Hello kind people of the wattpad world. Here is the next section of the first chapter of my novel in progress. I would advise that you read the first section of this chapter if you feel like understanding what's going on, but that's just me. I hope you enjoy, I guess it can get a little boring because you guys don't know the premise of the whole story yet. But just wait. If only this was published, there'd be a little blurb on the back to catch your attention, alas I have not the pleasure of blurbing so here it is without said blurb...
The next time I wake up, it's to a crying baby. Gray-blue light is seeping through the windows above me, the world is still dark but growing lighter, something about that gives me hope. The floorboards creak above my head as someone walks down the hallway. Moments later the crying stops. I hear the same steps coming down the stair and see the girl walk into the kitchen, the sniffling child against her shoulder. I squint as a yellow light comes on and the baby starts crying again. I hear cupboard doors open and close while the girl tries to calm the child who is now full on screaming. I try to fall back asleep for about twenty seconds before realizing that it will be a near impossible feat, and stand on shaky legs to help her.
Her first words when she sees me are words of apology, “I'm sorry we woke you.”
I shake my head, “I needed to get up sooner or later.”
She smiles and puts the baby's soother, sitting on her highchair tray, back in her mouth.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” I ask hesitantly.
She glances around the kitchen, her lip in between her teeth. “You could entertain Stella while I make her bottle,” she says indicating the little girl sitting in the highchair on the verge of tears again.
I laugh silently, “Are you sure I won't just make her more upset?”
“She'll be fine,“ she tells me, opening the fridge.
I pull up a chair from the table to sit in front of the highchair, “Hi Stella,” I say unsure.
She pauses, just staring back at me seemingly mesmerized, tears still clinging to her eyelashes. She reaches out with one of her miniature hands and touches my nose. I don't move.
“You remind me of her dad,” the girl says behind me.
I turn around to see her with a bottle in one hand, a carton of milk in the other. She stares at Stella as she speaks.
“You probably remind her of him too....” She says softer this time, turning back to the counter and putting the bottle in the microwave.
“What happened to him?” I ask.
Her hands stop working as she says, “He got really sick...he passed away when she was just five months old.”
I feel stupid and I don't know what to say so I just don't say anything. When she turns around she has a slight smile on her face but her eyes are shining, “That girl loved her daddy, didn't you,” She says to Stella.
The microwave beeps so she turns back to the counter and prepares two bowls of cheerios. By the time she sits down after giving Stella her bottle and sliding one of the bowls over to me the tears are gone.
“So,” she says in a huff, “I don't think we ever got to trade names.”
“No, we didn't,” I say eyeing a spoonful of cereal.
“I'm Paige,” she says after swallowing a mouthful of hers.
“I'm Logan,” I reply, “I think so at least. It sounds familiar.”
“But you don't remember anything else,” She says it like a fact, looking at me curiously.
I shake my head and laugh without humor, “The only thing I remember before you, is the couple of seconds before I hit the water.”
“Hmm,” she murmurs thoughtfully munching on a mouthful, stirring her cereal with her spoon.
“Did you see anything? See who did this to me?” I ask jerking my chin towards my shoulder.
“Not really...” she mutters, “I mean, I was up in the lighthouse when I heard the helicopter. That wasn't unusual so I paid it no attention, but then I heard gunshot. I looked up and saw you falling.”
I bite the inside of my cheek, trying to hide my disappointment that she doesn't know anymore.
The phone rings then and she swallows quickly, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand, “I'll be just a sec.”
I nod as she picks up the phone and watch her walk into the other room, the chord wrapping around the corner. I look back at Stella, really noticing the similarities between her and Paige. The same dark features; dark hair, dark eyes, dark eyebrows. I smile at her and she smiles back revealing little white teeth.
Just then I hear Paige enter the kitchen and hang up the phone as her muffled conversation ends. She still stands in the doorway, squinting at me intently.
“What are you looking at?” I ask.
“Your tattoo,” she says snapping out of her gaze and walking back towards me, “well, I was when you were playing with Stella.”
“Tattoo?” I ask. There wasn't one anywhere I could see it.
“Here,” she says holding my face to the side. She rubs her thumb over the back of my head slightly behind my ear below my hairline.
“What is it?” I ask as she examines it further.
“Just a bunch of numbers; one, three, seven, zero, seven, seven, two, eight. Mean anything to you?” She asks letting go of me.
I try to put meaning to the numbers but come up blank. “No, there's nothing.” I'm growing frustrated because nothing means anything to me now. I feel like an empty person.
She pauses momentarily as she sits back down, “Do you think you'll ever remember--?”
“I don't know,” I interrupt angrily but then catch myself. When I speak again it's slower, “I mean...I hope so...but I don't know.” I feel bad for cutting her off, she's just trying to help, but the situation aggravates me so much that lashing out seems to relieve some of the claustrophobic confusion cooped up in my brain.
“I'm really sorry,” Paige says quietly, staring into her bowl of milk.
“No, I'm sorry,” I say, trying to recover, “here, let me help.” I pick up our two bowls, meaning to help, but misjudge the strength of the arm that took the bullet. My arm gives under the pain and I drop my bowl, sending glass and milk spraying everywhere.
I almost curse but then remember Stella's presence and hold my tongue. I am completely at a loss for words and I feel completely stupid. I manage a glance at Paige, she's standing now, her hands held up in what looks like surrender as she gapes at the floor. She peeks up at me and I clench my teeth together hoping she doesn't kick me out because I have nowhere to go. Instead she bursts into laughter and I eventually join in, realizing that the milk had splashed all down the front of my shirt.
“I am really sorry,” I say searching the kitchen for something I could use to clean up the mess I've made, “I'll clean it up.”
“No, no, it's fine Logan,” she says reaching over and taking the other bowl still in my hand, “here I'll get the broom to sweep up the glass.”
As she tries to step over the mess in the middle of the floor to get the broom in the corner, she steps on a tiny piece of glass that had scattered further than the rest. She lets out a yelp of surprise and grips the counter to ease off of her injured foot. Blood starts dripping from her heel.
“Ouch,” She says looking up at me, distressed.
I help her to the couch, a piece of paper towel in her hand to keep the blood from dripping on the carpet. I retrieve the first-aid kit she's pointed out to me and do my best to help her. I hold her foot in my lap as I use the tweezers – probably the same ones she used to remove my bullet – to remove the piece of glass still embedded in her heel. She squeezes a pillow with tensed arms and I apply some Polysporin after the bleeding has stopped. Her foot flexes in pain so I look up at her. “Are you okay?”
She nods, breathing in sharply as I put the band-aid on. “Thanks,” she says.
“We are quite a mess aren't we?” I say sitting back on the couch, her foot still on my knee.
“Yeah, about that...how's your shoulder and everything?”
Instead of answering her question I ask her one, “Are you a doctor Paige?”
She laughs pulling her foot back in front of her, chewing on her thumb nail. “No, but my dad was and he taught me basic first-aid.”
“Is a gun shot wound included in basic first-aid?” I ask sarcastically.
She props her elbow against the couch and rests her head on her fist, “I guess not, I probably should have gotten you to a hospital...sorry.”
“No, I'm fine, I don't want to go to a hospital as crazy as that sounds,” I assure her, “I never got to tell you thank you for helping me.”
“You were lucky that the bullet didn't hit any bone, didn't hit the joint. Just some muscle damage, and you're not feeling any symptoms of infection,” she says.
“No, I was lucky that you found me.”
She smiles faintly when suddenly Jude's voice comes from the kitchen, “What happened in here?”
We both laugh under our breath. Unsure of what to say, “One of the bowls got um...knocked off the table. I accidentally stepped on one of the shards,” she calls to him.
“I'll clean it up,” I promise again, standing.
“No, I'll get to it,” Paige says catching the bottom of my shirt.
“You're hurt,” I say motioning towards her foot.
“And you're not?” She says bring up a valid point
I just shrug and turn to walk away. She lets go of my shirt.
As I attempt to mop up the floor with much difficulty, Paige comes to feed Jude and to take Stella up to have a bath. She won't stop offering to help me so in the end I just ignore her. Exhausted but successful after cleaning the floor I sit in the chair across the table from Jude, realizing I still have milk spilled down my shirt.
“What happened?” Jude asks as I toy with what to do.
“Spilled milk when I dropped the bowl,” I reply.
“I thought Paige said it got knocked over,” he mutters.
“Well, I dropped it,” I say slightly embarrassed. Jude looks at me unimpressed.
“You sound funny,” he mumbles , his attention turned back to his bowl of cereal.
“See, I think you sound funny,” I say though he doesn't seem to even take into account what I say. He just continues with what he was getting at.
“Your accent is Australian right?”
“I guess so,” is the best response I can come up with because I honestly don't know.
“It's a long way to come...” Jude says quietly.
“What's a long way to come?” I ask fixated on my shirt again.
“From Australia to Washington,” he says before drinking the milk from his bowl, something I wish I'd done.
Washington. The name seems to ring a bell. I know it's a state. A state in the United States of America. Jude's right, it is a long way. But currently my concentration is fixed on the sticky shirt I'm wearing, clinging to me. “Hey, do you think your mom has I shirt I could wear?”
“She's not my mom,” he says as he clears his bowl and leaves the room.
“Hey Paige?” I say in the doorway of the upstairs bathroom where she's bathing Stella.
“Yeah?” She asks turning around, her sleeves pulled up to her elbows.
“Do you have a shirt I could borrow, or even the one I was wearing before?” I ask gesturing to the damp one I'm wearing.
“Yeah sure,” She says standing up and sliding past me. She leads me through a door into one of the rooms I assume is hers. She pulls open the closet doors revealing a rack of clothes. Dresses and cardigans on one side, suits and dress pants on the other. She fishes through one of the drawers built into the closet and hands me a white tee-shirt
“Thanks,” I say accepting the shirt.
“Well, you and Nate are about the same size so we're pretty lucky,” she says tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.
“Nate...your--?”
“My husband,” she finishes for me.
I nod, feeling slightly awkward at the mention of him.
“In fact, if you need something to wear just come in here and pick something. It's not getting used anymore so....” She says, her voice taking on a solemn tone.
“Thank you, Paige, for everything,” I murmur.
She nods at me and swallows, probably trying to get rid of a lump in her throat. “I'll let you change.”
She walks past me and closes the door behind her, leaving me alone. I scan the room quickly, the bed already made, no clothes on the ground, no pictures. No pictures of her and Nate or of Stella or Jude. I wonder if she put away the pictures of Nate after he died. Wonder if seeing them is too hard.
After ten minutes of adjusting and readjusting arm positions I finally manage to pull the new shirt on. My arm is still sore to move so I hold it across my ribcage. I think I must look like C-3PO.
C-3PO? I struggle to remember what had been in my mind for just a fraction of a second. C-3PO...a robot? A golden robot. But from what?
I follow the voices down the hall into Stella's room where Paige is combing Stella's hair while she dresses a doll in front of her.
“Paige, do you know what C-3PO is?”
“Yeah,” She mumbles as she tries to secure Stella's fine hair into pigtails, “he's a robot...a droid or something.”
“What's he from?” I ask sensing her frustration as one of the elastics snaps and wonder if I should just ask later.
She pulls the other elastic out of Stella's hair and combs it back out, giving up. She lets out an exasperated sigh, “He's from a movie, Star Wars.”
“Star Wars,” I say to myself as images of yellow text rolling through space snap through my mind.
“Follow me,” Paige says holding Stella on her hip and leading me back downstairs in front of the TV, “we have it, see?”
She points to a shelf with a bunch of tapes lined up on it. Star Wars IV, V and VI sit side my side. I reach up and take the one labeled 'A New Hope,' episode IV.
“Can I watch it?” I ask eagerly.
“Sure,” she replies, “we don't have cable or anything so just stick in the movie and turn on the TV and it should come on.”
I do as she says and sit back on the couch. I analyze the box in my hand, noting the man in a black leather vest holding a gun, a younger looking guy with what I can only describe as a lazer sword, and an angry looking girl probably the same age with cinnamon buns on the side of her head instead of hair. I can't wait.
Paige leaves the house with Stella and Jude to go grocery shopping so I am left on my own to indulge myself in some good old fashioned explosions and lazer battles. I find myself knowing what the characters are going to say before they say it, and expecting all of the unexpected parts. I even find myself picking out the parts in the movie that the director either forgot to cut or didn't notice. I know when the storm troopers burst through the doorway that one will smack his head on the door, and I know that Luke will call Leia by her actual name at one part. I know for a fact that these movies were a big part of my childhood and the thought it reassuring. I am slowly but surely finding myself.
I fall asleep before Paige returns, either due to lack of sleep or the fact that I'd run all my adrenaline on a two hour movie I'll never know. But this time, I do dream. I'm pinned to a metal table, multiple hands seizing my arms, my legs. One huge pair of hands grips my head. I'm screaming and flailing and though I don't know what's coming, I know that I need to escape. I hear a muted buzzing start up and wish I could make the people around me see reason, but I know that I can't. They press the buzzing tool to the back of my head, just behind my ear, and it feels like they're repetitively pricking me with a needle. The need to escape bursts through me and I lift my head only to have it slammed back into the table as I have the strangest sensation that I'm falling.
When I wake up I realize that I'd rolled off the couch and hit the floor. My head aches as I come to the conclusion that the last instance in my dream actually happened just in a different scenario. I ease myself into a sitting position and ponder on the dream. Ponder on the fact that I was only four, maybe five years old In it. I reach back and run my finger over my tattoo, feeling the sting as if it were just done. And then it hits me. What I'd seen was not a dream.
It was a memory.