"Okay, so the first thing you need to know," I said once we were all situated at the tiny table in my equally small home. "Is that I can't remember anything, and I mean anything, from before I was eight and got away from… Enrique, what was the name of that place?" I asked.
"The School." He answered without turning away from the sandwiches he was making for us.
"Yeah, that place. Second thing you need to know, his name isn't Adrian, which I think most of you have already figured out." Or at least I hoped they had, otherwise they were all dumber than I thought.
"I am taking questions now." I said.
The little girl with crazy hair raised her hand almost instantaneously. I called on her like a teacher.
"Why do you call him Adrian? How did you get this house? When were you born? Where did you get that hat, oooh and that jacket. And your jeans?" She said it all in one breath. Talkative little bugger.
I looked towards the others and gave them a look that clearly stated, does she do this kind of thing all the time? The Gasman nodded his head solemnly, but also comically to an extent.
I sighed and spread my hand out flat on the table. "He asked me to call him Adrian if I was ever in trouble, he bought this house for me with the money he got from the job he has when he's not here, I can't remember when I was born but I know I am fifteen. No clue where the hat, jacket or jeans came from. Happy?" Nudge shrugged.
"Any other questions that do not involve my clothing or house?" I asked as Enrique came back with two platters full of sandwiches.
Well, no one answered. They were all too occupied by indulging in their food. It was like they had never eaten before in their lives. And I thought I ate a lot.
The thing was, normally, we would make two platters for of food any visitors wanted or unwanted (though there have been, like, no visitors except once, and that was like some kind of circus freak that got lost in the forest). One for me and Enrique, one for the…guest. And, yes, Enrique does in fact eat. Just not as much as I do.
So basically I had the whole platter to myself. But not this time.
This time the visitors ate just about everything on both platters So I was left starving. Yeah, I was just having a dandy day, wasn't I?
It was a wonder that I even got a small plate of salad. And you would think that for a group of people who had just lost someone that they loved, they wouldn't eat nearly as much. But I guess these people didn't know the proper ways to grieve.
After they had stopped eating, Max said, "So, are you coming with us or what?" Her mouth was still slightly full as she said it.
"I'm going to have to go with what on this one." I said and then added, "You know, you haven't given me any answers yet."
"Well, you haven't exactly given us any answers yet either." Max said.
"So, basically, none of us have any answers to give the others?"
"Yeah." They all agreed.
"Then why do you want me to come with you to get this…friend of yours?" Why would they? I'm an annoying pain in the ass, which they have already experienced.
"We could use someone else, and we have seen a demonstration of your fighting skills, so you might be useful."
"Am I an object?" I protested in disbelief.
"No, but what I said still stands." Max said.
"She's not going." Enrique said, but we could all hear the rest of the sentence floating in the air. And that's final!
Yeah right.
"You know, Enrique, you just convinced me to go with them, right?" I said.
"You're not going." He repeated.
"Like hell I'll listen to you!" I exclaimed.
Enrique never acted like this in the past. He had never pushed anything on me nor had he ever tried to talk me out or forcefully take me out of something. He always respected me and, in return, I respected him. I think he just lost a little bit of that respect from me when he tried to bar me from doing what I wanted (and don't bring up the fact that I wasn't going in the first place).
Without looking at me, Enrique repeated for a third time, "You're not going."
That's when the headache started. It started with a dull pain that was barley noticeable, but amplified another fifty percent in the span of thirty seconds. But I was used to these kinds of headache's. They were my visions.
At the point that we were at in this meaningless conversation, Iggy had risen from his seat. I saw a bullet shoot through the glass window on the left and pierce his brain.
!
I came back to myself to see that I was lying on the floor on my back with Enrique leaning over me with a look in his eyes that said he knew exactly what was happening.
"Everybody down!" I yelled.
Surprisingly, everybody went down. And the single bullet that I saw get Iggy turned out to be a whole party of bullets, tearing at the curtains by my windows and killing all of my furniture. And I really liked that chair!
Damn. I was gonna have to sue these people.
The rain of bullets slowed to a crawl and I hoped that they ran out of bullets. Sadly, that was not the case. They were just reloading.
One bullet went astray and somehow managed to hit me even though I was under the table. And that makes my day.
Please note the sarcasm in the statement above.
Well, because younger people might be reading this, I'll just say that I said a very, very bad word at that moment.
Enrique looked over at me in surprise (amazingly, I don't curse like that all of the time) and then said the exact same word only louder. Well, I was going to slap him later. I mean there was a toddler (kinda) in the room for goodness sake!
"You okay?" Enrique yelled above the commotion tearing apart the room.
I looked at the wound and nodded. It had only grazed the skin. But thank the gods that it hadn't hit my wing. Then I would be even more pissed off then I already was. Which, by the way, was pretty pissed off anyway.
At the time I was hiding under my nearly non-existent table when the rain of bullets finally ended. I guessed it had gone on for about ten minutes.
I exhaled in relief, only to have to suck my breath back in and hold it when I heard the door creak open. When will it end! I thought in exasperation.
The man (or woman, not sure) crouched down by the table where we were all hiding and said, "You can come out now."
"Ummm…no." I said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
All it took was one glance at the man's face (yes, it was a man. I was right the first time) to know that he was undeserving of any kind of trust I could have given him.
He grabbed the upper arm that had not been shot and pulled on it saying, "You are coming whether you want to or not."
"No." I calmly repeated.
My eyes raked the room, looking for Enrique because I had sworn that he was right next to me a moment ago. When I finally found him I had a really hard time trying to keep my most devious grin off of my face, which, if you knew anything about me, you would know is just about the hardest thing in the world.
Enrique was standing to the back of the man who was holding my arm, looking like he was waiting patiently for him to turn around.
"If you're smart, you'll look behind you." I said to the man. His response was an incredulous look that told me he was not going to turn around. "Fine," I shrugged. "But I would turn around if I was you. I wouldn't want to die without knowing who killed me." His eyes widened and he turned around and saw Enrique standing behind him. Enrique gave a harmless wave, but still, the hand on my arm went slack with fear. He obviously recognized Enrique.
"Hi," Enrique said. "What's it been, six, seven years already? Why come back now?" Enrique's voice was perfectly conversational, but I knew him well enough to hear the edge in his voice as he spoke to this mysterious stranger.
"I thought you died." The man said in horror, backing up to the door.
"Obviously you had an eye problem back then. Are you wearing contacts now? Otherwise I doubt you would have recognized me." Enrique batted his eyelashes at the man, who backed further until his back was pressed against the wall.
"What happened?" The man asked, his hand behind his back, desperately trying to open the door. But the door wouldn't budge, for whatever reason.
If you didn't get the fact that I rigged the door from the sentence above, then I think you need to work a little bit on your foreshadowing.
"I think I'm the one that needs answers. Now." Enrique added at the end to bring his point across.
"There is nothing for you to know." The man said shakily.
"Well, lets start with this: what are you doing here?" Enrique's voice now held an icy anger that even the dumbest person could pick up on.
"I have this place surrounded; guns pointed in through every opening. You think you can order me around?"
"If you order your guys to shoot, you won't be able to get out. I mean you can't even open the door. You'd die right along with the rest of us." The man's hands started shaking and he had gone suddenly pale. I had the feeling he was about to faint.
I crawled out from under the table, shaking off the hand on my shoulder trying to hold me back. I didn't care who it was; whether I liked them or not. I walked confidently to stand at Enrique's side, hands on my hips, looking like the badass I felt.
Enrique turned to me and it looked like he was about to tell me to go back to the others when the man suddenly spoke up.
"I remember you." He said.
I looked at him hard, trying to remember for myself, but no sign of recognition flared in my mind. I stared down at him and he stared at me right back, recognition shining brightly in his eyes.
"Keep him." I said to Enrique. "Its time to get some answers of my own."