Happy Birthday to Me Again (Birthday Trilogy, Book 2)

by Rowe, Brian

“OK. Well at least now we know where you are.”

  “Yeah.” I turned toward the bakery. I needed to get back. “OK, Wes. Tell my mom I’m in Bishop, OK?”

  “Sure thing.”

  “OK, bye.”

  I hung up the phone and ran back across the street. I didn’t know what this trio back in Reno could do for me at this point, but I felt better knowing they weren’t completely clueless as to my whereabouts.

  I entered the bakery and made my way over to the sandwich line, where, thank God, my dad was just now paying for the food.

  “Are you all right?” he asked me.

  I rubbed my belly. “Stomachache,” I lied.

  “Here.” He handed me my sandwich and a large, empty cup. “Go get us a seat.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, and made my way over to a table. I started inhaling the sandwich, feeling more hunger at this moment than ever before.

  My dad sat down across from me, watching me with suspicion as I barely chewed the food before swallowing. “Some stomachache,” he said.

  We didn’t say much for the next few minutes. But as soon as I reached the last few bites of my sandwich, I knew it was time to bring up a sore subject I simply needed to get to the bottom of.

  “Dad?”

  “What?”

  “What’s going on with you and Mom?”

  He took a giant bite of his roast beef sandwich and started chewing slowly and methodically, like he never wanted to open his mouth again. Half of a tomato dangled from his mouth as he swallowed the giant bite.

  “Cam, this isn’t really the time—”

  “Dad, I was supposed to be married in a few days. While I’m preparing for one of the most important days of my life, you and mom have been considering ending your, what, nineteen-year marriage?”

  “Cam—”

  “What were you gonna do, Dad? Just smile and applaud at the wedding, then call us on our honeymoon to tell us you and Mom are getting a divorce?”

  “We’re not getting a divorce. I don’t want a divorce. I love your mother.”

  “OK…”

  “Your mom sat me down a few months ago and said she missed me, you know? She said that I was spending too much time at work and not enough time with her. And I told her, as I would tell you and your sister, I do what I do to support all of you, and to give you guys everything you need and want. But she didn’t really go for that, and she said if I don’t start pulling back on my hours, she would consider leaving me…”

  “You love your job, Dad. You’re married to it, way more than you’re married to Mom.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  My dad pounded his fist against the table, startling me, as well as a family of five sitting at the table next to us. My dad put his hands in his face. “This is ridiculous. I’m having this conversation with my nine-year-old son.”

  “Dad!” I put my hand on his, and he didn’t pull away. “I’m still me.”

  He shook his head. “It’s not sad this time, Cameron. This time it’s just confusing and stupid and inexplicable. This is killing me inside, don’t you understand?”

  “There you go,” I said, “making everything about you. Again, I’m the one with the disease here.”

  “Whatever. Just finish your breakfast. We have another two hours ahead of us.”

  I shook my head. “Yeah, whatever.”

  I ate the rest of my sandwich slowly, knowing I didn’t want to get in that car again. Now that Mom, Kimber, and Wesley had info about my whereabouts, I had a strong feeling that my dad wasn’t going to get me into this clinic without a fight.

  Little did I know, though, while I enjoyed my final bite, that my dad wasn’t even going to get me to the next town.

  ---

  The drive down the barren 395 freeway was cumbersome, not so much because we still had a couple of hours ahead of us, but because there was nothing to see or do on the longwinded drive. My dad and I didn’t say much to each other for the next half hour; instead, he kept his smooth jazz music blasting through the car. There wasn’t much to look at outside, just some mountains, and plenty of dirt.

  “Where the hell are we?”

  “We’re close, Cam,” my dad said. “Really close.”

  As we started ascending a hill, I turned down the loud, annoying music.

  “Are you and Mom gonna be OK?” I asked.

  “We’re gonna be fine. Don’t worry about us.”

  “I just never knew there were any problems…”

  “Every marriage has problems. Ours has had them for years. If you marry Liesel, I know it doesn’t seem like it now, but you’re gonna have problems, too. You just have to work through them. Your Mom and I love each other very much. We’re going to get through this.”

  “You just have to promise me, Dad, you know, if anything happens to me…”

  “Nothing is going to happen to you.”

  “But if it does…”

  The car reached the top of the hill, and then we immediately started descending. I hoped there’d be a paradise of casinos or water parks at the bottom of this hill, but alas, there was just more dirt, and lots more boredom.

  “Cam… please…”

  “…You have to promise me, you and Mom are going to stay together, for Kimber’s sake. She needs you, the both of you.”

  “I can’t promise something like that.”

  “Please, Dad.”

  “As I said before, this was all instigated by your mother…”

  “Just cut back on your hours, Dad! How hard can that be? If you do that, then everything will be fine.”

  He took his eyes off the road for a moment and turned to me. He had a sad look in his eyes, as if he was going to start crying. “I promise you this, OK? I promise I’ll do everything I can to keep your mother from leaving me…”

  I heard my dad use the word ‘promise,’ but I didn’t hear the rest of what he said. As we reached the bottom of the hill, I noticed something strange up ahead on the road. It looked like a person.

  I didn’t say anything at first, because I figured it was my imagination playing tricks on me. But as the car got closer, I could see that not only was this person standing in the center of the road, but that it was the same young woman who I had been catching glimpses of ever since Liesel’s disappearance.

  “Oh my God,” I said. “It’s her.”

  “Huh?”

  “That girl… It’ s the girl who kidnapped Liesel!”

  My dad was still looking at me and not the road. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  The car was going straight for her, at eighty miles an hour. The girl wasn’t budging. She just stood there in the center of the road, her right arm outstretched, her index finger pointed right at us.

  “Dad! Look out!”

  My dad looked back at the road, and I was happy, for a split second, to see that he noticed her, too. His mouth opened wide, and he veered the car to the left.

  “Ohhhh shit!”

  “Dad!”

  “Cameron, hold—”

  My dad swerved to the left, barely missing the girl, and the car started flipping into the air. We tumbled over an embankment beside the road, twice, maybe three times, before coming to a halt upside-down and in front of a giant cactus.

  I tried to breathe but couldn’t for a moment. I was in such a panic that all I could think about at first was my father. I turned to my left to see my dad unconscious, blood trickling down the top of his forehead.

  “Dad… Dad!”

  I pushed against his shoulder with all my might, but there was no waking him. I pushed harder, and then I slapped him once in the face. He still wouldn’t wake up.

  “Dad! Answer me!” I started crying as I set my hands against his cheeks. “Please! Dad! I love y—”

  I tried not to scream when my passenger side window shattered into a million pieces by nothing more than a powerful kick. I didn’t have time to escape. I didn’t have time to
make a move. A hand with black-painted fingernails undid my buckle and gripped the bottom of my chin. The figure pulled me out of the car and hoisted me up to her face. She smiled at me, and I noticed, for the first time, to my horror, who was standing in front of me.

  “Hello Cameron,” she said. “Nice to see you again.”

  I was in so much shock I couldn’t think for a moment. “Oh my God… Hannah?”

  She laughed. “You never called me back. Shame on you.”

  “What… Look… I don’t know what I did, but—”

  “That’s the thing, Cameron,” she said, bringing my face closer to her mouth. I couldn’t believe at one time I had found this girl attractive. “You’ve done more than enough.”

  “What do you—”

  She took a step back and threw me up into the air, but, much to my astonishment, I didn’t come down. I looked at Hannah to see her right arm outstretched, again, this time with all her focus strained against my body. She had an evil, foreboding smile on her face.

  “Please, Hannah…” I looked down to see the car upturned on the side of the road, still no sign of movement from my dad. “Whatever you’re thinking about doing… please… please don’t it.”

  “Night, night,” she said. “I’ll see you soon.”

  With a flick of her hand, she tossed me straight at the street pavement. I watched, as my life flashed before my eyes, as the top of my head went straight for the cement.

  This is it, I thought. This is how it all ends. Out here on a desert road, my dad potentially dead in a car, me dying by the hands of some wicked witch I made a pass at.

  I waited a few seconds before I opened my eyes. I didn’t feel any pain. Am I dead? I looked forward to see the street pavement six inches from my face—I was still floating in the air. Hannah roped me back in toward her body at the side of the road.

  “Only kidding,” she said. “It’s not like I want to kill you.” She grabbed my feet and hoisted my little body up high in the air. Then she laughed. “Not yet anyway.”

  She flung my body down toward the car, and I smashed my head against the passenger side window.

  All I saw after that was blackness.

  11. Seven

  The blackness remained. The strong smell came first. My first thought was that I was smelling a Thanksgiving dinner that had rotted in the oven for a few long weeks. When I finally started blinking, a dark, depressing dungeon of a room slowly came into focus, and I realized that what was sitting in front of me was far worse.

  Liesel was in a cage, one barely big enough to house a large dog let alone a human being. Her hands and ankles were both fastened by strong, sturdy chains to the ground. Her hair was in shambles, and her skin was a dirty mess from head to toe. She looked like death. She didn’t look like the girl who I had come to love over this past year.

  “Oh my God… Liesel?”

  It didn’t occur to me until I leaned my body forward that my arms and legs were chained down as well. But instead of a cage, I was stuck inside an over-sized crib. I looked down to see that I was dressed in striped pajamas, and my lips were wrapped around a pacifier.

  I’m not a baby already, am I?

  No, I couldn’t be. I was still tall enough to be at least six years old, seven even. This revelation led me to the following question: Then what the hell am I doing in these baby clothes?

  Of course what I should have been concentrating on was why I was chained down, and why Liesel was stuck in a cage across the darkly lit room. But my wardrobe was just… inexplicable.

  “Cameron…” Liesel finally said, so low it was barely audible.

  “Leese! Oh God, it’s so good to see you!” I noticed how much higher my voice was. It sounded like Mickey Mouse, or maybe even Minnie. I cleared my throat and tried to make it deeper. “Leese, where have you been?”

  She looked at me with the kind of rage she showed me at the French restaurant the other night, except this time there was a more tangible sadness in her face. “Cam, you have to go… you have to get out of here…”

  “Not without you,” I said. “Not without—”

  I heard a door slam behind me. It was so loud it instantly shut me up, and I was afraid to turn my head around. I looked down to see the metal clamps against my hands and feet. I wasn’t going anywhere.

  Not without some magic, I thought. Then a question occurred to me: Why can’t Liesel lift the cage and undo her chains? She can do anything!

  I heard footsteps come toward the crib, and then I heard a cackle of laughter, so over-the-top maniacal that I thought I had stepped foot along with Mickey and Minnie inside an old Disney movie, coming face-to-face with the wicked queen herself. “Good morning, sleepyhead! You’ve been out for thirty-six hours!”

  I jerked my head around—I had to. Hannah stood before me, in a dark red dress, her lips stained with even redder lipstick. Her black hair was long and straightened, and she had a sinister smile plastered on her crazed face.

  “Hannah… What—”

  “Well will you look at this! It’s the love birds! United at last!” She stepped into the center of the room, which housed, unusually, a large black leather couch. She sat down and clasped her hands together.

  “Who the hell are you?” I asked. “What is all this?”

  Before Hannah could answer, I watched in awe as Liesel pulled at her chains, and screamed, a large white light erupting from the top of her head. The cage and her chains started shaking, like the entire room would suffer a violent earthquake.

  Hannah stood up, sauntered up to the cage, and shook her head. “Tsk, tsk, tsk.” She grabbed a long stick from the ground and started swatting it at Liesel’s side. As Liesel screamed even louder, with the shaking coming to an immediate end, I realized Hannah was hitting her with a hot poker stick.

  “Leave her alone!” I shouted. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “She has to learn,” Hannah said. “Magic’s not gonna save her this time. She’s up against something far greater than herself.”

  “Cameron…” Liesel said, her head turned to her left. I could see the painfully apparent red marks over her stripped body, her face stained with dirty tears. “Cameron… I’m so sorry…”

  “You bitch!” I screamed at Hannah, who had a grin on her face even bigger than before. I tried to pull on my chains, but there was no way my vulnerable seven-year-old body was going to have enough strength to pull myself out of this mess.

  “Cameron,” she said, “such filthy language for a soon-to-be newborn. You want some of the poker stick, too?”

  She ran up to me and started swinging the stick at me, just barely missing my face and body. She pretended like she was a swordsman, dancing around on her feet, swatting at me with the scary, deadly weapon. She started flinging the stick right toward my face, and I closed my eyes, scared she would poke one or both of them out.

  She laughed and threw the stick on the ground. “Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you,” she said. “I don’t hurt children.”

  “What do you want from us? What did we ever do to you?”

  Hannah sat back down on the couch. “You see, here’s the thing: I was having a really tough time in my life, Cameron. The worst. After four years of slaving after my sick mother, she died, a painful, excruciating death that only the few select people like us can experience.”

  People like us?

  “And just around this time, while I’m surfing the web, disappointed about my mom, feeling utterly alone, I see this… video.”

  “Video?” I asked.

  “Mmm hmm. It was short, out of focus. But I knew, in those first few seconds, the girl in the video, flying up around her high school auditorium like she’s goddamn Peter Pan… was my little sister.”

  “What? Sister?”

  “Hannah!” Liesel shouted from her cage. “Hannah! Stop this! Right now!”

  “Liesel,” I said, “I’m going to get us out of here.” Even though I had no idea how.

  Hannah cont
inued. “Cameron, at the very least, if you’re going to marry my sister, can you call her by her real name?”

  I squinted my eyes. “What?”

  “What are the first four letters in her name?”

  “I don’t know what—”

  “Tell me the first four letters of her goddamn name!” Hannah jumped up and rushed over to me, again. She started rocking my crib back and forth.

  “L…” I said.

  “That’s right.”

  “I… E…”

  “And?”

  “S.”

  “What does that spell?”

  “Lies.”

  “Lies! Exactly! All lies. Her name… her history. Haven’t you ever wondered, Cameron, where she really comes from? Do you really think her mission in life was to be a waitress at a pizza joint in po dunk Reno, Nevada?”

  “Liesel, what is she talking about?”

  She just kept her head down and didn’t respond. I could see, once again, that she was crying.

  “Cameron,” Hannah said, “I’d like to introduce you to your fiancée. Alicia May Foxwell.”

  “Alicia?” I asked. Again, Liesel didn’t look at me.

  “You should be over-joyed,” Hannah said. “Isn’t that a better name than the dopey Liesel Maupin? I mean, come on. She had a chance to start afresh and change her name. She could’ve at least picked something that didn’t make her sound like a complete dweeb!”

  “What did she ever do to you?” I asked, trying to control my rage.

  “I’ll tell you what she did. She left me. Your little fiancée left me when I needed her most. Four years ago, our mother got cancer. And with our combined powers, as elementary as they were, we were still unable to make her better. So instead of sticking with me to help Mom, she just fled, she just bolted out of L.A. and never looked back. For four years I had no idea where she was. I didn’t know if she was in the United States, or even alive. And then in February, I saw that video. Thank... the Lord… for Youtube.”

  I looked past Hannah to see Liesel finally turned my way, her hair covering most of her face.

  “So with Mom gone,” Hannah continued, “I decided to take a little trip up to Reno, just to see what my little sister was up to. Then I find out she’s nothing but a second rate waitress, and already getting married to a pathetic weasel of a guy who can’t seem to keep the powers of his fiancée in check.