“Oh.” My face fell.
“Can you go home without me?” He asked, running his hand through his hair a few times, “It’s only a few blocks. Mrs. Rita will be at her house all day, so if you need anything ask her. There’s macaroni in the pantry.”
“Sure. Have fun at work.” I half-heartedly put the rest of my pumpkin loaf in my mouth, but then reminded myself that I needed to try too. I stood and gave him a short hug before sitting back down and taking a sip of my drink.
Mrs. Rita was our neighbor. She was old, older than I ever hoped to get, and her husband worked while she took care of her house. Since my father wasn’t around most of the time, Mrs. Rita had taken the ‘good old neighbor’ role way too far. Every day over the weekends, she called, more than once, to check up with me.
“Thanks. I’ll be home around six.” He walked away, and I watched him leave for a few moments, wishfully thinking that maybe one of these days he would take off a Saturday, and we could do some exploring. We hadn’t done much of that since moving to Virginia. I held onto my half-finished coffee as I walked towards the door, but threw out my trash before leaving.
I walked out of Starbucks disappointed, staring into the parking place where my father’s car had previously been parked, but I forced myself to forget about it. Shrugging, I trudged down the street, staring at the white sidewalk, and my side bangs falling into my eyes.
“Hey, Natalie!” Someone shouted in a loud, high-pitched sort of voice. My head rose until I caught sight of Emilie half a block away, waving at me rapidly back and forth. She approached me at a record walking speed and was right in front of me within seconds. Apparently, avoiding her wasn’t going to be as easy as I’d hoped. How did she know I would be here? She didn’t even live on my street. Part of me wondered if all of these meetings were more than just a coincidence. For some reason, Shay and Emilie found something about me interesting, and maybe that’s why Emilie kept appearing out of nowhere exactly where I was.
Despite my reservations towards Emilie, I did enjoy talking to her in a weird way. She was intriguing, and unlike anyone I had ever met. Usually, I knew what to expect when talking to teenagers at my school. Maybe I knew rumors about them. Maybe the way they carried themselves gave me clues into who they were and how they would act. Emilie broke down all of those ideas because I had no idea what to expect from her and it was strangely refreshing. If she would stop talking about these fantasy lands and stories, maybe we could even be friends someday.
“Hi, Emilie. How are you?” I asked politely, even though I contemplated jumping the fence and cutting through the woods. The last thing I wanted while I was disappointed was to be tormented with some stupid fairytales again. But, she knew where I lived. Even if I cut through the forest and got to my house in record pace without tripping over branches, she still knew where I lived. I sighed despite my efforts to keep my composure together.
“Good, how about you?” Emilie seemed a bit nervous, much to my surprise. Last night she had been so self-assured despite the fact she might just be delusional.
“I’m fine.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“My dad just had to go to work. That’s not uncommon.” I tipped the Starbucks cup toward her before taking a sip of the sugary goodness.
“Ah... workaholic? That’s no fun.” She sounded sympathetic, but, like always, I could tell there was an underlying topic she wanted to talk about that was entirely separate from our current conversation. Emilie could play the part well, but, honestly, I’d have to be stupid not to realize she didn’t want to talk about my problems with my father. Who would?
“His job takes a lot of his time,” I admitted, trying to keep my emotions in check. The past few day felt like an emotional rollercoaster, and the last thing I needed was to burst into tears right now.
“So, are you going to sit in your house all day? That sounds boring.”
“It’s just what I normally do on weekends. And it’s not boring, really. Ten hours, home alone … you know.” I ran my fingers through my hair before shrugging. Except, she probably didn’t know anything about that. Emilie didn’t seem to believe my lies either, and I hardly blamed her since I wouldn’t have fallen for them either.
“Well, there are always other options.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“I could tell you more about Aughmortor.”
Well, might as well shoot that idea down before it got out of hand.
“More fairytales?” I asked smugly. “No, thanks. I’d rather go on with my day instead of listening to you waste any more of my time.”
“Maybe if you learned some more, you might actually believe me. Besides, they weren’t that bad.” Emilie turned serious which I ignored because serious Emilie couldn’t mean anything good. At least, that was what my experience with her so far had taught me. “Besides, what have you got waiting for you at home? Ten hours of crappy soap operas?”
“I have other things to do than soap operas,” I replied, rolling my eyes. But, let’s be honest. I could bluff for hours, but I didn’t really have anything going on today other than reading some books and finishing homework. Worse yet, I could call Olivia and listen to her talk my ear off for hours about how much she missed me.
“Fine. I guess you’re right.” This was the stupidest idea I’d come up with in the past month, and I was pretty sure I was going to regret the words, but it legitimately did suck to be in a massive house all alone with nothing to do. We didn’t even have a pet since Dad said they were expensive and would soil the carpets.
“Great!” Emilie walked towards my house, her platinum blonde hair tossing in the wind and her heels clicking together as she did a three-sixty spin. “So, did you think about what Shay said yesterday?” She asked, breathlessly slowing into a walk beside me.
“Yes. How could I not?” My tone said it all. How could I not remember all the crazy ideas that Shay had been throwing out last night? “Is she writing a fantasy book or something? It’s pretty good, if so.”
“Well, you obviously haven’t gained any more faith I see.” I expected to see Emilie defeated, but if anything that realization only seemed to make her more determined.
“Not really.” I released another sigh. What was I getting myself into?
“What if I showed you an example of things the Ones of Within can do. Would that help?”
“Shay said you couldn’t produce your Vatra on Earth.” The way I said it made it almost seem like a dinner table conversation about school work. Oh, I was way over my head in this ridiculous nonsense.
“Not Vatra, of course. I’m talking about magic.”
“Do you honestly believe this stuff?” I stopped suddenly, turning towards her, sparks of the viciousness from last night coming back to me all at once. Why couldn’t I try to make friends with someone normal? Why couldn’t she see how maddening it was to listen to someone speak of the impossible? Why couldn’t she see how maddening it was trying to explain how ridiculous the whole conversation was when she wasn’t listening or seeming to hear anything I said? How could you help someone that didn’t want to be helped?
“Yes, and you will too.” The way she spoke with such certainty and acceptance, drew all the fight out of me. Again, what could I say to that?
“I doubt it.”
We walked on my street while I thought of what Shay had said last night. I almost wished what they were saying was true because I wondered, frequently, if there was something more to the world. Everything here seemed to follow a simplistic path that was almost categorized in society as the ‘right’ path to take. First, go through elementary school, then the middle, then high school. Don’t forget to take lots of intimidating classes, to do at least two sports, and join a million clubs so you can get into a good college. After that, go to college and pretend that you know what you want to do in life and spend an exorbitant amount of money on tuition. Most people, after four years, will be kicked out on the streets to take their new ‘I-
just-got-out-of-college’ smiles to find a job and end up struggling to get that job due to their newbie post-college status. Yeah, that basically sums up Natalie Quinn’s version of our world, minus the part about falling in love, getting married and having babies- three very important customs that should never be overlooked.
“I have important things to tell you. About your mother.” Emilie’s voice was quiet and strained.
“My mother? What about her?”
“My father left when I was young, Natalie, just like your mother did.” She looked miserably at the ground, bits of her hair falling into her face. All of the laughter and the smiles I was used to seeing on Emilie’s face were replaced with the sad, withdrawn expression. You were so judgmental of her from the start when you didn’t know anything about her, I thought fiercely in my head. I was selfish. For years, I’d hid behind the pain of being forgotten by a mother I’d hardly known and the pain of living without the shell of a father. If I just looked outside of myself, there were people around me who were dealing with the same issues or even worse situations.
“Really?” My voice sounded hopeful, so selfishly hopeful. Maybe I wasn’t the only one who felt isolated, alone, even when I wasn’t. Maybe I wasn’t the only one who held everything in, watching and waiting for the emotions to explode day by day. Maybe I had a lot of things in common with Emilie. Not, by any means, that I believed any of this ridiculous stuff about Aughmortor and parallel universes. The new knowledge about her father made me feel closer to her though.
“Yeah. Are you fourteen?” She glanced at me, pushing the strands of hair in her face behind her ears.
“I turn fifteen this month.”
“Natalie, I’m fifteen... My father left when I was five. In early December.” She looked at me in the face keenly with her calm gray eyes. My mother had left in early December. When I was five.
“Whoa.” This was crazy. Bizarre. Was she lying to me? No, this didn’t seem like an everyday sort of pranks that teenagers pulled on each other but, then again, Emilie was not normal. “That’s ridd- I mean ... Why didn’t you mention this before?” Um, Natalie, you only met her yesterday. It’s not like anyone wanted to spill his or her dark family secrets to anyone.
“It wasn’t the right time …” Emilie’s gray eyes turned towards the door of my house as I unlocked it with the key in my pocket.
“You have a big house,” Emilie commented as we stopped at the front door. She seemed lost in thought like she remembered something deep from the past by the distance in her eyes.
“Yeah, I guess so.” I shook my head, trying to dispel the darkness of the previous conversation out of my thoughts with no avail.
But … was it honestly just a coincidence?
Of course, many kids probably had parents that left them, probably more than ever, due to the increasing divorce rates. Still, it was strange that her father had left almost the same time as my mother had. I frowned, trying to form an effective conclusion to my rapidly growing confusion. I was grasping at straws trying to explain the coincidence but failed miserably. I couldn’t really be falling for some of Emilie’s crazy ideas, could I?
I entered the house and took off my shoes, an example Emilie quickly followed. My dad was strict about not walking around the house in shoes because mud was ‘another way to dirty the expensive carpets’.
“I suppose I should give you a tour.” I trailed off, realizing it had been quite a while since I had anyone over.
Emilie shrugged, not seeming too inclined to the idea of a tour, but not saying it out loud. She followed me into the kitchen, where she slid into a stool, tossing an orange from the fruit bowl back and forth in her hands. I half-expected her to start juggling a few of them in front of me.
“One sec …” I walked over to the phone and dialed Mrs. Rita’s number. Might as well get it done with now rather than later.
“Hello, this is Mrs. Rita,” She answered in a ridiculously loud tone. Dad claimed she just didn’t get great reception in her house, but, truthfully, she was probably just going deaf.
“Hi, Mrs. Rita. This is Natalie.” I had to bite my lip to stop from laughing because she answered this way every time she picked up the phone. Emilie mimed putting her hands over her ears and screaming, and I barely contained the laughter rising within me. “I was just letting you know I reached my house. I have a friend over.” The phone crackled in my ear from her side. Mrs. Rita was probably making one of her food creations. Truthfully, her food was disgusting, practically inedible, but her husband seemed to enjoy it.
“All right … just call me if you need anything.” Well, she must be effectively preoccupied since every time I called her she wouldn’t hang up for about an hour. She was Olivia, like fifty years in the future.
“Will do, thanks.”
“So, who’s that? Your dad’s girlfriend or something?” Emilie asked, finally placing the orange back in the bowl after getting bored of tossing it around.
“No, that’s just my neighbor. But, my dad decided to tell me he had a girlfriend yesterday and invited her over at the last minute without telling me.” I pretended to unsuccessfully find it funny.
“My mother remarried a few years after my dad left. He was okay, but I always missed my father,” Emilie replied, examining a fake, flowering plant.
“So, what’s your theory for this ‘coincidence’? That our parents both left at the same time.” I asked, switching the subject. My mind kept going back to it, and I had to know. Even though I had no doubt it would be as ludicrous as some of her other ideas, I still had to hear it.
“My father and your mother were members of the Ones of Within. They were sent to Earth a few years before we were born. The flow of Earth’s destruction had stopped because of an event in Aughmortor, and the Larta was somewhat… controlled. Our parents were sent with a large group of other Ones of Within members to Earth. Their task was to watch the technological progress of Earth while the Ones of Within controlled things on Aughmortor. Earth ended up being fine, but the Ones of Within wanted them to stay for longer, more permanently. They thought they were bridging the gap between Aughmortor and Earth.
“Most of the members met people they married and had children with. Our parents had us and lived in peace for five years. However, trouble was starting up again in Aughmortor due to the Larta.” Disgust laced itself in Emilie’s tone as she spoke of the Larta. “The Ones of Within members were forced to return to Aughmortor and leave their families behind until their children were meant to come join the Ones of Within. In Aughmortor, a huge war took place between the Ones of Within and the Larta. Years of war began between the two, and there were huge losses for both causes. My father was killed during a battle like many of the other Ones of Within members. The war caused the Ones of Within to not return to the Earth due to the situation on Aughmortor becominga priority. No one returned to their forgotten children and families.”
My mother was a member of the Ones of Within? And she lived on a parallel universe called Aughmortor? And had special powers? This had to be a joke, but Emilie was strangely thorough with her whole story. She seemed, quite honestly, to quote this like history- almost like she was quoting facts on Ghengis Khan’s rule over the Mongol’s or how the Declaration of Independence came to be.
“The reason the members of the Ones of Within didn’t just return to Aughmortor afterward was the prophecy. It told the Ones of Within that in the years to come, one of the children on Earth would become the Chosen One, the one we are looking for. The prophecy said they would take over the old members of Ones of Within and restore it to its greatness for years to come. The prophecy failed to inform them of the war and the death count that would come before that greatness. To this day, there is only about one-eighth of the former population of Ones of Within members from the past. The rest are all new recruits who have joined in the past ten years.”
“A prophecy? Are there many of these … prophecies?” I knew what a prophecy was; prophecies were in
epic tales like the Iliad, which foretold of things to come.
“There are countless, and each one has it’s own title.”
“What’s this prophecy titled?”
“The Secret of Words.” Emilie replied.
The words emanated ominously through the room, causing us to be silent for a few minutes. Something about those simple words had a lasting effect; the silence and disquiet in the house almost seemed to restate how important the words were. But fairytales didn’t mean anything, and ‘the Secret of Words’ was, really, just a grouping of words that sounded powerful. That’s all. Being rational and lucid, my brain developed a simple way of handling all of the confusion. I wasn’t lucid enough to not ask for more of these stories because I enjoyed hearing them though. Emilie seemed to have something special; having an imagination this vast and brilliant couldn’t be a bad thing. There was something that she had that I didn’t, somehow, by just simply believing in her imagination.
“How long have these people been living, these Ones of Within?” I tossed the question out there.
“It’s not sure, but historians guess probably several hundred years.”
“I see,” I replied, faintly dubious.
“Natalie, I’m going to show you something.” She decided, picking up on the fact I didn’t believe her. Emilie sat down on a chair on the kitchen table and withdrew her hand, placing it deliberately on the table in front of her.
“What are you going to show me?”
“Magic,” Emilie replied smoothly.
“Impossible. You need to get a new hobby.” And this was precisely how all of the magic of the story was going to die out. It didn’t matter how hard I hoped or wished something would come true that wasn’t … it wouldn’t.
“You’re right, I should. I couldn’t agree more.” Emilie gave me a twisted, grim smile. “Now, watch carefully, or I’ll have to do it again.”
I looked doubtfully at her hand, but shut up and watched all the same as she closed her eyes in preparation. Any second now, she would burst out laughing and explain the whole thing had been a hoax.
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