Something Special - REVISED

Author: Lil-Hellraiser (originally)/Little Yellow Tiki Hut

YES, WE ARE THE SAME PERSON.

I am not ripping this story off of Lil-Hellraiser. She is me. I am her. I have created a new account. THANK YOU FOR UNDERSTANDING.

Disclaimer: I own nothing that you recognize from the books, or any of the musical pieces mentioned in this composition. Or the iPod.

Author's Note: This is Little Yellow Tiki Hut saying welcome to the adventure! I began this story in the year 2003 and now with more English classes under my belt, the experience of age, and a new screen name, I will commence Operation Revision. Have at it!

"Ouch!"

Spinning around, I laughed aloud when I saw my best friend, Dana, sprawled out over the slippery sidewalk, books lying on the dying grass next to her. It was October, and an early frost coated the area, making the ground crunchy and speckled with white. It also happened to make sidewalks dangerous turf.

She smiled gratefully as I reached out my chilled hands and pulled her up from the ice-ridden path, snow beginning to fall softly in our hair.

"Geez, I hate this weather!" She muttered angrily as she slipped once more and grabbed my shoulder for support. I smiled brightly.

"I like it, it's calming," I said. Of course, I wasn't one to talk; dear little me hardly ever slipped and fell while Dana seemed to slip and fall multiple times a day with or without ice. That's only because she is the clumsiest person in the world – no lie. She's always tripping down and up the stairs at school, dropping stuff, and falling. Part of me wished that we had a system worked out to prevent accidents, but hey, if it happens, it happens.

"Calming my ass." She said, now walking slowly alongside me. "It's horrible. I'm cold and I'm sore and I'm cold."

"You said that already," I said offhandedly. She gave me a snotty frown.

"Redheads always have to be the instigators," She muttered, smiling lopsidedly when I huffed and instinctively tugged on my long, red hair.

The wind changed, blowing ferociously against my back and my hair flared out all over the place. Dana, whose hair was currently tied up, snorted in amusement while I rushed to pull my hair back into place with my hand. As the wind grew lighter, I released my hair and pulled out my iPod. As soon as I pressed play and slipped my ear buds in, the raunchy, bold beat of AC/DC drifted through my head.

Without realizing it, I had begun to sing along with Bon Scott to "Jailbreak". Music has, and probably always will be my life. Beethoven, AC/DC, The Spice Girls – okay, they're pushing it – it was all great to me. I could play piano and harp well, and liked singing in school musicals. I didn't have the voice of an angel, no, but I wasn't completely terrible. I had composed many songs on the piano, and always enjoyed fast, emotional pieces such as Fur Elise and Canon. I could play the trap set in the school concerts, and I was trying to learn to play guitar but so far, it was more challenging than I thought it would be. Some of my friends even decided to take up playing an instrument, with my brilliant instruction, and in some cases, I succeeded in teaching them everything there was to know. Take Dana, for example: She's unusually talented, dare I say gifted when it comes to drums. But she always manages to knock over the tambourines or something and sometimes I don't want her to lay a hand on my trap set.

We neared my ranch-style home on the corner and slowed to a stop on the sidewalk. I put my ear buds away and turned to Dana, preparing to thank her for the walk and ask if she remembered our math homework (because I sure as hell didn't). She spoke first.

"Take care of them, okay?" She said, nodding towards the house. I knew what she meant, and a stone simultaneously dropped into my stomach.

I pulled her into a hug, the kind of hug only best friends can share together, and then she pivoted and began the three block trek to her house.

I watched her retreating form even after she had rounded a corner, disappearing from my sight, and thanked God that she was such a good friend.

I entered my house quietly and slipped my frosty shoes off. The curtains were half-drawn, casting shadows on the floor and all I could hear was the wind howling against the foundation, much worse than it had been ten or so minutes ago.

"Mom?" I called, unsure of where she might be. Dark red curls appeared, and my mother was embracing me in a loose, but warm hug. If you had taken a picture of my mother and me side by side, you could probably not tell who was who. We both had the same dark red hair, same cinnamon eyes, and same curvy figure. Our voices were similar, and the only things extremely different about us were our heights. Mom had always been very tall, almost as tall as my dad. She was about 5'10, and I was only 5'3, not too short for being thirteen, but certainly not as tall as her. Some people actually mistook us for twin sisters – mom has always looked young.

Her eyes sparkled with untold joy as she pulled away from me. Mom always had a brilliant innocence in her eyes, however older she became. There were no wrinkles on her skin, no marks on her face. She was so beautiful, even now, when her flawless face was bonier and paler than usual, and her cheeks were tinged with a red, flushed glow. Her body was skinnier, skinnier than I was, and she walked carefully, as if she were a delicate porcelain doll, as if one sudden move could break her clear in two.

Then the coughing came. Hard coughs which racked her body, hunching her over. I patted her back, eyes downcast, waiting for it to stop. The coughs had begun nearly two months prior, and no matter what doctors did, it never ceased. She clutched her chest tightly and willed her breathing back to normal, while I patiently waited. I was used to these coughing fits by now, as they happened several times every day. Sometimes at night I could hear her coughing and gasping, and tried to shut it out of my mind. It could be so haunting.

Slowly but surely, the coughing stopped and Mom straightened up, clearing her throat, breathing in loud shallow breaths. Then she turned to me, smiling, eyes watering up, but still happy. I don't think I ever envied her more than at that moment. It was as if her eyes retained all the beauty in the world.

"Sorry about that, Jo," She said, as if it were nothing more serious than the weather. I gave her a concerned look.

"Why don't you go lie down?" I suggested, hoping that she would so that I wouldn't have to worry about her right then.

"No," She said stubbornly. "I'm fine. When did you get so good at telling me what to do?"

I shrugged. "Grandma?"

"Ugh, that woman!" Mom groaned playfully. "No wonder, I knew you couldn't have gotten it from me." They didn't have an ideal mother-daughter relationship.

A slight smile graced my lips, and my eyes caught a small, sparkly item on the coffee table. A birthday card; I grinned. They hadn't forgotten. Mom followed my eyes and squeaked before bolting over and snatching it up.

"You never saw this!" She insisted, tucking it away in the drawer of the computer desk. "Your father would just kill me if he knew you saw that before tomorrow." She pressed her fingers to her lips and pointed to the ground, indicating that he was in the basement, right under our feet.

I made a face of comprehension and sidled over to the stairs, intending to see how he was doing. I found him reclining in an armchair reading The New York Times, the dedicated business man that he was.

"Yo!" I greeted as he turned a page. Upon recognizing me he smiled and straightened up in his chair. "Welcome home, Jolie." He said in his thick, deep voice. My father was born in Italy and had a natural accent from growing up there. I kissed his cheek as he tilted his head towards me and helped him stand. Dad swayed slightly and I was hit by a wave of fear. He couldn't be that sick…but yet here he was, only forty years old and already needing a cane to walk. I didn't understand it. My grandfather didn't need a cane yet, and God, he was almost seventy.

Maybe it's nerves. I thought, my hope waning. Stress, possibly. When I stretched my memory, I remembered the first time my mother had collapsed of exhaustion onto our living room floor from only walking down the driveway to get the mail. Since when does that ever happen to a thirty-seven year old woman? I had blamed it on dehydration or humidity then, but now I was quite certain that this was not the case. I could also recall the first time my father showed signs of an illness, when he tripped on a pair of shoes left in the hallway and broke a leg. He had been using a wheel chair for about six months, and then it was the cane ever since then. How could someone break their legs by tripping over shoes? I remembered wondering. I had witnessed his fall, and it hadn't been a very hard one. It was as if my parents were slowly growing older at the pace that dogs and cats did. They were becoming so fragile and tired.

Hearing more or my mother's strained hacking noises from up the stairs, I steadied Dad and reached for his cane. He playfully swatted away my hand, and I sighed. Ever since his accident he had insisted on not being treated like someone who couldn't take care of himself. Pride runs in the family.

As he ritually tapped the ground with the cane twice and ventured towards the stairs, I ran behind him in case he fell. He glanced back, irritated, but did not shoo me away. Sometimes he's smart and understands that safety overrides pride.

Pride is an issue. Besides Dana, only one other person knows of my parents' illnesses – Chase, my very dear male comrade. Not a boyfriend, mind you; I've only had one boyfriend before in my entire life. I've known Chase for the longest time, compared to Dana whom I only just got to know during the last school year. It's such a complicated issue to talk about to other people that I just never talk about it at all. Isn't bottling up your feelings a bad thing? Ah well. The point is, I'm a killer actress. It's so easy to lie to my friends and tell them I have a babysitting job or that I'm grounded for blowing off my chores – how could I explain that I'm taking care of my parents who have come down with some kind of crippling diseases that eighty year olds get?

Dad slowly ascended the stairs, his cane reaching out and helping him along. When he approached the ground floor and I saw that mom was holding out a hand to steady him, I retreated back down to the basement and into a little nook where we kept my piano. Sitting on the cushioned seat in front of it, I stretched out my fingers along the keys, silently rehearsing the music I was planning to play. When I was ready, Moonlight Sonata flowed from my fingertips and into the dim room, emphasizing the dreary atmosphere of the day and for some reason, it gave me a foreboding feeling. My heart began to twist.

At dinner that night, my parents pulled out a small box and handed it to me.

"We couldn't wait!" Mom squealed happily. I had specifically instructed them to not buy me gifts (money wasn't tight, but it wasn't there to burn), but nonetheless, I was pleased.

"I told you guys not to get me anything!" I pouted playfully, turning the box nimbly in my hands.

"We could always take it back," Dad suggested, lifting a hand to take the box back.

"No, no, I'll keep it…" I said quickly, curiosity getting the better of me. Carefully slipping the lid off the box, I sorted through the paper and promptly silenced, eyes growing round. Inside there was an antique ring, its silver band that criss-crossing and imitating ivy leaves. A jewel resembling a crystallized lily was centered at the top; diamonds were set all around it. Like my mother's eyes, the gleaming stones shone brightly and assuredly held all the colors of the world.

"…Are they real?" I asked stupidly, and then realized how greedy I must have sounded.

"I'm glad you asked," Dad said, peering from the ring, to me, and back. "It is very old, hundreds of years old. It was said to have come from a beautiful queen who crossed the seas, and when she died, the ring was forgotten. Pure silver and real diamonds."

I gasped, placing the ring back into the box and leaning into my chair, surprised. "No way," I breathed, moving my head closer to examine it. "That's really…wow."

Mom and Dad chuckled at my stupor, and were unprepared when I suddenly jumped up from the table and squished them both together in a gigantic hug. "Thank you so much!" I said in pure, uncontrollable joy. Mom smiled with those perfect, white, shiny teeth and rubbed my back. "I'm glad you like it," She said softly.

"We are very grateful to you, Jolie." Dad said, smiling. "You deserve far more than this for being so helpful. We would do anything for you."

I beamed and reached into the small box, extracted the ring, and placed it on my ring finger. A little small. I moved it to my index finger, which fit much better, and extended my hand slightly to gaze at it. I decided then and there that I would never take it off.

The howling winter wind beckoned at my window as I curled up in my heavy down comforter and tried to sleep. Every scrape of a tree branch against the house and creak in the floorboards seemed to be amplified by a hundred, and I felt like a small child hearing monsters go "bump" in the night. Eventually, sleep overtook me and I lapsed into dreams of warm sea breezes and ageless sands.

I awoke shivering at one in the morning, not to wind or mom's coughing, but to silence. This was odd, since mom usually coughed a lot off and on during the night and I would wake up to hear Dad comforting her until she stopped. But this time I heard nothing, and I never awoke in the middle of the night for nothing. Frowning, I quietly crawled out of bed and tiptoed into the hall bathroom, shutting the door gently and flipping the light switch on.

For a startling moment, I thought I saw someone else's reflection in the mirror instead of mine – it looked like me, only aged and weathered down, cold and ashen. It looked like my mother.

I jumped, and all that remained of the vision was my racing heart. Something was wrong.

Eyes narrowed with concern, I opened the door and stepped out into the hall, intent on checking with my parents. As I reached their room, I felt a tug at my insides – a puppet master manipulating my nerves. I listened for movement. There was none, and I opened the door a crack. I saw my parent's sleeping forms, a slight smile on mom's face and contentment in dad's open eyes.

Wait.

Open eyes? Was he awake? If he was, he wasn't doing much. My anxiety grew as I slowly ventured over to my parent's bed, leaving the door halfway open. I peered down into mom's face. She looked fine, and I cautiously lifted a hand to her cheek. I recoiled sharply. Her skin was as cold as ice and gray, nearly blue. Checking her blankets to see if they had any holes, my eyes moved down to her chest region and watched it for a few seconds in a kind of contained horror.

She was not breathing.

Thoroughly shaken up, I put my ear next her mouth and listened for a breath. There was none. Quickly, I laid my head onto her chest to listen to the weak, yet steady rhythm of her heartbeat. I heard nothing. Panicking, I turned to dad, whose eyes were still wide open.

"Dad, something's wrong," I whispered. A sick feeling came over me as I realized that he was not responding either. "Dad?" I moved to the other side of the bed and checked him over in the same way I had with mom. His hands were placed strangely; one hand reaching out to my mother, the other clutched almost dramatically to his heart. Had it been a heart attack?

I slowly backed away from the scene, something so real it must have been concocted from a nightmare. My eyes watered with unshed tears as I placed my hand over my mouth, registering the entirety of the situation.

I blinked, and a tear ran down my cheek. I squeezed my eyes shut.

I'm a firm believer in the soul. The soul knows more than we could ever hope and the soul always, always watches. That is why I forced myself to look up at their cold, dead forms and whispered so as not to disturb them:

"I love you."

And then I rushed from the room, fearing I would be ill.

NOTE: I hope no one thinks that I made major changes in this chapter, because boy, you won't be able to deal with the extreme makeovers I'll be doing with others! There are some sections I just want to re-do completely, and some chapters I might just leave out all together. Time will tell. As always, constructive criticism is welcomed and if anyone wants to see the original, just look up my old profile, Lil-Hellraiser, and there it shall be.

Thank you for everyone for your patience!

And don't forget to spread the word! I AM BACK!