Just a quick peek then it’s home for me.
Faring Lake Ave. Street is in a subdivision near a shopping mart and a park. When I turn down the road, the first thing I notice is that a lot of the single story homes are abandoned. A lot of the structures appear old and outdated, paint peeling off the siding, mailboxes knocked down. I don’t think too much of it until I pull up to the house with the numbers 40499 next to the door. Like the other homes, this one appears vacant. Shingles are missing from the roof, the porch is collapsing, and the windows are all covered with plywood.
I start to choke up, the wind getting knocked out of me as I turn around and the headlights beam across the home. Painted across the wood, in various colors are circular marks.
Marks that resemble my tattoo.
“YOU SEEM REALLY HAPPY,” MY dad remarks as he stuffs half a roll into his mouth. “Like extra happy.”
“You really do,” my mother agrees as she adds a glob of butter to her potatoes. “I wonder why.” Her tone insinuates something. What, I’m not sure.
Either she’s speculating that I might be bipolar, or she’s trying to get me to fess up as to why I’ve been almost stupidly happy over the last couple of weeks.
I shovel a spoonful of corn into my mouth. “I’m a normal happy, you guys, so don’t start.”
“We weren’t starting.” My mother works with a knife to slice her steak. “And I’m sorry for ever bringing that up. I’m really sorry about that, Lyric. I should have never said anything.”
“Okay, good.” I smile at her, and she returns it.
At the moment, all feels right in the world.
Despite all the drama, life has been good, something I ponder as I eat my mashed potatoes.
Things really have been great.
And calm.
As if the world is attempting to prove my thoughts wrong, all hell suddenly breaks loose as the back door flies open and bashes against the doorstopper.
Aunt Lila comes barreling into the kitchen, her eyes massive and jam-packed with terror. “I need you to watch the kids,” she sputters to my mother as she winds a scarf around her neck. “Something happened with Ayden at therapy, and he was supposed to come straight home, but it’s been over an hour since he left. Ethan’s already out looking for him, but I’m going to go check a few places, too.”
Fear pulsates through my body. I quickly check my phone to see if there are any messages from Ayden, but I have no new texts.
My mother shoves back from the table, the chair legs making a godawful scratching noise against the hardwood floor. “Let me just grab my coat and I’ll be over.”
I stand up so abruptly I damn near tip the chair over. “I’m going with you,” I say to Lila.
“Okay, that’s fine.” Aunt Lila is distracted as she glides her finger across the screen of her phone, checking for messages. “I don’t know why he’s not answering my calls or texts . . . he never does stuff like this.”
“I’ll drive around with Lyric, and we can check some places, too,” my dad adds as he hurries for the stairs. “Just let me grab my phone and wallet.
I send Ayden a text.
Me: Where the hell r u? Everyone’s freaking out.
Then I head to grab my jacket from the coat rack when the back door opens up behind me.
“I found her house,” Ayden says to me as he enters the foyer and closes the door.
“You’re okay!” I throw my arms around him, unaware until now how worried I was. “Everyone’s freaking out.” I pull back. “Wait, found who?”
“The last address my sister lived at.” His hair is disheveled, there are dark circles are under his eyes, and his shoulders are hunched, as if the weight of the world is crushing him.
“Rebel Tonic got back to you?”
He nods. “With an address.”
“And?”
His throat muscles work as he swallows hard and fights back tears. “It was a vacant house with this,” he lifts up the bottom of his shirt and taps his finger on the rough tattoo on his side, “painted all over the boarded up windows.”
I gulp. “Why . . . I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I.” He grips ahold of my hand. “But we’re going to go find out.” He marches across the room toward the kitchen.
“Where are we going?” I ask as I shuffle to keep up with him.
“To my house. I need to talk to Lila to find out what that letter was about.”
“Lila’s here, in the kitchen. She was about to go look for you,” I tell him, which only makes him quicken his pace.
When we enter the kitchen and Aunt Lila sees Ayden, a choking sob wrenches from her throat.
“Oh, my God, we were so worried about you.” She crosses the kitchen and wraps her arms around Ayden.
He stands with his listless arms to his sides, still holding my hand. “I need you to tell me what that letter was about.” He doesn’t have to explain what letter he’s speaking of. The reluctant expression on Aunt Lila’s face reveals she already knows.
“Ayden, Ethan and I already explained that there’s some things you aren’t ready for yet,” she reminds him sympathetically.
“I tracked her last address down,” he states bluntly, firmly holding her gaze. “It was about ten miles away from here. The house is boarded up and has these marks spray painted on it, ones that match my tattoo.”
“Ayden . . .” Her face contorts with emotional agony.
He tugs me closer to his side. “Just tell me.”
Aunt Lila seals her quivering lips together as tears fill the corners of her eyes. Ayden’s fingers clench around my hand as he watches her unravel in front of us.
“Your sister was kidnapped again not too long after you guys were . . . found in that house.” She lowers herself into a chair. “She’s been with those people for the last two and a half years. The police honestly thought she was dead until they received a note from her over a year ago on the day we brought you home.”
“What did the letter say?” he chokes out hoarsely, and I feel him sway, as if his legs are about to buckle.
“I don’t know,” she replies as tears stream down her cheeks. “The police won’t release that information.”
“Is that what happened to my brother, too?” he whispers in horror. “Was he kidnapped? Did they kill him?”
“All I know about your brother is what you do. He vanished out of the system a couple of years ago. Social services assumed he’d ran away. The next time he was found . . .” She reaches out to touch his shoulder, but he moves away. More tears bubble in her eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
“Why didn’t anyone tell me this?” Ayden starts to sit down even though there’s no chair around. I quickly usher him to a nearby barstool before he ends up falling on the floor.
“Because we wanted you to have a normal life.” She fights back a sob, her chest heaving as she verges toward hysteria. “Oh, sweetie, I’m so sorry you have to go through this.”
She runs over, wraps her arms around him, and squeezes him tightly. Ayden stares like he sees a ghost in the space in front of him, those dark eyes of his completely haunted with his past.
“You’re going to be okay,” she promises him, smoothing her hand over his head. “We’ll get through this. The police are looking for her.”
Still clutching onto my hand, my arm ends up getting crushed between their bodies. I wiggle it, but Ayden refuses to let go. Finally, I relax and let him hold on.
“I want to try to remember,” he croaks. “Do whatever it takes to find those people . . . Doctor Gardingdale . . . he said there were other methods . . .”
“Yeah, the detective mentioned those to me, too,” Lila’s tone is uneven, “and they’re too risky.”
“Leaving my sister with those people, hoping she’ll make it out alive is too risky . . .” His fingers enfold around the back of his neck and grip tight. “I swear I heard her scream in the parking lot tonight . . . She was there . . .”
“Oh,
honey.” She pulls him nearer, like she has no clue what else to do but hang onto him.
I want to stop the pain in his life and make him feel safe, but I don’t have that power.
Right now, everything relies on what the people after Ayden want. Until we find out exactly what that is, no one’s going to feel safe again.
Awakening You
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Copyright © 2015 by Jessica Sorensen
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The Author holds exclusive rights to this work. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited.
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www.jessicasorensen.com
Cover Design by:
Okay Creations
Photography:
Perrywinkle Photography
Interior Design and Formatting:
Christine Borgford, Perfectly Publishable
“I WANT YOU TO CLOSE your eyes and relax,” my therapist instructs in an even, soothing voice I’ve heard at least a dozen times.
I’m lying in a lounge chair in front of him with my arms overlapped on my stomach, and my heart is slamming against my chest as I prepare to be put under for my amnesia therapy. The soft flow of the ocean drifts from the stereo, and birds chirp just outside the window beside me.
“Relax,” he repeats. “Clear your mind.”
Clear my mind.
Clear my . . .
Body . . .
And . . .
Mind.
I fall deep into my thoughts, a blanket of darkness wrapping around me.
Around.
Around.
Around.
“Ayden!” my sister cries from the recliner. “Stop spinning me so fast.”
I continue to lap circles, pushing the chair she’s in. “You asked me to spin you, so I’m spinning you.”
“Not this fast, though!” she cries through her laughter, gripping onto the torn armrests. “I’m going to throw up!”
“Oh, fine.” I stop moving and hop back, watching the chair continue to twirl until it gradually slows to a stop.
“That was fun.” She bounces from the chair, her arms spanning to the side as she staggers toward me. “Whoa, I’m so dizzy.” She braces her hand against the sheetrock wall beside her. “Everything looks all blurry.”
I laugh, sitting down on the edge of the scuffed up coffee table. “Give it a minute, and it’ll stop.”
She nods, sinking back into the chair. “So, I heard a rumor about you.”
“Oh, yeah?” I ask, vaguely interested as I pick up the remote and turn on the television. The service has been turned off, though, probably because my mom forgot to pay the bill again, so I turn it off.
“Yeah, I heard you kissed Laura Flemming on the lips.” She giggles.
I set the remote down. “So what? It’s not that big of a deal.”
“That’s not what I heard.” Her eyes sparkle mischievously. Sadie has always been the kind of sister who likes to tease me about everything. “I heard that she wants to be your girlfriend.”
I roll my eyes. “Well, she can tell me that herself, then.”
“That’s such a boy answer.”
“If you haven’t noticed, he is a boy.” My older brother enters the living room from the hallway. He’s wearing plaid pajama bottoms, and his hair is messy, as if he just woke up, even though it’s six o’clock at night. “Where’s Mom?”
I shrug. “Out.”
He shakes his head, aggravated and exhausted from the late hours he’s been putting in at his job and school. “Probably doing drugs.”
“She doesn’t do drugs,” Sadie spits. “Stop saying that she does.”
“You’re just in denial,” my brother replies, winding around the chair and heading for the kitchen attached to the living room.
“I am not.”
“Am, too.”
“Would you two knock it off,” I intervene, being the peacemaker as always. “Just let her be, okay? It’s not that big of a deal.”
“Yeah, it is.” He motions around us at the shithole we’ve called home for about a year now. “Look around you. If you can’t see how bad things are, then you’re dumb as fuck.”
“I’m not dumb.” Tears overflow from Sadie’s eyes. “Why do you always have to be such a jerk?”
He sighs. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? I just want you to see how things really are so maybe you can have a chance at a better future.”
“I know things are bad,” she mutters, “but it doesn’t mean I have to be all mopey about it all the time.”
I hate when they fight. Life is bad enough already.
“How about we go outside,” I suggest to Sadie, “and see what kind of trouble we can get into?”
Sadie beams as she springs from the chair. “Can we go see Miss Tammy’s puppies?”
“Sure. Why not?”
She bounces off toward the door while I shoot my brother a look as I head for the front door.
“Don’t ruin her happiness yet,” I mutter under my breath as I pass by him. “Let her be a kid for a little while longer.”
“She’s thirteen-years-old.” He grabs a bowl from the cupboard then lowers his voice when he realizes Sadie is still lingering near the front door. “She needs to start growing up and realizing just how shitty our lives are. And how shitty our mother—”
“My babies!” The door swings open violently, and my mother bursts into the narrow living room with her arms wide open. Her attention falls on Sadie, and she lazily grins. “Come give Mama a hug.”
“Speak of the devil,” my brother mumbles under his breath.
Sadie gives her a nervous, one-armed hug. “I missed you.”
She trips in her heels as she staggers into the small living room. “Where have the three of you been?”
“Right here.” My tone is clipped. “Waiting for you to show up and pay the damn bills.”
She frowns as she slumps against the wall with her head tipped back, her droopy eyes on the stained ceiling above. “I’ve been busy . . .” Her eyelids lower as if she’s about to pass out. “How long was I gone?”
I bite down on my tongue until the rusty taste of blood fills my mouth, hating myself for detesting her so much. “Four days.”
“Four days,” she murmurs sleepily. Her head starts to angle to the side, and I think she’s about to pass out, but she suddenly gets a second wind. Her eyes pop open as she jumps away from the wall. “I need you guys to come with me.”
“I have to go to work,” my brother snaps while pouring cereal into a bowl.
“Work, shmirk.” She waves him off, staggering over her own feet as she jerks open the front door. “Come on. This is important.”
I exchange a quizzical look with my brother, and he shakes his head and slams the box of cereal down onto the counter.
“Fine, what do you want?” he asks, striding to the front door.
“It’s outside,” she whispers, her gaze darting from left to right.
My brother rolls his eyes, but steps outside, anyway. “I’m getting so tired of this shit.”
My mom stumbles down the rickety porch to the gravel driveway, and we all follow her. The sky is clear, the sun gleaming brightly, but there’s a chill to the air.
“What do you think she’s on this time?” he asks me as we hike down the windy road, past trailer homes, and toward the field surrounding the area we live in.
I shrug. “I really don’t care anymore.”
/> Which is the truth. I may hold it together on the outside, but I was done with my mother and her drug and alcohol addiction a long time ago. I have four more years of this shit, and then I’m getting out. The moment I graduate, I’m packing my shit and leaving. And I’m going to take Sadie, too.
My mother leads us on a wild goose chase up through the field and around the fence line before heading back toward the house.
“I have a bad feeling about this, Ayden,” Sadie whispers to me. “In fact, I had one of my feelings this morning that something bad was going to happen today.”
“It’s going to be okay.” I squeeze her hand, trying to comfort her, but I’m pretty fucking worried myself.
By the time we’ve reached the road again, I figure my mother probably forgotten the purpose of why she brought us out here—if there was even a purpose to begin with—and is going to take us back to the house.
But she makes a right at the smaller home just next door, and the three of us begrudgingly trail after her, exhausted and cranky and ready to go home. Even Sadie has grown quiet.
“Just wait right here,” my mom instructs as we reach the bottom of the rotted, wooden steps that lead to a crooked front door. She climbs up the stairs and fixes her dress into place before knocking.
The door swings open, but I can’t see who’s inside the house. For the most part, the three of us have tried to stay away from our neighbors, considering most of them deal and do drugs.
I hear hushed whispering and sigh, knowing more than likely my mom’s buying drugs. My gaze travels around the area, across the road, along the front of the house. I notice a strange, jagged, circular pattern painted on the metal along with a sign that reads: Enter at your own risk. Those who dare step in never get out.
Part of me thinks the warning is a joke, but a small part of me starts to get a little anxious about who lives in this house.
Unraveling You Series: The Complete Set Page 29
