old voice rang out to me, clear as a bell and innocent as a duckling.

“Ari!” he called out again, the giggling ceasing. His smile disappeared, my mother stopped spinning, and they both stared at me.

“ARIANNA!”

I bolted upright, gasping for air as I looked in all directions, not sure what I was searching for. Sammy seemed surprised and frightened, backing into David. David was also staring at me, his eyebrows furled in confusion.

It took me a second to remember my dream. It was three years ago, not too long after the accident. That memory was the only time where mom seemed almost normal again, where she had fixed us lunch and was calling us to eat. Almost like before the accident, when Sammy was just three. It was hard to imagine all that time had passed, and to this day I still wonder if mom remembered who we were before everything, when she gave birth to me and then to Sammy. How happy she had been to have two kids of her own.

Thinking like that would get me nowhere. First I would need to get back to my parents, to help them again and continue establishing a relationship. I wouldn’t get anywhere sitting in a field of grass, wishing for things that might never come true.

My mind was still jumbled up with thoughts of my parents and the accident when I heard a… a helicopter?

To confirm my assumption, I spotted one in the sky, a little ways away but coming closer.

“It’s been circling us for about fifteen minutes now. We don’t know where it’s from. It hasn’t come close enough for us to get any details and it won’t land,” David said, gazing at the helicopter. His eyes were gray in the morning light with a fleck of black, reminding me of runny ink on paper.

For a second I wondered if it had even spotted us. Maybe it hadn’t landed yet because there was no reason to. If there were no people to rescue, then why would they waste their time? But who was I kidding? We were like giraffes in a herd of zebra; easy to detect with little effort. Though the grass was waste high, our clothes were contrasting with the light green.

David looked suspiciously up at the helicopter with a distrusting glint in his eye. Whatever was in the sky wasn’t coming down for some reason that we didn’t know about. We were starving and thirsty, and the last thing we needed was for someone to ignore us. I felt absolutely helpless.