CHAPTER 3

The Physics assignment turned out to be a workload. Not to mention the notes. It was killing my right hand. Magnetic flux, electrical flux, resistor, capacitor, inductor—

I almost finalize my future major in uni right there and then: English major. A bit too boring for my taste, but at least I’d deal with no complicated formulas or annoying diagrams. Or maybe I should just choose Psychology. Maybe Mr. Zimmerman would turn crazy by his own teachings and needed counseling.

That’d be hilarious.

My eyelids felt heavy, and by the time I decided to take a look at the clock, I found that five hours had passed. Damn. Stretching out my stiff limbs, I wondered where Jamie was going out with Nick this time. I hadn’t asked, because I was afraid she’d drag me as their third wheel. She did that sometimes.

I had these druggie-look-alike heavy bags under my eyes the next day at school.

Another set of notes. Assignments. Notes. Assignments.

God. It was only the second day of school. I couldn’t believe the school would really torture us this way.

People who passed me in the hallways of the school scrambled out of my way when I walked to my lockers. I must have poured off a lethal aura around myself. I didn’t know how they could all be so carefree; I sure felt like life as a student was already killing me enough, and that was still without all the drama.

Jamie hung out with her old friend and Nick. I told them I’d be in the library.

Our school had a very limited range of books. Any research I needed to do, I almost always did it online—not because I was too lazy to go through the pages, but because I couldn’t possibly find any Faraday theorems in the magazines section, classics section, or the encyclopedia section. The latest magazines were 80’s edition. The classic collection would be very helpful if the pages weren’t so ancient yellowish that the words were blurred together. Not to mention the ones with ripped out pages. I’ve found, in one awkward occasion, that the book Julius Caesar on the lower shelf is actually only Julius Caesar in the cover and a copy of some new trashy fiction titled One Night with My Biker Billionaire Stepbrother. Seriously. And the encyclopedia section consisted of no encyclopedias visible, but instead, a bunch of Latin books and Latin dictionaries. Which might have been very useful if only our school had a Latin class or if the dictionaries were not all Latin-Latin.

Inside the library, I worked on my paper in front of one of the computers. The computer, too, was ancient. It had the big cube-shaped monitor people used to use before flat-screens came into invention. I jotted down the information I needed and tried to figure out a problem to solve as an example to the material.

When I woke up at the ringing of the bell, I hit my head on ancient monitor and found that my drool was all over the keyboard. I must have been more tired than I thought. In the clumsy attempt to wipe it, I bumped into my papers and they all went down scattered on the floor.

I reached out to take them, but someone had already gotten there first, scooping the papers in one swift motion and handed them to me.

Groggy, I rubbed my still-blurred eyes and took it from the guy. “Thanks.”

The guy nodded and turned away. It was only after I had the papers slipped back into my file that I realized who the guy had been. The realization made me drop all my papers back to the floor, but I didn’t care. I went after the guy, searching the whole the library even, but he was already gone. Dejected, I went back to where I’d left the mess of papers all over the floor and arranged them.

The mystery guy remained a mystery

I went home looking like half-a-zombie. Jamie asked if I wanted to take a nap, but I refused. I had shifts at the Ollie’s. They were tiring, but sometimes they did a good job taking away my mind from the stacks of assignments.

Around four, someone called out my name.

I scrambled in hurry to take another order—and was surprised when I saw that it was Jamie’s friend Ingrid, and a few of the school cheerleaders.

“Hi, Elena!” Ingrid piped up.

“Hey,” I greeted back shyly. “Uh, so…what do you guys want to order?”

“What’s good around here?” Ingrid asked.

I rattled off the special menus today, including Ollie’s bests.

“Okay, I’ll have the Bolognese spaghetti, please.”

“Do you have sea-food?”

I blinked and turned to the girl who’d just spoken. Sylvie Hamilton, the head cheerleader, smiled widely. Beside her, Amy and Vero were sitting with pissed-off expressions. I’d never liked them, but Sylvie had never been anything but nice to me.

“Well…we have peppered salmon steak, tuna in tortilla, and regular fish n’ chips. And lobster, of course.”

“I think I’ll take the salmon steak and the fish n’ chips.”

Amy shot her a look. “I thought you were on diet!”

Sylvie smiled sheepishly. “Well, it’s just today.”

Vero snorted. “You’d always loved fishes.”

I cleared my throat. “What about you two?”

“Orange juice,” Amy said. “No extra sugar.”

“Same,” Vero said.

I repeated their orders and put on a wide smile. “Anything else?”

“That’s all for me,” Ingrid said. “Thanks.”

They all nodded. But just as I was about to turn away Sylvie called my name again.

“Yes?”

“Uh,” Sylvie said, sheepishly, “make the salmon steak two, please.”

Her friends blinked in shock. I wrote her order and saluted her with a wink.

“Say hi to Jamie for me!” Ingrid called as I went to the kitchens.

Seven p.m. was the busy time.

Ollie’s was crowded with diners. I wished I had eight hands, like octopus. My always occupied two hands couldn’t seem to ever be enough. An order here, a bill there. A dirty table here, an empty ketchup bottle there.

But it’s what I wanted to do. And I got the tips, which were a handful if my smile was just wide enough.

At nine we were closing up. Most who had hung around for the free wi-fi had gone home. The other waiters had also gone home, having finished their shifts.

When I was wiping the tables, someone rang the counter bell.

“We’re closed,” I said, not looking up.

A shadow fell over me. “Not even a cup of coffee left?”

I looked up. A man in black jacket and hat smiled down at me. The hat cast a slight shadow over the top half of his face, but the row of teeth he showed made my spine shiver in apprehension. I blinked, telling myself that I was being irrational.

“Sorry,” I said in what I hoped was a calm voice. The Cadwells are just upstairs, I told myself.  “But the cook has gone home.”

“And I suppose you can’t even make a cup of coffee?”

I studied him. I took a deep breath. “Henry!” I yelled as loud as I could. “Are you still there? Someone needs a cup of coffee!” I mustered up a smile at the stranger. “Henry is a backup cook. Maybe he’ll be able to make one for you.”

It was a lie, of course. No man named Henry worked at Ollie’s.

The man took three strides toward me. I stepped back, my lower back hitting the corner of a table. A glistening metal flashed in the dim light. It all happened so fast. “Henry, hur—”

I hadn’t even finished the sentence when he plowed down the knife on me. I ducked to my left, faster than I thought I could, and the metal hit the side of my arm in a deep gash. I gasped at the sudden, searing pain. I felt my knees going weak, my good arm trying to cover my injured one as I fell, whimpering. The man came at me again, but my legs lashed out, kicking his knees.

I heard footsteps from the stairs. The man must have too, for he glanced once at the stairs, then at me. His hat had fallen off. A deep raised scar ran from his temple across his face. Someone screamed. He grabbed his hat and went away.

My arm burned. The pain felt worse and worse as a pair of legs and a face came into my view. I couldn’t seem to catch my breath.

The blackness swallowed me in.

I saw their shadows before I saw the flames. They were coming from every side of the house, except for the backyard.

And then the torches lit the house.

The house looked like a traditional East-Asian home. There was a scroll of paper written with an archaic calligraphy. Most of the walls were made of wood and oil papers. Panic clawed at my throat, at my chest. The smell hit me hard, the smoke invading my breath…

I was out of the house.

I took one last look at the burning house. A deep sorrow crashed through me, a wave of sadness like a storm. I almost choked on my own breath, and it wasn’t because of the smoke. Someone stood in front of me, his back to me. I followed him out of the fire, deep into the woods until the sounds dimmed out. It was a long, long walk. And it got colder. Colder and darker into the woods, surrounded by the tall trees and the scent of ashes still trailing behind the night—

It was too bright when I opened my eyes, and for a second I thought I was in the fire again.

I waited until my eyes adjusted to the lights, and I realized that the lights were fluorescent white instead of licking orange flames. I blinked my eyes twice. I had never had that dream before. My dreams were usually of some peaceful sights of a lake, breezy woods, and warm sunlight.

“Elena?”

I turned to see Mr. Cadwell. He was wearing his worn brown duster, his face drawn and exhausted. I got a flash of déjà vu. This was also how we had met for the first time.

The flash of memory wasn’t much, really. I had been too groggy in the pain meds when I had woken up a few years ago in the ER of the local hospital. The voices around me had been buzzing noises at first, and my vision had been even more terrible than it was now. The bits and pieces I had actually been able to catch were just short sentences like, “Yes, it’s plugged.” And, “Sign these papers.” And some more words that had sounded so strange to me at first. And then the voices had gotten louder and clearer, and I heard Mr. Cadwell saying, “Don’t worry, she’ll be in good hands now.”

I’d sometimes wonder why the Cadwells wanted to take me in. I was a big mess. Some amnesiac only forgot pieces of events in his or her life, but I even forgot the basic knowledge as simple as how to play a movie inside a DVD. Although the Ollie’s wasn’t their only business, the Cadwells also weren’t a super wealthy billionaire, to my knowing. My best guess was that Mr. Cadwell had taken a look at how young I was, the same age as his own daughter. Maybe that was why.

I blinked at him a few times to clear out the haze of my memories.

“I’m in a hospital?” My voice sounded cracked. I tried to clear my throat, but it was too dry.

“Yes.”

I closed my eyes, remembering what had happened. So it must have been real. I’d hoped it was a dream, like the fire. I blinked and looked at my bandaged arm. I barely felt a thing now.

“Seven stitches. A shot of tetanus.”

“Did they catch him?”

“No.” A pause. “I’m sorry.”

“How much pain med did they give me?”

“Enough for you to stop trashing like you did. It must have hurt a lot.”

“Where’s Jamie?”

“Giving information to the cops about the intruder’s description.”

I let my head sink into the headrest. “I’m so sorry. I don’t want to bring trouble to your home.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Elena,” Mr. Cadwell said. “I should have been a better ward. It’s my fault that you get hurt under my roof.”

Before we could argue any further, Jamie walked in.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey.”

“They’re going to ask you about the psycho. They already know you’re awake.”

“That fast?” Mr. Cadwell asked.

“We heard you talking. Officer Sanders said he wanted to speak to her alone, Dad.”

Mr. Cadwell looked at me. “Are you okay with that?”

“Superb,” I said, trying to conjure a smile.

With some hesitation and a glance back, they both left me and let the cop in.

A man in uniform came in. He had dark blonde hair and a kind face. Jamie sometimes said he looked like an older version of Captain America. He looked so different from Armand that I couldn’t understand how the two of them could be related at all, but they were. He’s his father.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, out of the sake of politeness.

“Well enough to answer your questions,” I said.

“Alright.” He pulled himself a seat beside my bed and handed me a glass of water.

“Thanks.” I drank the water and put it on the other bedside with my good arm.

“Do you remember his face?”

“It’s covered by his hat.” I pressed my lips. “Wait. He’s got a big scar from his temple to his jaw. Dark hair, I think, but the light was too dim to tell.”

“His height? Skin color?”

“Not sure at all about skin color, but he’s taller than me. I couldn’t tell for sure, with his hat.”

“How did he come in?”

“The front door. Rang a bell, asked for a cup of coffee. I told him we were closed. He struck suddenly with a knife, tried to stab me. I ducked, it slashed my arm. I blacked out.”

“How did the slash feel like?”

I shot the officer a bewildered look. “Hurt, of course.”

“I mean, did it feel different than usual cut? Did you feel…sick?”

I grimaced. “How does that have anything to do with my case? It’s just gash, okay? A psycho stranger cut me. I overreacted by blacking out. Couldn’t stand the pain of a single cut like the baby I am. Satisfied?”

I expected the officer to admonish me for my cross words, but he only eyed me strangely. “You don’t know?” he asked.

“Know what?”

“The man left the knife. They found it laced with arsenic.”

“I was poisoned?”

Officer Sanders shook his head. “No, Elena. The doctor didn’t find any arsenic in your bloodstream. Luckily.”

“How—”

“No one knows. You’re just lucky.”

Thanks for reading! Vote or comment...please? :)