Lost (24 page)

“She’s about to walk!” Mom said. “This is my favorite one. Turn it up.”

Dad cranked up the volume, and, in the video, Mom clapped and cooed at me. “
Come on, baby. Come to Mama
,” she said. I looked around skeptically and wobbled over to her.

We all cheered on the sofa, and I caught my new tears without them noticing. Dad chose one of his favorites next. I was five. I had to admit, I was very cute.

“
Do you remember what to say
?” Dad asked from behind the camera. I nodded, smiling big, then bolted up the stairs. Dad caught up with me as I knocked on a door. “
Come in
,” Mom said. I struggled with the doorknob, juggling a red heart made of construction paper in my hands. Dad opened it for me. “
Aww
. Hey, cutie
.”

I jumped on her bed then looked back at the camera, then back to Mom. “
Daddy wants to know if you will be his
balentine
.”

“
Vvvvalentine
,” Dad corrected, at the door.

Mom chuckled. “
Tell him I already have one
.” She tickled me and planted a million kisses on my face.

“
Mama, is Daddy your boyfriend
?” I asked.

We laughed on the sofa. I was the loudest. Mom looked over to me and held her arms open. I crawled to her and joined their snuggle. “I missed you,” she whispered against my hair.

“Missed you too.”

We focused on the incredibly cute question I’d asked in the video. “
Yes, I am
,” Dad said.

“
Will I have a boyfriend
?” I asked.

They stopped laughing, on the sofa and in the movie, as I waited for an answer. “
Nope. I won’t allow it
,” Dad said, bringing the camera closer. Mom chuckled lightly and pretended that the heart I’d scribbled on was a masterpiece.

On the sofa in the present, she tightened her arms around me. “Still okay?” she whispered.

“Yeah,” I said, not understanding why I wouldn’t be.

This life was amazing.

I wished I had the memories, but watching them was almost as good. It felt real. I’d been completely right in using the portal. I’d put them back together and erased St. Catalina completely. I was never Leah. Never depressed.
Never alone.
There was no Kamon here. No July 4
^th
I’d kill her on.

It was a normal night. I’d bet there was a barbecue and fireworks show that my friends were at that I’d been banned from. I cringed a little. When summer was over, I’d probably have to go to high school. I doubted I had skipped my last year like I’d done in my old life.

Around ten, they started yawning excessively and stretching. It seemed like that was parent for:
we’re about to go be disgusting
.

“Goodnight, baby,” Mom said. “Don’t stay up with Snowflake too long.”

“Who?” I asked.

They turned to me slowly,
brows
tight and mouths open. “Snowflake,
your bestest
friend on the planet, the big white horse in the stable,” Mom said. “Remember her?”

I laughed, trying to cover that up. “Of course. Snowflake. Sure. I won’t stay up too late.”

Figuring
good
‘ole Snowflake was outside, I looked around for a door. I didn’t see one in the living room. I ran to the kitchen. There wasn’t one in there either.

“What are you doing, kid?” Dad asked.

“Um … playing around before going outside?” I suggested.

Mom screamed, a screech that stalled my heart and nearly shattered my eardrums.

“Stop!” She ran through the living room towards me, and Dad caught her by her waist. “Why are you trying to go outside
?!
”

“Uh … to see Snowflake?” I said, clueless and frightened.

“Lydia,
breathe
. Come on, honey. Just relax.” Dad held Mom as she squirmed in his arms, crying and glaring at me. “Christine, that wasn’t funny. Apologize to your mother.”

“I’m … sorry?”

Dad shook his head at me, disappointment seeping from his eyes. He picked Mom up like a baby and carried her out of the room.

Maybe Mom had a weird thing about doors. Or maybe I’d freaked her out by not knowing where to find Snowflake. But that scream alluded to there being more behind it. Much more.

Instead of finding Snowflake, I ran upstairs, listening for them so I could apologize for upsetting her.

The door I’d gone into on the Valentine video was cracked open.

“I’ll talk to her,” Dad said. I could hear her sniffling from out here.

“She hates me. She’s been pretending all night just to do this. Just to hurt me. I didn’t tell you what she did earlier. She was in the pool,
naked
, doing the dead body thing. I did what you said. I didn’t react. But she yanked a reaction out of me this time. I guess that’s what she wanted.”

This version of Mom was a liar. I wasn’t naked in the pool. The wet clothes I’d taken off were still on the floor in my room. Dad sighed, and I walked in slowly.

“Mom,” I said, crawling in bed next to her. “I’m sorry. The Snowflake thing, whatever I did. I’m really sorry.”

I lifted her arm and forced myself to her side.

“You know how I feel about it,” she whispered, her voice breaking twice. “Please don’t do that again.”

I agreed, but I didn’t know what I was agreeing to. How could looking for doors be off limits? Did I only use powers to get out of the house?

And I’d asked a hell of a lot of questions and hadn’t been led to one single answer.

“Tell me what I need to do to make you happy,” I said. “I know you’ve probably said it a lot, but tell me what I shouldn’t do, and I’ll listen.”

She sat up in bed and grabbed my hands. “It would be nice if you cleaned your room.” I smiled. That one made sense, a normal mother-daughter problem. “Don’t go in the pool without asking.” Okay, that one was stranger, but I understood. Safety first. “And please, baby, please stop trying to leave. Just stop with the escape plots. It kills me. Please.”

I didn’t know what to say. Why would a seventeen-year-old need to escape from the house? Why couldn’t I leave?

She and Dad were crying so I knew it was bigger than being grounded and missing a 4
^th
of July barbecue. I stayed in their room all night, waiting for the courage to ask for an explanation. When that courage didn’t come, I slipped out of their bed. Dad pulled Mom closer in his sleep, an instinctual movement, both of them snoring.

I roamed around our quiet home, following the long and twisting hallways to new parts of the house. I started opening doors, unlocking the mysteries of this life. We had an art studio with my grandmother’s paintings adorning the walls.
Across the hall, a bowling alley with an arcade.
We were loaded, richer than rich.

I opened the
next door
and stepped into a photographer’s darkroom. Pictures dangled from strings around the room and trays of water covered the countertops. I walked towards light peeking under a door in the back. It led to a gallery.

This must have been Dad’s hobby. Most of the pictures were of Mom.
In the kitchen, clipping her toenails, and painfully dragging a comb through my hair as a child.
All framed and on the wall like art.

He’d made a section just for me in the gallery. This time, I curbed my enthusiasm over my baby pictures and stared at them in a way I hadn’t before.

Whether I was in Mom’s arms or Dad’s, we were always in the house. I unhooked a picture of me blowing out seven candles on a cake from the wall. My parents were the only guests at my party.

I found one of me on a white horse. Snowflake, I assumed. I was hugging her like she was my only companion. A death grip, but happy.

I gasped. Snowflake’s stable was indoors, probably somewhere in this house.

That hall turned into another long one with scribbles on the walls and hopscotch boards painted on the floor. It obviously belonged to me. It had three large rooms – one full of my artwork, done with much less skill than I had in my old life. The next was a playroom with a climbable wall. I walked into the last room on the hall, and the air in my lungs rushed out.

Inside, I saw a fully decorated classroom with a chalkboard lined with hand drawn alphabets, foam planets hanging from the ceiling, and one, lonely desk in the middle of the floor.

I didn’t go to school, not a normal one. They’d even hung my work around the room – math problems and stories I’d written about Queen Mommy and King Daddy. I had to leave the classroom to breathe again.

“We live in hiding,” I finally admitted. That was why she’d screamed when I’d mentioned going outside. We probably didn’t exist outside of this house, outside of each other. And from the look of things, I wasn’t happy living this way. I stayed in my disgusting room, destroying clothes and trying to escape.

I went down to the living room and watched the videos they didn’t care to see, the unhappy me.

“
Dad, stop being lame
,” I said when he zoomed in on me marking on the walls in my room. I must’ve been fifteen or so. “
Get out
.” My tone was harsh. He lowered the camera and closed my door. I felt awful for hurting his feelings, but … at that point, I’d been in the house with them for fifteen years. I was sure this had gotten old.

“
Pumpkin pie
,” Dad said on the next video. “
It’s your 16
^th
birthday. You can’t be sad on your birthday
.” I picked up my cake and tossed it off the table, splattering icing everywhere. Mom shook her head and bent down to clean it.

“
Baby, you’re one year older. Let’s just celebrate
,” she said.

“
I’m one year closer to death. Let’s not
,” I said. Pressing through the awful birthday party, Mom and Dad put a box in front of me. I knocked that off the table too. “
I want to talk about college,” I said. “I want to go
.”

“
No, baby. I’m sorry. You can’t
,” Mom said. I stormed away from the table and Dad turned off the video.

Wonderful.

My parents and I were fighting because I wanted to leave the house we were boarded up in. I wiped the tears from my face. I didn’t deserve to cry. I’d done this. I just had to make it work. Being here with my parents would have to be enough.

I closed my eyes and tried to move myself to my room. I didn’t budge.

Mom must have been more careful with the powers with Dad here to look after her. So I walked to my room and slaved in there for an eternity, scrubbing and unearthing years of clutter.

I found two pairs of jeans that I hadn’t ruined and a few shirts that still looked like shirts. I piled the rest of the grungy clothes outside of the door. I wanted to take them to the trash, but something told me we didn’t have a normal system for that.

I peeked under the bed and groaned. There was another civilization under there to tackle. I pushed the bundle of more trash and tattered clothes to the middle of the now clear floor. I stacked ten dirty plates and a cabinet full of sticky cups.

Amidst the junk, I found a notebook, and I flipped through it.

“This must be a journal,” I said.

I’d written in the tiniest script possible. I squinted and brought it closer to my eyes.

I don’t know who Julian is, but Mom sure cries a lot about him. This is the third night I’ve listened outside of their door. Mom is not okay. She’s always sad. I don’t know how I have gone thirteen years without seeing this. I know she gets sick and Dad has to take care of her, but now I’m starting to think she’s not really sick. Not physically sick, anyway. I just don’t understand why we can’t leave or when I’ll get to meet other people and have fun like they do on the movies. And every time I ask, they get so quiet
.

That was the happiest I was in any of the entries. I could feel my decline into desperation for another life as I read through the notebook, growing angrier by the day. I’d uncovered the Julian mystery by eavesdropping. Mistakenly, I thought Mom was being dramatic about him and the other name she’d mention in secret – Kamon.

I tucked the notebook under the mattress. I couldn’t be this girl anymore. Mom was right about them, and if we’d been here for years, Julian could be out there, still obsessed with her.

I sorted through the rest of the pile and used an old shirt to free the colonies of dust around the room. It smelled better already. With everything neat and tidy, Sophia’s necklace seemed to glow on my bed, wrong and out of place in this life. I tucked it under my pillow, not ready to throw it out, but knowing I had to be stronger than this.
Stronger than giving up and breaking my parents up again.

It was my fault the first time, and if not for me now, they would probably be worry-free in this house. I sighed. I was an accidental complication in any life.

It felt like I’d only slept for a brief moment. Mom tapped my shoulder and sang my name.

“Good morning,” I said. She gestured her disbelief about my clean room. “Do you like it?”

“I love it, baby.” I pushed over in bed and made her a space. “I’m starting to think I’m dreaming.” I fit so naturally and easily next to her. It made me want to trust my choice to change the past. And she smelled the same, like oranges, like calm.
Like my mother.

“Why are you up so early?” I asked. My room was dark, only lit by the light glinting in from the hall.

“It’s almost ten, baby.” I craned my neck, looking for a window, for light. I didn’t find one. I didn’t have a window, because this wasn’t a normal house.

It was always night in here.

Lying here with Mom would have to eclipse that. I loved that she wasn’t in a rush to get anywhere. She wasn’t famous. She wasn’t Lydia Shaw; I’d killed her on the 4
^th
.

I smiled at her hands, not accustomed to seeing a diamond there.

“I love your ring,” I said, rubbing a finger across it. It had to be three carats or more. And because I wasn’t psychic, that was only a guess.

“Thanks. I know it may not seem like it, but it does bother me that it won’t be yours one day.
Like an official ring from a man.
I know we fight about it, and I’m really sorry. I can’t imagine what that must feel like to know.”

So Mom and I fought about guys.
Or really, the fact that I would never meet one.
I shivered. My parents never expected me to get married and leave.

But it was my life now.

“I’m fine,” I whispered. “Did you eat breakfast?”

“Dad ran out of eggs so I had to think him up some. Now I’m exhausted. He’s going to bring the food to us.”

So Mom still had powers but hadn’t taught me. It was how we ate. What would happen if we didn’t have her? We’d starve to death?

Mom giggled and kissed my hand. “Do you remember that time when you spit out my food and said it didn’t taste real?” I smiled, ready to pretend, but … a memory formed – me at a table in my pajamas and Mom manifesting a plate of food.

I remembered jumping in my chair, surprised by her powers, and then shoveling eggs into my mouth. I let them dribble back out to the plate. My parents laughed, and Dad fired up the stove to make me a real breakfast, the typical way.

I remembered something from this life and it felt as real as any memory from St. Catalina or my life with Nate.

Dad brought our breakfast in and flipped on the lights in my room. “Whoa, kid. This is great.” He sat on my bed. We ate there and talked about how my room had slowly turned into a dumpster. Strangely, those memories didn’t feel foreign either.

“Poor Snowflake is not used to seeing you this late,” Dad said as he disgustingly brushed his hand across Mom’s thigh.

That seemed like it was code for:
Get lost, Christine
. I was suddenly upset and tired of them doing that to me, using Snowflake to occupy me when they wanted to be alone.

Wait … I couldn’t be upset with them. This was my first morning here.
I
wasn’t really fighting with them. I shook off the unfounded anger and got out of bed. They followed me out of my room.

At the end of the hall, I made a sharp and deliberate left, like I knew my way around better than yesterday.

They went right.

“See you later, baby,” Mom said.

“Okay,” I said.

Drawings of a white horse and a stick figure with curly hair covered the walls down the rest of the hall. Paper snowflakes dangled from the ceiling, guiding me to her stable. I vaguely remembered Dad helping me hang them. When I came to a glass door, memories bombarded me. Strong ones. Happy ones.

I saw Mom holding my hand and walking me down the hall. I was only as tall as her waist. “
Remember when you asked why Daddy was making all that noise by your room
?” she’d asked, in front of the glass door I was standing in front of in the present. It had a big yellow bow on it. “
He went out into the dangerous world and brought you back something wonderful
.”

“
He went out there with the monsters
?” I’d asked.

“
Yep, just for you
.”

I remembered bursting through the doors when I heard the horse. Dad was inside with her, brushing her hair.

I snapped out of the memory and opened the door. The floor was covered in sand and hay. The majestic and stunning white horse was out of her stall, sitting gracefully in the corner. I had a feeling I always left her out.

“Her house is too cramped,” I whispered, remembering when I’d told Mom
that years
ago.

Like an old friend welcoming me to her home, she rose to her legs and met me in the middle of the stable. I smiled, my heart fluttering. I was in love with this horse.

The memory of when I got her swept me up again.

“
Happy Birthday, pumpkin
,” Dad said. “
You’ve been asking for a pet for years. We think eight is old enough to take care of one
.”

I screamed and Mom shushed me. “
You have to be calm around her. If she hurts you, I can’t be held responsible
-”

“
She won’t hurt her, baby
,” Dad cut in. “
The guy said she had a gentle spirit
.” Completely unafraid I rubbed my new horse and kissed her nose. “
What’s her name
?” he asked.

“
Snowflake
!” I yelled.

They laughed, and Dad taught me how to mount her and hold myself up. I was a natural and rode her until they made me get down.

Back in the present, Snowflake followed me into her stall, and I paused, realizing that the memories meant this life was becoming permanent. Sophia had said that I would need to remember who’d given me the necklace for the wish to work. I guessed my other memories would fade, and soon, the life I’d given up would be forgotten, as though it never happened.

“That’s what I wanted,” I said, trying to convince myself of it. I opened the cabinet, suddenly remembering where I stored her food. She mostly ate the feed Mom manifested for her, but I usually snuck her treats from the kitchen. Red apples were her favorite.

Snowflake liked to munch slowly all day. I only pretended to feed her on a schedule to disappear for a while without being questioned and followed.