We Found Love – Chapter 10 – Lost & Found
{Leah Rodriguez}
© Roy Rodriguez
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“I'm an angel of course.” She winked at me.
I froze in mid-smile.
“W-What?” I stammered and everyone looked at me in surprise. Even I was surprised that I was stuttering, but this girl had appeared in my dream. This was not normal.
She laughed such a melodic laugh that we all focused back on her.
“No I'm not an actual angel, you idiots. Actually I might be,” She gave me a silly grin which I could only picture her mastering. “But I'm a normal person like you. My name is Angel.” She offered her hand for me to shake.
I took it and shook while still in a daze. She had super soft skin, but her palms felt so sure of themselves. She felt so sure of herself.
“I'm here for the next two or three months, transferred from West Virginia.” That ever-lasting smile stayed on her lips as she dropped my hand.
I shook my head lightly and gave my brain a tight slap. “Welcome to Spring Hills I guess.” I smiled back at her and everyone gave their introductions – not that she needed those.
“So which one of you are gonna go to history right now?” She grinned at us.
Err… I raised my hand, “Me. Wanna tag along?” I stepped towards her.
“Sure,” She grinned and something about her made me think that she knew it all along that I was going with her.
We all said our goodbyes, and I headed out for my class. We both talked along the way, and she told me a little of her background, and I told her a little of mine. The class wasn’t that far, so we couldn’t chat long. I wanted to get to know her.
The teacher, sadly, interrupted our talking when we entered the class and told us to sit down. She sat two seats down from me, and I could feel her hawk eyes on the black board all the time. After class, we talked a little more, and she told me she was pursuing art, that’s why she had taken humanities for the time being.
I wished her best of luck, and she wished me right back. After the first four classes, we headed down to the cafeteria, while she showed me some of her sketches. They were so good, I actually wanted to buy them from her. I'm sure my siblings wouldn’t mind.
When we entered the cafeteria, she went off to get her lunch tray. Then I heard Lana’s voice call out, “Hey Angel! Come on over! You can sit with us.”
She smiled appreciatively and sat down between the twins.
We kept chatting about random things but somehow, my gaze always flickered to her. She was smiling at everyone and what they said like she knew something nobody else did – like she was enjoying some kind of an inside joke.
She caught my gaze and winked at me, and I quickly stuffed some of the peas I had brought for lunch into my mouth. She laughed but everyone was lost in their own. Recess ended after five minutes, and we all set off for our own classes. Surprisingly, her every class was with me. Whether I should’ve been surprised or not, that was a mystery to me.
For the rest of the day, we all had fun like we usually did, just we included Angel into it. We hung out in the library, creating a ruckus at our table till the librarian kicked us out. We laughed at his face, at the very door.
When the school ended, I walked to our car with my siblings and Lana. Angel was taking a ride with Anu, so we let her go with her. Just when I was about to start the car and drive off to home, I saw Angel running towards us, with her hands in the air like Anu was on fire and dying to give a hug to her.
I had to bite my cheek to not laugh out loud at that. She stopped near my window as I rolled it down.
"Should we go to the waterfall today? Please? I really wanna go and I haven't had the chance to go. Pretty please?" She gave me the puppy eyes.
Zo spoke up before I could. "Sure! We'll love to go." Her grin couldn't get any bigger.
I hesitated a little. I didn’t have something that people might call a good memory set with that place. Still, I smiled and let her lead us there. We were 5 people in all: Me, Zo, Ro, Lana and Angel.
Anu had to do homework so she went home and Lana came with us instead. As we parked into the parking made near the waterfall for sightseers (not that there were much of them), Angel jumped out of Lana’s car but I could see that her excitement had died down a little.
I adored the surroundings, a huge waterfall with a wide basin and then a big stream flowed ahead to divide the town in two halves. For a little distance, there were huge trees on both sides, close enough to provide shade for the place to become a nice homework-or-nap area.
Just too bad I had stopped coming here for a while.
Angel led us through the woods, saying she wanted to explore a little bit while I walked to the edge of the waterfall. Crossing my arms over my chest, I stared into the clear, almost flimsy blue water at my reflection.
I suddenly felt a hand on my shoulder and looked back to see Ro with a small smile on his face. I smiled back, although it didn’t reach my eyes. Not even nearly. I leaned back into Ro, tilting back into his chest and he stood his ground as a sturdy rock; as my sturdy brother.
Suddenly, I felt like falling asleep right here. I felt really drowsy, and Ro seemed like a really good pillow.
“Help!”
I heard a slight voice ring in my ears.
Oh look at me, I’m hearing things from my past now.
“HELP ME!” This time, the scream was really loud, enough for me to realize that the voice was real, not from my mind.
I suddenly jolted from my position, using my fast running skills to see a girl, hanging off a bare rock in between the rapids.
Oh holy hell of hades.
I gasped, my hands automatically covering my mouth.
She wasn’t just a girl who was stuck on the rocks in the middle of the rapids, it was my best friend, Melanie who was stuck on the rock in the middle of the rapids. Her eyes caught me and she screamed, terror covering every inch of her.
“LEE HELP ME!”
And I was stuck.
I WAS FREAKING STUCK AT MY POSITION.
I couldn’t hear anything, not even the screams or screeches or meows or whatever the hell my friends were doing right now, couldn’t see anything else other than my friend who was hanging between life and death.
And I couldn’t move.
Till I could realize what was really happening, Zo had already taken her shoes off and jumped into the water.
“Careful, Zo!” Lana yelled out.
Ro looked frantically around till the time Zo reached Mel. I was still frozen, in body and mind.
How could this be…?
I thought she…
Before I could think ahead, Ro yelled something at everyone else.
“Everyone go towards the shallow end, where the stream slows down! We’ll all hold hands and form a chain so that we can catch Zo and Melanie!” Everyone nodded and ran towards Ro had pointed.
Ro ran ahead of me, but turned around to face me. “Sis! Come on! We finally found Mel!” He yelled at me.
But again, I stayed frozen, with only my hands shaking.
“Sis,” He grabbed me by the shoulders, causing me to look up at him. “We finally found her. Come on, we have to save her.” He said to me, his face was a mixture of terror and sheer absolution.
Tears poked at the back of my eyes as I stared at him.
He sighed, hugging me tight once. “I understand, just relax. Melanie will be fine.” He said, then ran off again, leaving me to stand with my quivering arms around myself.
I closed my eyes briefly, thinking that this was just another nightmare, just as the one where I had first seen Angel and Ro was a demon.
But it wasn’t. When I opened my eyes, the scene in front of me was still the same.
By now, Ro and the others had their jeans folded up and had formed a string in the stream, ready to help Zo and Mel when they swam to their position. Zo was nearly reaching them, and was very close, but then something else happened.
The sky was already overcast, but it looked like it was already raining heavily over and up there at the cloud level, where the waterfall originated from. And right now, it looked like someone had poured a million gallons of water in a single second into the waterfall.
The wave that followed wasn’t huge in height because the stream was wide and the basin was deep, but it was something. My eyes found a horrified Zo and Melanie, gaping at it while Ro and the others tried to go towards them as fast as they could.
Obviously, the two of them got swept away with the water, while the others had barely managed to keep themselves on the banks.
The next thing I knew, I was running as fast as my feet could go, trying to catch up with Zo and Mel.
The wave dissolved into the water and flooded the banks, and just when they were going to crash into the little wedge that divided the stream into two for a short distance, I lunged myself into the water at them.
Successfully pushing them aside, we got thrown into a shallow pool of water. My heart was racing at the speed of light, or faster.
But what I did know right now, was that Mel was okay, and crying and sitting in front of me, while all of us caught up with us.
I stared at her like she was something extra-terrestrial.
“Melanie… I…” I stuttered, not finding any words to form the questions I wanted to ask.
“I know, I’m supposed to be dead.” She whispered, hanging her head in front of every one of us.
“I-We-I-We searched everywhere for you. But I don’t understand…” I took a deep breath and took my spinning head in my hands. “…How? You died when you fell off the waterfall. We all thought you died. Then what happened?”
She looked up at me, slowly wiping her tears off on her already wet wrist, she gave me a very slow nod.
“I know I would’ve died when I fell off the waterfall.” She turned, avoiding our careful gazes. “But I didn’t. Somehow, I survived. Some people who had travelled to the origin of the fall found me. I’d lost too much blood, and too severe trauma... and I slipped into a mini coma.”
Hearing this, all my blood turned cold.
“They nursed me back to life, thinking I would wake up sometime or the other. I did, and it took two full years.” Melanie looked up at me with an uber-sad look. “I'm… sorry…” And again, she broke down crying.
It took us a while to get everyone after drying ourselves a little. The whole time, she snuggled into me and Ro held her legs up in his laps in the back of the car while Zo drove us home. She told us how it took long to find us all, and then when she did, how it hurt to see us in those situations.
I could fully understand, because it had hurt me to see her like that too.
“Everything okay back there?” Angel asked, turning back in her seat.
I nodded, running my fingers through Mel’s hair. She hummed quietly, snuggling in my lap. I let her fall asleep there, and then Ro carried her in.
I sat down on the loveseat, putting a pillow behind my head and trying to shut down my brain for at least a few seconds.
Melanie Rose had been my best friend since I came to Spring Hills, she had been living here all her life. Her parents lived away, and we had formed a very special bond. When Lana came to town, the three of us were inseparable. Oh, and Ro used to have a kid-crush on her too. Like when we were 6 or something.
But one day, we had taken a trip to the waterfall to do our homework. We were young, and impulsive, and hormonal.
And most of all, stupid.
And climbing the hill that led up to the waterfall seemed like such a good idea back then.
The way up had been easy, and we were right on the edge of the fall. We were having fun, laughing at each other, pushing each other around and when we got tired, we had just decided to lie down on the banks to relax.
Never had I ever thought that us rolling down the sand would end up in Mel falling off the cliff.
It was a painful fall, one that consists of many landings on the rocks on the way down. And when she landed down, we had never been able to find her. We had searched everything, the cliff, the waterfall basin, the rocks on the way down, the hospitals… even the morgue after a few days.
We couldn’t find her anywhere, till now.
What a reunion, huh.
“Sis?” Ro’s voice woke me out of my memory-lane-walk/dreams and I half jolted awake.
“Yeah?” I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes.
“Mrs. Cole called, she wanted her order today. Remember, twenty boxes of coco-nutties?”
Oh. “Yeah, yeah.”
“Yeah, so I'm gonna go and make sure she gets it safely to her car. I don’t want her falling over or worse.”
I nodded briefly and stretched my legs to get up, but Ro grabbed a blanket and put it all around me, pushing me down on the couch again.
“Go back to sleep, I’ll handle the bakery for a few hours.” He smiled, kissed my forehead and walked away.
I smiled to myself, then closed my eyes as my body passed out into Tom heaven.
!
*Roy’s POV*
I arrived at the bakery in our car, parked it in the back and after admiring our hard work for a few seconds, I punched in the code and unlocked it.
After making sure that the cookies were packed and ready, I saw Mrs. Cole walk in with her old self, wearing a faint grey cardigan, and a pair of black jeans.
Her white hair was on top of her head in a neat bun with a pen holding them there. She was a very avid customer of ours, always preferring our bakery over the others in town. She ran a small dog care centre in the middle of the town, and I sometimes hung out at her shop to play with dogs or other pets.
“How’re you doing Ro?” She asked, leaning on the counter while I fetched the boxes out.
“I'm fine,” I replied with a smile and began putting the boxes in the back of her semi-SUV.
After I finished with the task and received the cheque from her, I turned the sign on the door to open and as if they had been waiting for it, two girls walked inside, wearing clothes and chattering to each other in voices that would make Ariana Grande furious.
“What can I get you ladies?” I asked, wiping the counter.
“Two chocolate milkshakes, and a piece of strawberry pastry; and make it snippy.” She barked/spewed at me and I nodded.
A customer is a customer, even when you want to fire them to the moon after chopping them into little cubes.
I plated the pastry first and served it on the table they were sitting on, then headed to work on the milkshakes. Even though it wasn’t my business, I couldn’t help but listen to whatever they were talking about.
“So this girl, you know this girl, yeah, she wrote something on this website where you write and stuff. And this girl had the biggest ego in the world! Like that girl is such a self-absorbed winch. And then she had the guts to tell me – me! – to take a hike!
That girl didn’t know what she was messing with. She doesn’t know that I'm a girl who craves solitude. I mean she wrote that someone takes 3 hours for grocery shopping! I mean who the meow does that?!”
The girl rambled on and on, and the other one nodded like the typical supportive friend. I so much wanted to ram their heads into the blender I was using to make their milkshakes.
Don’t do it don’t do it don’t do it.
“Can you make it faster?” The other Asian-looking friend asked.
“Sorry, yeah, I’ll just be done.”
“Put on caps if you have them, we have to be somewhere important.” The first ranting one said, making the words sound like she was someone important.
And then I thought of something clever.
In her glass, I squeezed a whole lemon so that the juice was at the base, then covered it up with thick cream which wouldn’t mix with the lemon juice. Then I prepared the other things, put on the lid and walked to their table to hand it to them.
The girls took it from me, handed me the money then walked out in their heels like they owned the place.
As if.
Well, even if we lost two customers, I didn’t care.
People like her who though that they could belittle someone on what they write, bark whatever they want at them, and then call them things like ‘self-absorbed winch’ deserved what they got – that is a super-sour milkshake.
I smirked big time to myself and perked my collars up, feeling proud.
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HEEEELLLOOOOOO THERE MY BREAD CRUMBS!!!
Lol okay that did not make sense. At all.
So yeah, I know I promised this update on Sunday but I couldn’t. I got caught up. In stuff. Ahem.
So anyway, this Melanie in this chapter is @Leedbookie’s critique and super awesome friend, Mrs. Mellark.
I seriously am curious why she uses ‘Mrs.’ even when she’s her age. O.o
So Mrs Mellark, if youre reading this, this one’s for you, on a special request by my sista.
To all other readers, please vote and comment if you liked it!
LOVELOVELOVE
-R-