All That Remains (Manere Book 1)

by Megan Bushree

  “Oh? That’s neat. I’ve never met anyone with my same birthday.”

  “A family, Great-grandma, and a birthday twin on the same day. Aren’t you having a big day?” I nodded with sincere excitement.

  “I wanted to bring you a gift, but you must promise me that you won’t open it until you get to where you are going. Far away from Manere. I hear you’re going off to college. Bright girl,”

  “How did you know,” I asked.

  “I have my ways,” she said coyly. She lifted a small metal box from her purse and placed it on the table.

  “This is for you. As I said, do not open it until you leave. I think it will please you and maybe bring you happiness in the next step of your life. Here is the key. I can trust you not to open it until you leave, correct?”

  “Of course. You don’t have to give me anything though”

  “No, no. You are my only great-granddaughter and you deserve it. Once you leave here, it will mean much more to you. It’s a token of my pride for you in leaving this wretched place.” I nodded enthusiastically.

  “Maybe we can talk more about you and my grandparents who play tennis, and you could tell me about your life away from Manere. I could order a pizza or something.”

  “That sounds lovely. I would enjoy that. I will give you all the gossip that your mother has been keeping from you” Ethel said with a mischievous giggle. I leaned over and quietly asked, “Before all that, I have to ask, what does texting mean?”

  Chapter 20

  Getting to know my great grandmother had been one of the best experiences I had ever had, and I never knew it would have been a possibility. The way she spoke freely about her life and her ability to sneak in and out of Manere was enough to convince me that I had the coolest great-grandmother ever. I didn’t tell my mom about her visit. It was my own little secret that was quite big.

  After having a brief conversation earlier in the day with my mom, I was still convinced she was keeping something from me. Since my birthday was just around the corner, there could have been a birthday-driven surprise behind her secrecy. It couldn’t be because I also knew that after my reaction from my thirteenth birthday which was a surprise party, she would know better than to do it again. After having a stressful day on the soccer field, a sport I was terrible at anyway, I just wanted to go home and ignore the world. I walked home in tears from being overwhelmed by my cruel teammates, and vicious coach. I just wanted quiet. I opened the door and discovered a room full of people shouting ‘Surprise’, it was the worst feeling at the worst moment. I ran out of the room and sobbed uncontrollably. My mom and dad came into my room.

  “What’s going on, honey?” my mom asked me

  “I knew this was a bad idea. Are you nervous?” my dad asked me. He was the first one to be gentle with me when I was nervous.

  When thinking about when my anxiety started I could never recall an instance before my dad died. I knew there were moments, but they seemed to resolve themselves but maybe that’s just how I remembered it. With both my parents assuring me that everything would be fine and that they would tell everyone it was time to go home, I got up, wiped my tears, and insisted I could handle it. I went out and acted as nothing happened. The entire party was a blur. I don’t even remember who was there or if I had cake, but I did stay. I stayed, and that was the only thing I cared to remember.

  **

  Driving into work became a terrifying event. Drivers everywhere can be bad. Of course, I wouldn’t know if that were true. Those who insisted on operating vehicles in Manere were not merely bad drivers, they were possessed by something that assumed all responsibility at the wheel. Their brains had become a paralyzed sludge confined within their skulls with little purpose. The residents of Manere ran through stop signs and red lights, cut in front of other vehicles, passed vehicles at excessive speeds on two-way roads when there were cars in the oncoming lane. The dangerous behavior was almost something to marvel over if I weren’t one of those people in the oncoming lane that was nearly smashed into.

  When I pulled into the Blethenfield Insurance parking lot, I let out a sigh of relief. As I came out of my car, the woman we referred to a Tweaker Terry came barreling toward me with her shopping cart full of her belongings. I rushed toward the front door to avoid her, but as soon as my back was to her, I heard a smash. I turned to see that Tweaker Terry and pushed her cart right into the side of my car.

  “What are you doing? You just hit my car,”

  “You don’t even have permission to be here,” she yelled.

  “I do. You don’t. This is a private business. Go away,” I said trying to stand my ground.

  “You took it from me. I know you did, you sneaky bitch took it from me,”

  I let out a sigh “oh, whatever. Stay away from my car or I’m going to call the cops on you,”

  “I want it back. I told you. I did.” She said and kept rambling while I entered the office and closed the door behind me. I watched as she circled my car a few times eventually losing interest and shuffling off to another parking lot. I looked down to see the desk calendar to count the days until I left Manere. The dates and days didn’t seem to line up until I realized the calendar was five-years-old.

  “Not soon enough, that’s how long,” I said under my breath.

  Chapter 21

  In what may have been the first in history, the town of Manere was allowing an open session. The town meeting usually encompassed the same individuals. A few select business owners from the Chamber of Commerce who had their own meetings and the town council which was filled mostly with the town’s elders. If you owned a home in 1950 when the town officially named itself and declared itself a town, you were given permission to attend. Those under eighteen and under were automatically denied entrance. Like so many other things, the reasons were never explained. Some speculated that it all had to do with the conspiracy of Manere. Those who already reached the legal age of leaving Manere on their own and chose not to were given consideration.

  Of course, others say that children were not permitted because they would create a ruckus. These ideas came from some town’s elders who never had children of their own. When it was announced that I could attend, I knew it was something I had to do before leaving for good.

  As I entered the longstanding community center room, an older gentleman stopped me. “Young lady, are you a town member? I believe you are one of the young people who is cutting themselves off from Manere for good soon. Is that correct?”

  “Actually. I am a town member, as I have lived my whole life here. As for moving away? Um, I have not officially made the decision. It is true that I have been accepted to a university, but I don’t know if I am ready to leave my home,” I lied with the most unaffectedness I could muster. The man let me through, and I took a seat in the back.

  “We are making big changes in the next few months to keep Manere the best town in the world,” an older woman at a microphone said. I looked up to see six people sitting with a long desk sitting in front of them. Each with their own microphone. I didn’t know any of them but had recognized them from their pictures in the Manere Sun newspaper.

  “To guarantee the quality of life in our beautiful town, we have made the decision to cut down on some outsourcing from nearby towns. With great deliberate considerations, we will decide what are the most important imports necessary to keep our town great. With that, there will be fewer outside materials and luxuries that do not further the quality of life in Manere,” Dissent flooded the room with grumbles and moans.

  “Now, now. I know what you’re thinking but we truly believe that if we tighten up our borders, we will eliminate any chances of a possible crime in our fine community. It is when ideas from the outside infiltrate our home when we need to worry.”

  A man raised his hand but did not wait to be acknowledged before asking, “What about all the crime we have now? The borders are mighty tight. No one from the outside is coming in and yet we have had tons of crime and
druggies for the last couple of years.” The audience agreed.

  “I am not sure what you mean by that. This town has never been safer. What you may have heard in your gossip circles about crime and drugs are grossly exaggerated. We are the safest town in the world. If we want to maintain that record, we will do what we, the town council, believe are the right choices.”

  “Don’t we have a say in the matter?” the outspoken man asked.

  “We live in a community that chooses the most capable residents to make these decisions. We have been here the longest and have been successful in making Manere a wonderful place to live. If you question our choices, you can always leave,”

  “If you can make it out alive” another voice shouted from the back

  “What was that? What are you insinuating? Who said that?” the town councilwoman asked.

  “We are just prisoners, you already have us in a cell, now you want to take away our yard time and strap us to a ball and chain,” the unidentified voice yelled.

  Deliberations were going on throughout the room. Chairs squeaked against the floor and voices rumbled through the room. “Listen, listen. We have made our decision. If you want to live somewhere else, go ahead. Leave Manere and once you find out that the only thing out there is people shooting each other on the street, heroin dealers on every corner and housing prices that are so crippling you will be forced to live on those dangerous streets, you will wish you never left this paradise. By then it will be too late, and you will have to live with your choice. That is all for tonight,”.

  The woman stood up and walked out a back door much to the mystification of the other town council members. They too followed her soon after. The residents whispered and shouted about the town’s troubles. Some were disappointed that their first and possibly only entrance into a town meeting had ended so abruptly with so little information. I stood up to leave, waiting in a line of people trying to make it out of the single door. I could see Milo getting in his car. He was too far away to catch his attention, and the crowd was too big to get through before he got in his car and sped away.

  Chapter 22

  After I pulled into my driveway, I could see Milo was working on his car with the garage door open. He dropped the hood closed and looked in my direction. I waved but rather than waving back, he walked into his house. So much for being friends again. Leaning over the passenger’s seat to pick up the water bottle that had rolled under, something pierced my hand. I yanked it back desperately hoping it wasn’t a Brown Recluse or something equally vicious and life-threatening. The flashlight I kept in the glove-box still had enough power to expose anything hiding under the seat. There were no spiders or even webs hidden below, much to my relief. It was a pocketknife that poked me. When I sat up, I was startled to find Milo standing outside my window.

  “What are you doing psycho?” I asked.

  “What are you doing down there?”

  I stepped out of the car to show him the knife. “Do you recognize this?” I said.

  “It’s not yours?”

  “No. I don’t know how it got in my car,”

  “Peculiar. Probably just the person who had the car before you,”

  “It was my dad’s car. From when he was a teenager. He never wanted to get rid of it,”

  “Cool. It’s a relic from the 70s. The old man had a switchblade.”

  “It’s not a switchblade. You have one just like it,”

  “I do. So” Milo tensely fidgeted. He wanted to change the subject.

  “What’s up?”

  “Happy Birthday,” he said as he shoved a brown paper bag toward me.

  “You remembered? You’re like the only one who didn’t forget” Even I had almost forgotten. When I woke up, my mom gave me a brief hug and went on and on about how each year flies by much too quickly for her. She made me French toast and gave me purple flowers. I don’t know what they were called because I don’t know what most flowers are called. They were pretty, that’s all. She told me she had more planned and left before I finished my breakfast. I unrolled the paper bag peeking through before pulling out a Christmas ornament. A fair-haired young girl in a ponytail ice skating on an island of ice.

  “Where did you get this? It seems familiar, somehow,” I said.

  “It was in the window of Harold’s Antiques when we were kids. When we used to walk home from school, you always wanted to look at the store window to see if he added anything new. When you saw this, you told me that it was you,”

  “I did? I remember Harold’s. Why would I say it was me?”

  “Because Angie, you always said that if you lived somewhere you could ice skate, you would be as happy and free as the ornament girl. She looks like you too, or at least she did when you were ten.”

  The memory started to form, and I felt like I was there, in front of Harold’s with Milo, dreaming of twirling in a baby blue pleated skirt with my face to the sky while delicate snowflakes melted on my nose and tongue.

  “When did you get this? Harold’s closed months ago. I can’t believe it was still there,” I brushed the ornaments ceramic hair with my thumb.

  “I’ve had it for a while. Last year, I walked by the window and noticed Harold packing up some boxes inside. I went in to say hello and asked him what he was doing. He said he was downsizing. I asked him about the ornament. He had no idea what I was talking about but said that maybe because he never sold it and it was just sitting somewhere in the store. He let me search through the store. Helped me look through a few boxes and everything. It took a while, but I finally found it.”

  “You did all that? Last year? I thought you hated me last year?”

  “I did. You know Angie, just because I hate you doesn’t mean I don’t love you. You’re my oldest friend. We’ll always be friends no matter how much we hate each other,”.

  I pulled Milo in for a hug. He had grown at least five inches since the last time we hugged. I looked back at the skating girl. She had a chip on her petite nose, and the lobe of her ear that peeked below her ponytail appeared deformed.

  “She’s a little broken,” Milo said.

  “That’s okay. We’re all a little broken.”

  Chapter 23

  The “Limited Fuel” sign was slamming against the front window of the gas station. The wind strong enough to knock the sign against the window and create permanent damage, or to fly in the opposite direction striking some unsuspecting passerby. Limited fuel was a common problem at least once a year but with the town’s tightening the borders, fuel had been low for months. My car was mostly full, and I topped it off when I could just in case the town ran out completely. It was one of the many reasons I chose to walk to places as much as possible. People not knowing where I was by identifying my car in parking lots was an added benefit. Having anonymity in a microscopic town was nearly impossible but walking rather than driving was more freeing. There was a way to slip by or creep along by foot that provided me comfort and the feeling of being an observer rather than the observed.

  As I Careened through the alleys and narrow streets, I felt like one of the rattlesnakes that inhabit the shrubbery of the open desert. The torridity of the day felt like a heavy blanket stifling me, weighing me down. The direct sun piercing the top of my head and causing the beginning stages of an itch on my ears and neck that would only be calmed by a cold shower when I got home. The beads of sweat on my nose and brow were all it took to make me crave a midday shower, a luxury but also a necessity of the summer day.

  Before I knew what I was looking at, my pulse began to kick up just enough for me to notice. My ears became tingly and unable to capture all the surrounding sounds. It was more than heatstroke I was experiencing, my entire being seemed to disappear deep inside of me while peering through the hollowed-out windows once occupied by my eyes.

  It was a hand, a mangled, distorted hand that could be identified only by distinguishing anything that was formerly human but had been ripped and destroyed and left for dead. As I w
alked closer, hoping I was wrong, I could see it was not just a hand, but an entire person attached. Stuffed between the dried out and hollowed desert trees and a narrow wash was the rest of the limp, dirty body of a young woman baking in the sun. The smell reached my nostrils. Every part of me that had left my body for a moment returned abruptly and urged me to run. My legs moved quicker than I could keep up, I had to stop. I could feel the vomit edging its way toward my throat. Vibrations radiated through my head as the sweat beaded on my nose and behind my ears. My house was not far, I could see the gray roof with its patches and rusty swamp cooler becoming a beacon calling me back to safety. Once I reached my house, I didn’t bother going around to the front, I hopped between the slim opening on cement blocks that sat between my house and Milo’s.

  “Hey, what are you doing” Milo called out as he walked toward me. Once he saw the spooked reaction, his face changed too.

  “What? What happen?”

  “It’s her. I think I found Rachel.”

  “You did? How did you manage that?” he asked. His tone was light, sardonic even.

  “She’s dead. I saw her body. In the desert. Her body. Just over there,” I pointed not being critical over the exact location.

  “Are you serious?”

  I nodded.

  “You're sure?”

  “I’m sure it was someone. I don’t know if it was Rachel. I know it was someone. Her head. I couldn’t see her face that well, it was in the dirt. A hole. It looked like someone shot her, in her head.” I Gasped as soon as I heard the words fall out of my mouth.

  “Sit down, I’ll get you something to drink,”

  “I don’t want anything to drink. She’s dead Milo. She’s dead. Really dead. If it’s not Rachel, it’s someone. A girl,”

  “Are you sure it’s not some Tweaker who got lost?” he asked as he handed me a chilled glass of water.

  “She wasn’t a Tweaker. She looked normal. Like she was a normal girl our age. She could have been me,”