Unfaded

by Sarah Ripley

  “I was born in Ireland,” I said. “But I don’t remember it. We moved here when I was a baby.”

  “Ireland?” He nodded as if what I’d said made some sort of perfect sense to him. When he glanced up again he must have noticed the look on my face because he tried to explain himself. “You look Irish.”

  “Um, thanks.”

  The lights in the shop flickered as a second power surge occurred. We both glanced at the window at the same time.

  “That’s some storm,” I said, aware that I was beginning to babble. “I hope nothing gets knocked out. No power this time of year is nasty.”

  The door opened and Dad came out with Kian’s father right behind him. They were both deep in conversation and didn’t even look towards us. Dad was talking about cars as usual.

  “I don’t think we’re going to be able to fix your Toyota,” he said as he trampled fresh prints in the snow. “Tomorrow morning I can take you over to Barry’s car shop. Might be able to get you a good deal on a used car. I’m sure your insurance will help you.”

  “Thank you.”

  The man looked at me and then Kian. There seemed to be some sort of silent communication between them. It was creepy and I wasn’t the only one who noticed. Dad watched them both carefully, a small frown formed on his face.

  “You can fill out the rest of the forms later and bring them back tomorrow, Mr. Gallant,” he said.“But you’ll have to forgive me. It’s late and my daughter and I are expected back at home for dinner. Hopefully we can get there before the power goes out. It’s going to be one hell of a storm.”

  “Of course,” he said. “And call me Micah.”

  “Come on, Dad,” Kian said. There was no mistaking the sarcasm in his voice. Micah raised an eyebrow in response.

  There was something definitely fishy about these two. I glanced over at Dad but he wasn’t paying attention. He jiggled the keys in his hand, obviously thinking about the meatloaf dinner Marley probably had waiting for us at home.

  Besides, my curiosity wasn’t going to get the better of me. It wasn’t like I was ever going to see the two of them again. Tomorrow morning they’d get themselves a new car and head off to whatever was waiting for them.

  Two

  Back at home, Marley had dinner on the table. Chilli instead of meatloaf. Not much of a difference. Almost all of her cooking tasted pretty much the same.

  Marley was Dad’s long time girlfriend. She also worked at the shop with Dad and me. They’d been together for eight years, since I was a small kid. But yet I didn’t call her Mom or anything like that. She just wasn’t the type of person you call that. My real mother died in a car accident when I was a baby and I never knew her.

  I went upstairs to drop my backpack off in my room and found Granny sitting on my bed in the dark. She was wearing headphones and rocking back and forth to what sounded like Johnny Cash. She loved music and even had her own iPod, something that I had insisted on getting her last Christmas. She was holding it in both hands, swaying back and forth, and the volume was up really loud since she was almost deaf. I could hear Johnny singing about a Boy named Sue.

  “Hi Granny.” I turned on the lights and waved at her. She smiled and waved back but there was no recognition in her eyes. Granny had Alzheimer’s so talking to her could sometimes be a real challenge. She forgot things like where she was and she was doing half the time. Sometimes she’d wander off and we’d have to go looking for her. She didn’t always know who I was either.

  “Hello Helen,” Granny said. Helen was my mother’s name. Sometimes she got the two of us confused. She used to tell me stories about her when I was a little girl. She still talks about her but more in the way someone with Alzheimer’s talks about people in the past. Usually the events will spill from her mouth with no rhyme or reason.

  “I’m Myra, Granny,” I said. Sometimes it sunk in.

  “Ok, Helen.”

  Sometimes not.

  I helped Granny down to the table for dinner which went uneventfully. Usually when there are accidents on the highway Dad manages to use it as a perfect opportunity to lecture me on unsafe driving. He thinks Connor drives too fast. I think he’s being too old. Dad forgets what it’s like to be young but every now and then you can get him talking about his youth. He used to race cars back in the day and even he’ll admit he used to drive a whole lot scarier than my boyfriend.

  But tonight Dad must have had something else on his mind because he didn’t say a single word about our crash visitors. He had a look on his face as if he was trying to figure out nuclear physics. The frown lines on his forehead were deeply impacted and he barely touched his meal.

  Of course my phone rang halfway through dinner. I jumped out of my seat and was halfway across the living room to grab it out of my jacket.

  “Mai, what have I told you about that damn phone?”

  “Sorry, Dad,” I said. “But I’m expecting a call.” I picked it up and checked the caller id. It was Connor.

  “Dinner is family time,” Dad yelled from the table. “Tell that boy of yours to stop calling while we’re eating.”

  “I will,” I said and I answered the phone.

  “Hey,” Connor said. “Wanna meet up at Bean’s in an hour? Study night?”

  Bean Town was the local hangout for the teenagers. It had internet and late hours which made it appealing to those who actually studied. For others, it was a place to hang out and get wired on lots of mochas and espresso. My group of friends were kind of in the middle. Sometimes we studied; mostly we hung out and had a good time.

  I glanced back at Dad and Marley and they weren’t paying attention to me in the slightest. Granny had spilled some of her chilli on the floor and was trying to pick it up with her fingers. Marley knocked her chair over in her mad rush to clean before tomato sauce ended up everywhere.

  “Yeah, Ok,” I said. “Do you want to meet there?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Love ya.”

  “Love ya.”

  Back at the table no one lectured me a second time. Marley and Dad were used to my interruptions, regardless of how annoying. It’s not that I hadn’t tried to get Connor to stop calling during dinner. He just kept forgetting.

  “I’m going to be at Beans tonight,” I said as I forced a mouthful of chilli. “I’ve got a big Algebra test and an English paper due next week.”

  “Fine,” Dad said. “But come home if the storm gets bad”

  That was it. No worries, no threats, no curfew. That was my life. I was good, boring, predictable, Mai Evans. Dad never really worried because in seventeen years I’d never given him anything to freak out about. I studied enough to get decent grades and I never got arrested or brought home drunk. I was too good if you ask me. I would have loved a bit of adventure, something crazy and wild that would put an end to the boredom of my life. But change never happened in Addison so I couldn’t see a big rebellion anywhere in the near future. Perhaps once I got off to university things might be different.

  * * *

  The snow was really coming down by the time I pulled into the parking lot an hour later. I squeezed my car into a spot between two trucks and grabbed my backpack. Inside, the shop was filled with students. I knew all of them. I spotted Connor immediately over at our regular table with everyone else. Claire and Amber were my oldest friends; inseparable since the first day of school. We had grown up together; there was nothing about them that I didn’t know. Eugene was Connor’s best friend, a nice enough guy, great basketball player but incredibly shy when it came to anyone outside his circle of friends.

  I waved from the door and hit up the counter to order a caramel macchiato. Amber came bouncing over immediately to wait with me.

  “Chemistry be damned,” she said loudly. “Who needs it? Not me! Scott Myerson asked me out to a movie on Saturday.”

  “Seriously?” I grinned. She’d been working on Scott for a while.

  “Yes, seriously,” she smirked. “I’m not nearly as ugly as I make
myself out to be. There’s a personality inside of me dying to get out. She’s blonde, she’s bubbly, she’s no stranger to danger. Of course she’s probably terrified that I might eat her.”

  Amber was about twenty pounds overweight and she didn’t deal with it very well. She had a bad habit of trying to put herself down which Claire and I always refused to let her.

  “There’s nothing wrong with you,” I said. “You’re a hottie and you know it.”

  “Pffft,” she said.

  The barista handed me my drink and Amber grabbed my arm and pulled me towards the back of the room. “We have to go shopping,” she said. “Or you have to let me invade your closet. I need to find something new. Something that will shock his heart into the next cosmos.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  I grabbed my seat beside Connor and Claire and dropped my heavy bag down beside me. Connor looked up but didn’t pull the headphones from his ears. He kissed me on the cheek and then turned his attention back to the video that Eugene and he were watching on YouTube. That was one of the things I loved the most about him. We’d been dating so long that we were comfortable enough to ignore each other. How many girls in the world can say that?

  I decided that English was going to be the more doable assignment so I pulled my laptop out of my bag and settled down.

  I opened up my Word Document to read over the work I’d all ready done. But I was having trouble concentrating. I was thinking about Kian and our earlier encounter. I couldn’t help but wonder what Amber and Claire might think of him.

  I think what made him so appealing was the underlying certainty that I’d met him before. How on earth could I have forgotten a person like him? He’d said the same thing. He felt he knew me too. Maybe that was why his father had stared at me the way he did back at the motel. Perhaps he knew me too.

  But where? I hadn’t done much travelling outside of Addison in the past decade. Marley didn’t like flying and Dad was often too busy with work to consider luxuries like time off. Most of the holidays we did take involved weekends in hotels with waterslides and hot tubs for the adults. Occasionally in the summer we’d go camping but we hadn’t done that in ages because of Granny’s deterioration. The thought of her wandering off into the woods was enough to keep the Evan’s family out of the wilderness. There was a possibility that I might have met Kian at one of those places but it seemed unlikely. He didn’t seem like the type to hang out in hotels and neither Micah nor he looked like the outdoor adventure types. No, he was more mysterious. More sophisticated. He’d be the type of person you’d meet on a train in the middle of the night or in a fancy restaurant in New York. He’d be the person you’d meet halfway up the summit while rock climbing or in the small poverty driven towns of Mexico. He’d be deciphering the Rosetta Stone in London or sketching the artwork at the Louvre in Paris. So why had I met him on the northern highway in the middle of nowhere? What was he doing here?

  And why was I so determined to psychoanalysis the crap outta him?

  “Hey, Mai!” Claire’s voice sounded so far away. “What are you dreaming about?”

  Was that what I was doing? Dreaming?

  “I was just thinking about something,” I muttered.

  “Whoever his name is, don’t let Connor know,” Amber joked.

  I glanced nervously at Connor but he was completely oblivious, laughing with Eugene, the headphones still stuck in his ears.

  “Wow, guilty look,” Amber said. “There is another man!”

  “No,” I said. “There was a bad accident on the road today. Dad brought some people to the shop. They were fine but their car was totalled. I was just thinking about it.”

  “Let me guess,” Claire said. “You got the whole dangerous driving lecture over dinner? Remember when you rear ended that guy, Amber?”

  “Don’t remind me,” Amber said. “Mai, we need to get your Dad a new career. Maybe he could become a pilot or travel agent or something cause then he could get us cheap flights. I’ll let him lecture me if he does it in Mexico or Australia.”

  “Cancun would be nice,” Claire chimed in. “Ooo, let’s go to Panama!”

  “He’d still manage to bore you to death,” I said with a grin.

  “At least I’d be getting a tan.”

  I put my hand on my mouse, prepared to get back to my English paper. But something happened. The computer screen faded away in front of my eyes. I blinked twice and the coffee shop began to melt. I could see my friends watching me with wide eyes. Claire opened her mouth but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. Connor reached out to touch my arm but I never felt his fingers.

  Instead the chair beneath me began to fade. I jumped up to keep from falling. The coffee shop turned dark. I stepped forward, off of the tiled floor and onto soft earth.

  I was in the middle of a field. As far as I could see there was nothing but wild flowers and high grass. Blue skies opened up above me and went on forever to the furthest corners of the world. Puffy clouds floated gracefully and aimlessly. There were no trees. No mountains. Definitely not Addison. Wind captured my hair, blowing brown strands across my lips and nose. I caught it with my fingers and tucked it behind my ears before it could tangle. All around me were flowers of the most brilliant colours and designs. Their fragrant scents filled my nose. I reached down and stroked the petals of a daisy. The flower was real, slightly greasy and soft the way it’s supposed to feel.

  I could taste the wind on my tongue.

  It wasn’t until I turned around that I realised I wasn’t alone.

  There was a girl about my age standing behind me. She wore leather armour wrapped around her waist and handmade boots. Long black curls cascaded down her back and her eyes were bright blue, the colour of a sapphire and lined with long black eyelashes. Her perfect oval face was covered with dirt but it wasn’t hard to tell she was stunningly beautiful.

  In her right hand was the biggest sword I'd ever seen in my life.

  She glanced right through me, her eyes darting back and forth. She appeared to be listening for something by the way her head tilted to the side. Pressing her lips tightly together, she waited.

  “Um, hello?” My voice sounded hollow like I was taking through a paper tube. It didn’t matter. It was obvious she didn’t hear. Her eyes glanced quickly to the left towards a noise that I didn’t hear. Whatever was happening, we weren’t hooked into the same sound system.

  I took a step forward and stepped on something squishy.

  I looked down.

  I was standing on a bloody hand with no body attached to it. Dirt encrusted fingers reached up towards the sky. I gasped and jumped backwards, almost tripping over my feet.

  With a raging scream, the girl pulled the sword up and spun around with a ferocious speed. Her weapon sliced through the air and she shoved it backwards and through the stomach of a man who appeared out of nowhere. Falling to his knees, he opened his mouth and blood spewed from between his teeth.

  Suddenly there were bodies everywhere.

  Lightning crashed from behind me and I jumped. The blue sky instantly disappeared into grey clouds. The air was thick with dark smoke and when I inhaled I could taste bits of ash. Turning around, there were people everywhere. All either dying or fighting. Boots sloshed through the mud and blood and armour clad bodies twisted and turned as they were either stabbed with swords or impaled with sticks. People screamed and swords crashed together, the sound of metal against metal pierced my ears. The smell of copper filled my nostrils, drowning me in the most awful scent.

  The girl screamed like a banshee and brought her sword up against the group of men who appeared before her. Blocking their advances, she twisted her body like nothing I had ever seen in gymnastics class. Her weapon sliced through the air and into the tender meat of their bodies. One by one, the men dropped to the ground at her feet.

  I must have gasped or cried out because suddenly she whipped her head towards me, her eyes burning with triumph. She was at my side before I even
knew she’d moved, bringing her arm around my neck where she placed a dagger against my throat. I wanted to scream but I couldn’t move. My body had rejected my brain.

  She leaned up close against me, her mouth right beside my ear. I could feel the heavy hiss of her breathing as she exhaled and inhaled deeply.

  “You wanted this,” she said. “I gave it to you.”

  I broke my paralysis and pulled forwards. Suddenly I was falling and I closed my eyes tightly to avoid the splatter of blood that I knew would await me once I hit the ground.

  I opened my eyes.

  I was lying on my back and looking up at the fluorescent lights of Bean Town. Several pairs of eyes looked down at me. Voices murmured but I couldn’t quite hear what they were saying. Instead, I could still hear the metal blades as they crashed against each other. I could smell the ash and copper. The dagger was cutting into the soft skin underneath my chin. Blood sprayed across my face.

  My body jerked as I braced my arms against the tiled ground. Hands grabbed me and tried to push me back down. I was freezing cold and all the hair on my head and arms stood up and shivers raced across my spine. My mouth opened but the air wasn’t coming in. A great ball of panic burst from my chest and I twisted and turned as hard as I could. I needed to get up. They had me down and they were going to kill me. I closed my eyes tightly and waited for the dagger to drop.

  “Mai! Stop it!”

  A voice came through the darkness. I recognized it. Claire.

  Opening my eyes I finally saw what I was supposed to see. I was still on the ground of the coffee shop but there were no people there with weapons to destroy me. No mysterious girl with beautiful black curly hair and violent blue eyes. Instead, I was surrounded by my friends. Connor was beside me, his eyes wide and watching me carefully, pinning one of my arms against my body. Claire and Eugene were on the other side; they were both holding onto my arm and keeping me firmly pressed to the ground. Amber was at my feet, holding on tightly to my boots.