"Six months my ass, you've known Valentino for six years"
Six years. I've known Valentino for six years? How was that possible?
"I don't believe you" and although I said this, no matter how far fetched what she was saying sounded, I did believe it, because of the way she said it. And the fact that it would explain a lot.
"I don't understand why you've come here pretending like you don't know him. I know you've had your problems in the past but I assumed that you had gotten over it" Kiera reckoned.
My sight began to become slightly hazy, I was feeling dizzy, too dizzy.
Six years.
"Why do you look like I told you something new? It's almost like you actually forgot-" Kiera stopped short looking towards me once again. All features of her face rose like she had come to some sort of revelation
"The car crash"
No longer paying attention to my frazzled brain I looked to her with my eyebrows disappearing into my hair line. Images began to flash one by one in my head. The impact of the truck on the car my father and I were in, The glass around me shattering, the head bashing against the dashboard, the blood, so much blood everywhere, and then the darkness.
"You don't remember him because of the amnesia, of course you don't know we were long gone before that even happened, and from the way you were looking at me, you don't remember me either"
I didn't say anything. There was nothing left to say, she had everything figured out, things I couldn't even figure out myself. That five percent of memory I lost was them, Valentino and Kiera. What about their family? Were they people I had forgotten too? They must have been.
I had been lied to for two years.
"I'm so sorry Cassie. I forgot that you weren't supposed to know any of this until-"
"Until what?!" I yelled cutting her off "Until I buried six feet under so you you could tell it to my grave? Just admit it you and Valentino were never going to tell me" I said no longer miffed but angry.
He's been lying to me all this time. Probably laughing about it behind my back, about me being oblivious to the things going on around me. I think I always knew he was keeping something from me but I had never imagined for it to be something this big. Something about me. The news that Valentino knew me before we met, again.
"Cassie it's not like that, we couldn't tell you, your parents-"
"My parents? What do they have to do with anything?" And then it came to me, they were involved too. They kept me from knowing about my past since the crash. That was almost two years of lies.
I tfelt like I was about to pass out. But before I could I rushed out of the room and down the hall. I began to run not caring again the amount of people I pushed out of my way or how many people shouted from behind me.
"2,4,6,8 who do we appreciate?" a familiar voice chanted in an overly exaggerated girly tone. But somewhere in that slightly familiar voice came a very old familiar voice, like i've heard it before, long ago.
The day Valentino asked me to help him with the salsa competition I thought that voice was familiar, but never had I ever imagined that it actually was.
I continued through the reception area and past the entrance doors and straight to the car. I got in shut the door and slammed my head on the dashboard, again and again and again. I hadn't even realized I had been crying until I looked in to the windscreen and saw the storm of tears racing down my cheeks. And suddenly I couldn't stop. It began with quiet sobs and I desperately tried to stop them but the more I resisted the worse they got. By one minute I was full on crying and dry heaving.
I slammed my fist into the dashboard once again. How could I have been so stupid? How could I have not known that I had known Valentino? If I had been with him for so many months something should of trigger inside me despite the amnesia.
But it never did.
His tropical turquoise eyes were staring into mine just like any other moments we had in the past and just for a second I saw something
Something so familiar, something old, something I've seen before
"Valentino?"
"Yeah?"
"Have we met before?"
The answer, if we had ever gotten around to it would have been yes. But would he have lied to me?
Probably.
"How could you think I'd keep a secret girlfriend, no, secret fiancé from you and everyone? I wouldn't lie to you" Valentino said.
He said he'd never lie to me. But little did I know that he had been lying to me ever since I met him.
Lies. Everything I've known what if it all was lies.? What if my parents aren't my real parents? What if Valentino's name isn't really Valentino. All the memories with them in my past, how could I never have come across any?
I impatiently rummaged through my purse and found my phone and dialed a number. After a few rings she picked up.
"Hello Cassie, where are you? You left early today"
Not only would I not tell her that I'd left San Francisco and tell her about Nyah's condition, I didn't have time to talk about such little things. I mean in comparison to this whole situation they were.
"I know everything" I replied, a few seconds later my mom answered
"What do you mean you 'know everything' honey? Where are you?" Her confused voice once would have made me smile at her being oblivious but today it just made me angry. I don't know why
"Valentino, Kiera, I've known them for longer that six months haven't I?" I was hoping that my mother would tell me that everything I had learned in this past hour was just a misunderstanding. That there was another girl Kiera had been talking about, or even better if I just woke up from a nightmare.
"Why do you think that Cassie?" I took her a while to answer back, only adding to my suspicion.
"The car crash, I forgot more than you let me believe, didn't I?"
Again I was left in a painful silence, all I needed to confirm my suspicion. It was all true. Before she could reply, I answered my own question
"I have, and you, dad, Valentino, his family, oh god...even Diego knew about it"
"You sure you want me to help Diego? If I have anything to do with it, he might become an even better player than you" Valentino asked smirking just a little.
The reason why Valentino knew my brother's name. It wasn't because I told him without realizing, it was because he already knew him.
My own eleven year old brother was a part of the plan to lie to me. Who else? Who else had they spun into their web of lies?
"How did you find out?" mom asked defeated only making my sadness slowly bubble up into anger
"How did I know? HOW DID I KNOW? The real question is why did my whole fucking family keep something from me? Ever since the car crash I've been looking for something, something I knew I had forgotten and all along you knew. You could have helped me but instead you lied again and again to me".
Yeah I remember that" I heard Valentino say, I could even tell that he was smiling maybe even reminiscing.
"Remember what?" I interrupted
"Nothing!" my mom and Valentino said in sync which was strange very, very strange
"-That time Valentino came round the house and I interrupted you guys, you were talking about me weren't you? Or something that happened in the past? Who is Valentino mom? Because I know you know a lot more about him than I do." I said getting teary yet again, trying to wipe them away.Fuck it, I'm allowed to cry right now.
"Cassie please come home, we can talk about it when you get home" mom said pleadingly
"Talk about it? You've had two years to to talk to me, but you didn't. You decided you wanted to have more control over my life? What was it? Why were you hiding everything? I found pictures ma! Photos, that you had never bothered to show me. My whole life...it's a lie"
"Cassandra, don't say that. Please calm down" Calm down? She had the audacity to ask me to calm down? Hell no!
"Well guess fucking what mom? I can't calm down. You lied to me. The one person I trust the most in the world, the woman who has always been there for me never was. You are one shitty mother!"
"Cassandra! Don't you dare speak to me in that-"
"You know what? I fucking will." I said disturbingly happy that I was finally getting her boiled up too "You are not my mom, don't expect me home tonight, or ever again-" With that I threw my phone at the passenger door and let the front and back smash into piece. Bits on the glass had fallen out of the phone, but I hadn't let it sink in. And drove off.
Unconsciously I already knew where I was going to. Valentino's. He was the route of the problem. The one that could have told me all along. About me, about him, instead of laughing at me being oblivious of everything behind my back.
We were sitting in my car, Valentino was driving me back from the party, which I was in no way happy about. I was having such a good time as well.
The car stopped in front of my house. "Hey" I asked looking out of the window "How'd you know where I live?" I asked, confusion showing through my face.
"Antonio told me" he said
It was yet another lie. He knew where I lived because... he must have been there before...
I accelerated on the freeway and switched into a less dense lane earning a few beeps from other cars. If I have known Valentino for six years he must have come to my house at some point. He'd probably been in the garden, my room and all the rooms I thought he had never been inside of.
I was slowly becoming self conscience. How much more did he know?
That first day, running into him in the locker rooms accidentally. It was the first time seeing him, after the crash I mean but at that point I thought it was the first time seeing him, but he definitely must have knew who I was. Right from the beginning.
My grip onto the steering wheel hardened. I felt myself becoming dizzy with thoughts but continued to drive on, wiping my eyes every now and again so I could still see through the windscreen.
"What's her name?" Kristen questioned breaking from their silent conversation causing me to raise my head from my shoe evaluation. Don't people usually ask the name of the person they don't know to the person they..don't...know?
"Why does it matter?"
"Valentino don't be difficult today, what is her name?" she demanded an answer. Now I was defiantly paying attention, when did I suddenly become such a difficult subject to talk about, I mean really? My name? Shouldn't we be past this stage?
You could see Valentino give up as he stopped tensing and sighed. What the hell?
"It's Cassie" As soon as my name left his lips everyone was still, like I mean unnaturally still and silent. The look on the women's face made me feel weird, like to her I was bad news. I haven't done anything wrong in my life! I mean I had but not worthy of being frowned upon or something she could have known about.
Kirsten, Valentino's housemate looked at me so weirdly and I always wondered why. It was because Valentino must have told her everything about me. He told her, and not me, the person actually involved.
Kirsten was now in the ever growing list of people who had deceived me.
"And me and Antonio used to hang out as children a lot, of course we still do now but we were like two peas in a pod back in the day"
This was a complete shock to me. I never knew they had been friends for so long. "It's strange how we haven't crossed paths earlier, huh? I hung out with him for most of my childhood too"
Valentino tore his eyes off the road and looked at me intensely for the second time today as if he were trying to work something out but soon avert his attention back on to the road.
"What were you like in your childhood?" he asked
Valentino asked that question with the knowledge that I couldn't answer it. Oh God and Antonio...he's known Valentino ever since he was a child and me ever since I was born. He must have known. What if we all hung out when we were kids and I only remembered Antonio in them?
It was so possible. Heck right now I am open to the idea of dinosaurs resurrecting from the the dead.
Antonio.
Kristen.
Diego.
Kiera.
Dad.
Mom.
Valentino...
All my family! They all must have known if Antonio did. Mis tías, mis tíos, mis primos, mis abuelos! My whole family always knew.
Who was there left to trust in the world?
The drive back to San Francisco took ages but as soon as I arrived in front Valentino's house I grabbed the album and ran out of my car.
I knocked on the door with my face boiling red. When no one responded I banged on the door again and again but there was no answer. All I wanted to do was slap him across the face, and punch him and kick him again and again for lying to me. For not being the guy I thought he was. For allowing me to like him for his honesty when all he was was a dirty liar.
I fumbled through the album and began slipping all pictures out. Some of them probably had Valentino on them but I didn't bother to look.. It'd be too painful to look at everything I had forgotten. I scattered all the pictures across the front porch, some facing the floor, some not. Lastly I took out a coral lipstick from my front pocket and wrote in large letters across his front door-
I KNOW EVERYTHING.
###################################################################
Ciao i miei amici! I hope you enjoyed this tense chapter of Finding Me.
I purposely left the last chapter on a long cliffhanger to add tension. It might have just been annoying that I haven't updated in a while though...oopps
What could come ahead of Cassie's revelations. Wait for the next update and and you'll find out soon