by Riley Moreno
Never Lost (Part 1- Never Lost Series)
A short story series
By
Riley Moreno
Copyright © 2012 Riley Moreno
https://www.twitter.com/rileymoreno
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Cover art by Riley Moreno
Table of Contents
Never Lost (Part 1- Never Lost Series)
About the author
Preview: Halloween
Never Lost (Part 1- Never Lost Series)
I awake to the cold. No surprise there. I’ve been cold all night. There’s a crack between the pane and the sill of the window across from my bed where the chilly fall air is allowed to seep in. I’m huddled here beneath the covers like a freaking Eskimo, fully dressed in my warmest hoodie, two pairs of socks, and my comfiest jeggings. The quilt on the bed smells musty. Everything in the room smells musty.
I miss my old home, my old familiar room with its effective windows and warm carpeting and the stupid murals my friends and I hand-painted on the walls the summer we were twelve—ridiculous portraits of boys we liked, and smiley faces and cute little animals. I liked the lopsided yellow duck the best. But now he’s gone, left behind. And I’m here in this horrible farmhouse smack in the middle of nowhere.
“Harper!” Mom’s voice cuts through the air, finding its way into my hellhole of a new room and banishing any thoughts of additional sleeping from my mind. “Breakfast!” she shrills.
“Coming!” I return. Muttering under my breath, I peel myself off the lumpy old mattress. I can hardly wait to set up my bed from home in here. The four-poster contraption I’ve been forced to sleep on the past couple of nights looks dangerously close to caving in.
In the bathroom, I splash some cold water on my face, brush my teeth, and smooth on deodorant. I reason that I’m already dressed, so there’s no point in changing. I’ve even got a bra on under the clothes I slept in. I drag a pick through my long mane of wild chestnut curls, frowning at my reflection in the mirror. I look like a ghost, my fair skin paler than ever, dark circles ringing my blue eyes. Gross.
A little makeup does the trick, mascara brightening my eyes and blusher detracting from the pallor of my skin. Halfway satisfied, I smear on some lip gloss and plod downstairs.
Mom and Uncle Lenny are at the kitchen table, drinking coffee, and my seventeen-year-old brother Chase, a year older than I am, is parked on the cracked Formica countertop, his cell phone wedged between his ear and shoulder. He doesn’t look any happier than I am, and right this moment, he’s filling his girlfriend Monica in on how much it sucks to be here. (I can tell Mom’s doing her best to tune him out.) Outwardly, Chase is pretty much the male version of me: same fair skin, blue eyes, wild dark curls. And inwardly, I guess we’re similar too—similar enough, at least, to get along most of the time.
I give him a little finger wave and a sympathetic glance before pouring myself a cup of coffee and joining Mom and Uncle Lenny at the table.
“Good morning, sunshine,” Mom says extra-chipperly. She slides a platter of bacon across the table toward me, obviously forgetting, in all of her enthusiasm, that I don’t eat red meat.
I cock an eyebrow at her. “Sunshine?”
Mom laughs, and so does Uncle Lenny. I take a still-warm buttermilk biscuit from a large bowl and slather it with jelly, then slide an egg onto my plate, along with a few apple slices. One thing I’ll say for Uncle Lenny is that he fixes a pretty extensive breakfast.
“Nice day to be outside,” he observes, flipping a page in the sports section of the newspaper. I follow his gaze to the window. It’s golden out; multicolored leaves litter the never-ending yard, trees flame orange and burgundy, and the sunshine drizzles over everything, like icing on a coffeecake.
“Chilly, though,” I say, just to be perverse.
Uncle Lenny glances at me. “Who says nice weather and warm weather are one and the same?”
I shrug. “It’s cold in here, that’s all. I was freezing last night. Something’s wrong with the windows in this place.”
“Harper!” cries Mom, admonishing me.
Uncle Lenny cracks a smile. “No, she’s right, Diana,” he says. “There are some cracks in the sills around here that need caulking—up in her bedroom, too. I forgot about that.”
Although I resent Uncle Lenny for inviting us out here to live with him, I’m grateful that he’s taking my side. It’s the least he could do….
Uncle Lenny’s an interesting person, not really one of those warm and cozy uncle types who swoops you up and calls you princess, but not a jerk, either. Mom says he’s hardened, but not hard. I guess that about fits.
Uncle Lenny is mom’s brother, and while they’re both a quarter Algonquin Indian on Granddad’s side of the family, you’d never know it by looking at Mom. She’s fairer than Chase and I put together, with sort of dishwater-blonde hair and blue eyes. Uncle Lenny, on the other hand, has the whole Native American vibe going on: creased tan skin, flinty eyes, dark hair back in a ponytail. He really plays it up, feather-shaped earrings in his lobes and leather cording to tie back his hair.
Chase says that all he needs is war paint. But the look fits Uncle Lenny, as do his pilled flannel shirts, well-worn jeans, and tooled-leather boots. He’s an enigma, with a hard-drinking party boy side balanced by a reserved compassion and mild sense of humor.
I never minded Uncle Lenny—in fact, I always sort of liked him, until Grammy died, and Uncle Lenny invited Mom and Chase and me to come live in the farm house with him. I guess he was lonely or something; who would ever have guessed that after looking out for my grandparents all those years, providing for them on his income as a locksmith at the local hardware, and taking care of the house and grounds, that proud Uncle Lenny would pine for company in their absence? People are such a riddle.
Anyway, Mom jumped at the opportunity to leave behind our happy lives in a little ranch house in the suburbs of Chicago and move back into her childhood home in the nether regions of Wisconsin farm country. As a single, working mother, she said it made a lot more sense to not have to pay rent on a house; besides, she missed her home and brother, and everything came cheaper in Wisconsin, and she could easily arrange to work long-distance for the publishing company where she’s an editor.
Yada, yada, yada. Never mind that moving here came with great cost to Chase and me, forcing us to leave behind our high school and our friends and Chase’s girlfriend and our extracurricular activities….
We got here two nights ago. So far, my brother and I haven’t been to our new school yet. We start next week, I guess. Oh, joy! Welcome to Hick Town USA. How am I ever supposed to meet a guy around here, one who actually washes his hair and doesn’t dress in overalls and work boots? Okay, so I know that sounds stereotypical, but I really don’t care. What right did Mom have to bring us here? And as long as we have to live on a farm, why can’t it be a functional farm, full of big-eyed animals and pumpkin patches, rather than a couple rickety outbuildings, falling into utter disarray?
I’m sorry that Grammy died for a lot of reasons—including the fact that I really loved her—but whether this sounds selfish or not, I must say that I’m sorriest for me.
Like, what am I even supposed to do here today? This is Saturday, for heaven’s sake. Back home, I’d be out shopping with my BFF Whitney, or planning my costume for the big Halloween bash that I was sure to have been invited to at Aaron Rydell’s house. But instead, I’m stuck here, in this claustrophobic excuse for a house, with rooms so small you can hardly breathe in them, and—
“Harper?” Mom snaps her fingers in fr
ont of my eyes. “What in the world are you daydreaming about? Didn’t you hear what Uncle Lenny just asked you?”
I stare at her, then down at the biscuit in my hand, about to drip peach jelly onto my jeggings. I tip it upright quickly, lick the sticky jelly from my fingers, and turn to my uncle. “No, I’m sorry. I was…thinking.”
Uncle Lenny assesses me, reaching one hand beneath the table to acknowledge Grammy’s old cat, Muffin, who’s brushing against his ankles. “About how much you wish you hadn’t left Chicago?” he probes.
His flinty eyes are emotionless, and I can’t tell whether or not I detect a note of humor, even sympathy, in his voice. It’s funny how everyone from out of town calls the suburbs “Chicago.”
“Ummm,” I hedge, dabbing my lips with a napkin. I stare at it intently, at the peach jelly and lip gloss smudge I’ve
