Reminiscence

This picture is of me in my costume for the photo shoot that I did. I'm still not sure that I did well, but I was supposed to be mysterious and confusing... The next one is pretty self explanatory. I am almost fully convinced that my camera is bipolar. You know how I told you my camera deleted all those pictures? Well they're back. Yeah. So now I can show you the cheesy but cool picture I took at the movie theaters, and stuff like that. So yeah. We had rehearsal again today, but it was cut an hour short because of the snow. Earlier we tried to make a igloo... but it didn't work out too great. We got about 1 millionth of it done... I've been writing a bit more of Reminiscence, which I decided on calling... well, Reminiscence. And the boy's name is also going to be Daniel, but he thinks his name is Aaron. But so far that's all I've got. Any idea on what else could happen? Here's what I have so far. 

(and sorry about the picture thing, I don't know how to fix it)

Reminiscence

[Document Subtitle]

Kaila Wooten

Chapter one        

 

My parents were never really like other parents. They didn’t go out on dates, we rarely all went out to dinner, and I never had a real birthday party. But I didn’t know I wasn’t normal, I thought everyone was that unlucky. Or at least until I was made fun of in elementary school.

         Janet would always tell me that her hair looked better because her mother helped her do it. I told her that my mother didn’t help me with my hair. Don told me that his dad had helped him to ride his bike without wheels. I told him that my daddy rarely helped me do anything. I was a loner, never too many friends, never too much going on.

         But I was happy, and I didn’t feel like I was missing anything to great. The only thing that I wanted more than anything was a brother. Littler, older, I didn’t care, as long as he came. I used to watch my friend Alice with her older brother, James, and feel hot envy in the pit of my stomach.

         I live in Morristown, Pennsylvania. It’s a small wooded town, usually cold, with one big city right on the outskirts of it, called Hanes. I’d been to Hanes once. My mother had taken me there to a play that she wanted to see. She couldn’t hire a babysitter and Dad had to work that night. So, I went with her. 

         I was a plain girl, dark brown wavy hair, dark eyes, light skin. Nothing special. I looked just like my mother, my father having light mousy hair and hazel eyes. My name was Isabella. Not Izzy, not Bella, Isabella.

         So, here I was, sitting with my parents at the dimly lit dinner table, begging my parents… again.

         “Please Mom??? Why not? It’s not like I wouldn’t help out. I would be a great big sister!” I pleaded, knowing it was all true. I would definitely try as hard as I could.

         My mother shook her head. “We couldn’t. Not again.” she said sadly. Why? I asked myself. Was I really that bad? No. I was an average child. Not genius, but I got good, steady grades. I did well in ballet, and I didn’t make fusses.

         So why wouldn’t they want another child? I knew that they couldn’t be certain it would be a boy, but wasn’t it worth the risk? I didn’t try again, but Dad pressed on.

         “Don’t ask anymore Isabella, the answer is no.” I finished my dinner without saying another word. I brought my plate to the sink, washed it, and put it away. I walked up to my room to find my cat, Dina.

         I named her Dina because she looks just like the cat in my favorite movie, Alice in Wonderland. I found her cuddled on my bed, right beneath my pillow. I picked her up and sat down on the bed.

         “I just don’t get it Dina.” I told her. “I’m not bad enough that they wouldn’t want a little boy.” I laid down, drowsiness taking over.

         I dreamed of a bear. A little bear, a plush one just like the one that Mom and Dad kept in there room. It sat on a shelf, not moving. It was huge, bigger than me, and as I walked up to it, it started to move.

         “It’s coming.” It told me.

         “What’s coming?” I asked.

         “Time. It’s almost time for you to learn.” I didn’t understand what the bear meant, but I took it to heart. I always had with dreams. I valued them, loved them. I listened to them.

         I woke up calmer and less angry than the night before. Out of habit I almost started to dress for school before realizing that it was Sunday.

         I went down the stairs slowly, not knowing whether my parents were up yet. Seeing that they weren’t, I went downstairs to the kitchen table to finish the homework that I had started last night. By the time I was finished, Dad was on the couch watching TV and Mom was in the kitchen with me, making breakfast.

         I tried to work hard on my math, but I needed the date, and I wasn’t sure exactly what it was.

         “Mom, what’s today?” I asked. My mother didn’t answer. She stood there with her back to me, making eggs. “Mom?” I asked again.

         “Sunday,” she said shortly, as if there wasn’t anything else about it.

         “No Mom,” I said smiling, “The date.”

         “September… Sep-September nineteenth.” She said slowly, as if it were hard for her to say.

         “Thank you,” I told her, trying not to think about the way she’d answered. It was almost as if someone had died on this day. It made me shudder to think about. It is time for you to learn. My parents’ bear had said. But what did he mean?         

When I was done with my homework, I went back to my room. I wasn’t perfectly keen on carrying on a conversation with my parents at the moment, and feeling particularly distant, I sat on my bed with Dina to read a book.

         I read for a while, but after realizing I was reading the same paragraph over and over and understanding none of it, I gave it up as a bad job. I ventured downstairs, to see what my parents were doing. I found them both on the couch, my father holding my mother. After analyzing the shaking of her shoulders, I could tell that she was crying.

As soon as Dad saw me he let go of my mother, who straightened up at once and dried her eyes.

“I suppose that the breakfast is almost ready.” She said quietly, walking of into the kitchen. I looked at my father unsteadily. He stared at me for what seemed like years, then looked slowly away. I didn’t know what to do, so I went back upstairs.

         I had already tried reading, and there wasn’t much else to do. So I sat there, on my bed, thinking about the possible reasons that Mom had been crying. It wasn’t unusual for something like this to happen. Especially when we would go to the park, or Washington D.C, or when it was September.

         I found Dina laying in the same spot, asleep. I picked up my book and tried to read. I started on the same paragraph I had been having trouble with before.

         “There’s no reason I would ever leave you!” she cried, running toward the boy with such haste….. such haste… such…. I dazed in and out, not really getting through anything.

And then all of a sudden I wasn’t at home anymore. I was in a different house, wearing different clothes, with a different face. I sat on the floor with two or three toys, a battered old teddy bear, a rattle, and a pacifier.

I tried to think, but it came out… funny. It was like my mind was far away. In another universe altogether. I was the boy. If the boy thought, I thought. But all his thoughts were incoherent.

His. I then realized. This wasn’t a memory, at least not mine. This was as boy’s memory. The boy googled and goggled and made all sorts of noises that I couldn’t understand.

I wouldn’t have known I was so small, except for the fact that the grown women standing with their backs to me seemed to be as tall as giants. I looked up at one of them with admiration oozing from my eyes.

Yes, I thought in my other universal mind. That’s his mother. She was a pretty woman, she had dark brown hair, shoulder length. She was smiliang and laughing, as if nothing in the world could go wrong.

         The boy looked up at her, with her back to him, willing her to pick her up. As if on cue, she turned and bent down to scoop him up in her arms. She turned back to her friends, as if it were a party.

She picked me—him up, and cuddled me in her arms showing him off to her friends. I could only make out snippets of the conversation, the boy wasn’t paying any attention. I tried to tell him to listen more closely, so that I could hear the whole thing, but he didn’t seem to know I was there.

“—Daniel. Isn’t he just precious?” I heard the boy’s mother say, gesturing to the child in her arms. I recognized the voice. It was my mother’s voice. But I didn’t know any Daniel. But this lady sure was my mother.

The ladies carried on their conversation, but Daniel was too preoccupied in his little toy to notice. His thoughts wouldn’t have made any sense out loud, but in his head it was quite logical. Blue. He thought. White. Round. Noisy.

So that left me to ponder what this… vision meant.

But before I knew it, I was back on my bed, in a cold sweat. What had just happened? It had all seemed normal while I was there, but now, back in my own room, I didn’t know what to call what I had just seen.

It had happened in real life, that was for sure, I didn’t have enough of an imagination to make it up. I knew that it was real, I just couldn’t imagine how. The women holding Daniel was definitely a younger version of my mother, but who was Daniel?

She had gloated on him like a grandmother or a mother for the first time. But that would make Daniel my older brother. That was the part I didn’t understand. My mother was thirty-eight now, but she couldn’t have been more than twenty-eight in the… memory. That’s what it was.

It was Daniel’s memory.

“Isabelle?” my father’s voice called up to me, cracking.

“Yes?” I answered.

“Your mother and I are… going to the store for some groceries. We’ll be back in a couple of hours. Lunch is in the fridge.”

“Alright,” I said, knowing full well that Mom went shopping yesterday, but knowing not to argue. I wondered what could be so important that they had to leave even before breakfast. I knew they hadn’t run out of juice that fast.

I went downstairs to eat. After I finished, I started to clear the table. The silence was eerie. It wasn’t that my parents hadn’t left me home before, they had done it plenty of times. It was just that after that memory, I had realized something. Mom had been really happy in Daniel’s memory. I didn’t know who Daniel was, but he made her glad to be alive.

All of a sudden I wanted Daniel back. It didn’t matter if I wasn’t the only child anymore, I’d wanted a brother for a while, begged and pleaded even. It would be fun. For me and for Mom and Dad, if my guesses were correct.

To take my mind off of things like that, I concentrated on my work. Forks in the wash, plates in the wash, food in the trash… I kept on and on. Dinah came down to watch me work. I ignored her. She had been outside in the trees, catching anything she could get her hands on. I could smell her latest prey from the dishwasher across the room.

She walked over to me, something in her mouth. I ignored her. Knives… she walked closer. I looked up, ready to shoe her and the terrible smell away.

“Dinah…” I trailed off. She was holding a bird in her mouth. Not that I’d never seen a dead bird in the house before, but Mother would be furious. It wasn’t like she was that close to Dinah in the first place. And it wasn’t like I loved dead things all that much either.

Dinah advanced, as if trying to back me up against the kitchen wall. I tripped over my corduroy pant legs trying to get out of her way. She was insistent on giving me her gift though, and didn’t stop until I was safely backed up against the wall.

I had all but forgotten the knife in my hand until I heard a soft but distinct bang and then rip. I turned slowly, torn between wanting to watch Dinah’s bird, and what I’d done to the wall. I was beyond dead now, I was already in limbo. There was no way to escape this one.

I looked at Dinah, placing the blame on her. I lured her outside and shut the door again, locking the kitty flap too. I threw the knife in the sink and ran upstairs without looking back. I flung the door to my room closed with a clang, and flew onto the bed with such force that the whole thing shook.

I sat there for a while, wondering what I would do. I couldn’t face my parents, not after what I’d done. I couldn’t blame Dinah, it would get her thrown out. And then there was the fact that the knife had gone so easily through the wall. I knew how hard dry wall was to break. Especially with all that glue and wallpaper over it. 

When I was seven, I’d gotten angry at my parents for not looking at me straightly, and so I’d run around throwing myself at the wall. It hadn’t even barely made a noise then.

I sat there on my bed, mustering up the courage to confront the damage I had done. It took me what seemed like years, but finally I did it.

I walked down the stairs at a pace that made slugs look lightning fast. I reached the bottom, all the time wishing I were back at the top. As my vision swam I caught glimpses of my laughing mother and the little boy Daniel. I wished I were there, instead of here.

Reaching the kitchen, I picked up the small butter knife and brought it to the kitchen, doing all I could to postpone going back into the dining room.

But, when I couldn’t put it off any longer, I walked up to the wall, hands trembling. I looked at the tear. Small really, but straight through. Not what I thought it would be at all. I had thought that it would go through the paper and nothing else. But it was straight through the wall too.

Straight through. As if there was no wall behind the paper. My mother had always been in love with this wall paper. She wanted me to stay away from the walls, never press on them, never run your hands along the walls, even though some of my friends did.

I looked at the small wound in the wall. I was curious now. Was there some secret to my house that only I now knew about? With trembling fingers, I wiggled my finger in the hole. There was a very shallow gap behind it, almost like… a door frame.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter two

 

I pushed my finger harder to find that there was a door behind the paper. That was the point when I broke. I stopped thinking. I tore at the paper. It came off easily, as if it weren’t glued to anything. And it wasn’t.

As I tore back the paper, a door leered out at me, seeming to glare me away. But I pressed forward. All I could think about was what on earth is behind this door? I now understood why Mom was always so paranoid about the wallpaper. She knew. She knew and she hadn’t told me. Had she even told Dad?

I tried the knob. It was locked. No. It can’t be locked. It would have ruined everything if only the door had been locked. That’s all it would have taken for me never to…

I tried the door again, harder this time. It squeaked and whined, but finally I realized it was only stuck. I gave it one big push and it creaked open, revealing a room resembling a large closet.

A closet big enough for a small boy’s room. The place was a mess, clothes every where, toys strewn across the floor. A little rattle lay in the small blue bed across the room. Not just a rattle, I realized, The rattle. His rattle. Daniel’s rattle.  Blue, white, round, noisy. His exact thoughts. I picked it up, holding it tightly in my cold hands. It made them feel warmer just to know that at least this boy had been happy, well cared for.

He had lots of clothes, ranging from newborn to a young toddler. I picked some of them up, but it felt eerie to make contact with the things that had been locked away for so long.

I looked around even more. Apart from the things that seemed to be Daniels, there were items too, newspaper clippings, website links, times, dates, tv showings, things that no toddler would be interested in. But there were also pictures. Everywhere. In albums, in broken frames, on the floor, on the wall… everywhere.

I stared at them in amazement. I saw Daniel at a park, on the swings. I looked at him laughing in his mother’s—my mothers—arms. I could see him at his first birthday party, eating the candles that had been blown out for him. But the odd thing was, there were no pictures where he looked a day over three.

What happened to him? I asked myself. Why isn’t he here? I looked at more of the pictures. They looked just like the ones of me and my parents, just without me in them, and in different settings.

I picked up a newspaper clipping. I started to read. And that was when it started to all come together… and scare me.

Two year old boy, Daniel Marks, MISSING. Disappeared April 12, this year. I figured it out. He was two years old, I’m twelve… It was the year I was born… 1993.

Was last seen in Hull Park, Virginia. Hull Park. That was where my mother and father had moved from. My mother and father… They’d be back soon.

I grabbed some of the website links and took them upstairs to my parents’ bedroom. There I sat down at the computer and opened the websites indicated. They all said the same things. Boy missing, last seen, date… but there was something new.

They added that three years ago he was seen in Washington D.C. Washington D.C. I thought. It was pretty far away, but not far enough that I couldn’t make in a month or two.

By then, my mind was subconsciously made up. I had to leave. I had to get out of here. I ran upstairs to my room, the door to Daniel’s closet hanging open forlornly behind me.

My parents would be back any minute now. I would have to leave. Go. Where? Anywhere but here. I couldn’t stay: my parents would be murderous. They were happy with Daniel, happy like they had never been with me. And if I knew my parents they wouldn’t want me to know about it.

But… and the question was, did I know my parents? Until today I thought I did. Not anymore. I kept on upstairs. I was seeing red now. How could they keep something like that from me? Now I knew: Not again. They couldn’t have a little boy because they already had tried. And it didn’t work out very well.

I started to cry. I cried my way into my room, slamming the door shut and locking the bolt. I threw open my drawers and closet. I grabbed a backpack, stuffing it full of jeans, sweaters, and underwear. I put in a few hair ties and a hairbrush, just to be sure, and an extensive first aid kit.

I went back downstairs, avoiding Daniel’s closet, I ran to the kitchen. Throwing open the cabinets I grabbed everything that I knew I could eat without cooking it. Bread, nutella, and also some fruit and dairy from the fridge. My parents would notice I was gone, but it didn’t matter. They were morning Daniel. They wouldn’t care that I was gone.

I stood at the door to Daniel’s closet, grabbing a few of the items. I took the blue rattle, a picture of him and my parents, and a few newspaper articles. I also put in some pictures of me and my parents, just to make sure I had solid proof.

I turned around to look at the house one last time. Goodbye. I told it. I love you, but I can’t stay here. I can’t. Then I realized. Dinah. I couldn’t leave her, they would throw her out.

I called her, and she came running. I scooped her up in my hand, (she was tiny then, able to fit in my hand) and put her gently into my pocket. I added some food and away we went, not even looking back.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter three

 

I walked for what seemed like hours. I never ran into my father’s gray-ish Volvo, even though I hid from every car that passed me. I walked along the interstate, checking my parents’ map that I had brought along every now and then. I was headed towards Daniel. I was headed towards D.C.