Disclaimer: None of the IaHb stuff is mine. La la la la. Does anyone read these? I always do because some of the things that people write here are kind of funny. For example, around Christmas a lot of people were asking Santa for Christopher Ralph here. Well, I thought it was funny. Anyway, my apologies for spelling actor's names wrong in this. (I'm not sure if I did, but I might have.) Okay, enough rambling. Hope you enjoy this one. Don't forget to review.
"Ohhhhhh," Erina groaned as she slouched on Angela's couch. One of her hands rested lightly on her forehead as if its mere presence could pull out the dull throb that had started there.
It had all started just moments before when Erina and Angela had been innocently watching television. Erina had gotten an idea for her book and she had wanted to write it down in her notebook before she forgot it.
She had gotten up from the couch, in search of her backpack, where the notebook was located. Usually, when she came to Angela's house, she would drop her bag next to Angela's own by the front door. So, that's where Erina headed first.
It was not there. After a quick search of the whole house and an intense interrogation of Angela's younger brothers (two little fiends, who made sport of hiding things on people), it was decided that the backpack in question was, in fact, lost.
At that point, Erina had started to panic. Her backpack was, well, everything. Erina had never been the kind of girl to carry a cute little purse on her shoulder. No, they were always too small and the strap always fell off Erina's shoulder. So, she carried everything in her backpack. It was more spacious. Plus it stayed put on her back; she did not have to worry about it falling off. Everything was in it.
At that thought, Erina groaned again and ran her hands over her face. How could this have happened, she wondered. She was usually so careful about where she put it and so forth.
Angela, Erina's best friend, hung up the phone that she had been talking on and crossed the living room to sit next to Erina on the couch. She pitied her friend, who thought that the end of the world was at hand just because she had lost her bag. Couldn't she just buy another one, Angela couldn't help but wonder. Angela just could not understand the sudden 'sentimental attachment' that Erina seemed to have towards the missing backpack.
"Erina," Angela started, and she watched as Erina slid her hands away form her face and turned dazed eyes toward her friend. "The woman at Barnes and Noble said that she'd check to see if a bag was turned in and that she'd call us back when she knew."
Erina nodded, a troubled look settling on her face. She turned her gaze away from Angela and stared straight out in front of her. But, Erina saw nothing. How could this have happened, she wondered again.
Angela watched her friend, her brow furrowed in worry. Erina sure seems to be taking this hard, Angela thought. "Can't you juts buy a new bag?" Angela asked innocently.
Erina looked back at Angela. She did not say a word as she stared at her friend in surprise. She realized suddenly that Angela had no idea how horrible the situation really was.
Abruptly, Erina stood from the couch and paced across the small living room. "You don't understand," she said fiercely to her friend. "That bag had everything in it -my wallet........my money............Oh, my license.......And.....my manuscript."
With her last words, Erina stopped pacing and looked at her friend with pure desperation. "What am I going to do?" she asked, not really expecting a satisfactory answer.
..............................................................
"What do you mean it's not your bag?" Chris asked, startled. Of course it was hers. It had to be.
"Just what I said. It's not mine. I didn't take a bag into the bookstore," Jackie replied calmly.
"Well, then whose bag is this?" Chris asked, his voice rising a bit with panic. How could he have ended up with a complete stranger's property?
Jackie shrugged her shoulders and then watched as Chris leaned back against his seat, startled. "Well, why don't we just take a look inside and see if we can find anything of interest?" She suggested lightly.
Chris nodded his consent and Jackie slowly unzipped the larger compartment of the bag. Immediately three black pens fell into her lap along with a small notebook labeled 'Thoughts And Good Ideas For Stories'. Jackie flipped through the notebook, looking for the written name of its owner. No names were written, though, so Jackie handed the small notebook to Chris to hold and she reached into the bag again.
This time, she withdrew a folder, which seemed to be bursting with papers. The volume of papers made the folder look fat and curiosity overwhelmed Jackie as she realized that the folder had not distinguishing marks on it. She opened it up and her eyes immediately fell upon the printed words on the top sheet of plain white printing paper. 'Silver Dreams', it read. Jackie flipped to the next page.
"Hmmm.....," Jackie said quietly, as she read. This, she knew, was apparently someone's story that they had spent a great deal of time writing.
"Interesting," she whispered as she flipped to the next page and continued to read.
'What?" Chris asked, leaning over in his seat to get a better view of what Jackie was looking at. "Did you find something?"
"No," she answered, reluctantly closing the folder and handing it to Chris. "Not yet."
Jackie unzipped the small compartment on the front of the bag and let her fingers wander through more pens, a few scattered pieces of paper and a pack of gum. Suddenly, her fingers skimmed the surface of a smooth, cloth object, way down deep in the bottom of the small compartment. Jackie smiled, knowing what she had found. Her fingers closed over the wallet and she pulled it out of the backpack.
"Jackpot," she said to Chris as his eyes widened at the sight of the wallet. "This is bound to have some kind of identification in it."
Jackie unzipped the wallet and opened it slowly. She smiled brightly as her eyes met with the face of a young girl around her own age. Through the picture, the girl smiled back at Jackie as if they both shared a secret that the rest of the word didn't.
"Know her?" Jackie asked Chris as she showed him the driver's license she had found in the wallet.
Chris' eyes widened and his face drained of all color as recognition pounded into his brain. "Oh no," he groaned and then slumped back into his seat again. This cannot be happening, he thought. It just can't be.
"So, I'm guessing that you two have met," Jackie remarked, trying to bite back a grin. She had a pretty good idea of who the girl in the picture was. Jackie had seen Chris talking to the girl in the café.
"She's.........," Chris stared and then turned to look at Jackie. "I met her at the bookstore," he said as a way of explanation.
"The coffee girl," Jackie said, not even bothering to pose it as a question. She already knew the answer, even before Chris nodded his head in response. She shook her head and smiled. This was just too perfect, in her opinion. She had seen the way that Chris had watched the girl even after she had accidently spilled coffee all over his shirt. Well, Shawn's shirt. Oh, the plot thickens, Jackie thought as she looked at the girl's picture again. This, she knew, would be good.
Suddenly, the seatbelts sign flashed off and people all around Jackie and Chris stood up to stretch their achy bones. Jackie remembered that she had wanted to go hang out with her friend, Reagan. But, now, there was something a bit more important to deal with. I'll talk to Reagan later, she thought decisively. Then she turned to Chris.
"Why don't you tell me exactly how you managed to get this bag," she said, a slight grin starting on her lips.
.............................................................
Angela approached the couch cautiously, wondering with every step how she was going to accomplish the task set before her. Erina is going to totally freak, Angela thought knowingly. You see, the lady from Barnes and Noble had just called Angela back and she had not had good news.
"Erina, honey," Angela started as she sat down on the couch next to her friend. Erina turned her head to look at Angela with so much hope in her eyes that Angela almost blurted out the whole thing. Break it to her slowly, Angela commanded herself.
"Well, that was Ba-" she started, but was cut off by a younger version of herself rushing into the room. Her younger sister, Reilly, came to a halt right in front of her, the remote control to the t.v. clutched tightly in her hand.
"Oh, Angela, please can I change the channel? My show is coming on in just a minute. Please? Please?" Reilly pleaded with her older sister.
"Reilly, we were talking here," Angela said, annoyed. Really, sometimes her younger brothers and sister could be pains.
"Sorry. Please, please, please?" Reilly, continued, all but kneeling on the floor to beg.
"I don't care what you do," Angela answered, shrugging. All she wanted was for her sister to leave them alone so that she could tell Erina what the lady from Barnes and Noble had said before she lost her nerve. "Just don't interrupt us again."
"Okay," Reilly excaimed in excitement and she rushed across the room to sit in front of the television. She aimed the remote and clicked to the channel that her show was on.
Angela shook her head as she watched her sister for a minute. Then she turned back to Erina, who watched her expectantly. "Erina, honey," Angela started again. 'That was the lady from Barnes and Noble on the phone." She searched her friend's face for any trace of a reaction, but saw nothing. Yet. Erina simply looked at her, waiting for her to continue.
"Now, don't worry or anything," Angela remarked, knowing that that was exactly what Erina would do. "The lady said....well, she said that one of the employees..............gave your bag to someone else, thinking it was theirs or something."
Still no reaction from Erina. She continued to stare at Angela, not fully comprehending what she had just been told. The only sound in the room came from the television that Reilly watched. Then, Erina exploded emotionally.
"Oh no!" Erina moaned and covered her face with her hands. Someone else had her bag, she thought. Someone else had her manuscript. Oh why hadn't I been more careful, she berated herself.
"It will be okay," Angela said doubtfully. Erina looked at her slowly with a glare that clearly told Angela that Erina didn't believe her either.
"It doesn't get much worse than this," Erina mumbled.
As if on cue, Reilly's favorite show came on television. The theme song was light and upbeat, while pictures of the crisp, clean young actors flashed across the television screen.
Erina watched with only a slight interest. Her mind was still overwrought about all that she had lost. Sure, she could have her license remade and she did have her manuscript on disk. It was just the thought that someone else could turn the story in as their own that scared her. She had worked on it for so long, she couldn't bear to think of seeing someone else's name on her story.
Oh, Reilly's favorite show is 'In A Heartbeat', Erina thought vaguely. I've seen this show before. It's pretty cool.
Erina and Angela watched as the names of the actors slid by with their faces. Shawn Ashmore. Reagan Pasternak. Danso Gordon.
Hmmm, Erina thought suddenly a bit more alert. He looks kind of familiar.
Then someone else was smiling out from the television screen and his name flashed across the bottom of the screen. Erina's heart stopped beating. Christopher Ralph, the screen said under his perfect smile.
"Oh my god," Erina mumbled, hoping that no one had heard her. But, Reagan turned around from her perch on the floor and smiled knowingly. "Isn't he dreamy?" She asked a stunned Erina.
The last face and name flashed across the screen and Erina was almost certain. Jackie Rosenbaum. Erina's mind was a whirl of thoughts as everything fell into place. The three familiar looking people in the café. The guy who called himself Chris. He had mentioned his friend Shawn. Perhaps Shawn Ashmore? Suddenly, Erina knew why Chris and his two friends had looked so familiar to her. And, suddenly, Erina knew what Chris did for a living.
"Oh my God," she said again, louder this time.
"Are you okay?" Angela asked, wondering what was wrong with her friend all of the sudden. Erina's eyes were as wide as saucers and they seemed to be glued to the television.
Angela looked back in forth between Erina and the television, trying to decide what the connection between the two was. Erina looked as if she had seen a ghost. Then the cherry red color started to inch its way up Erina's cheeks again.
Erina could not believe what she was seeing. There, before her on the television was the guy she had spilled coffee on. She had sat in the café and talked with him too. And all of the time, she had had no idea as to who he really was. Slowly, She raised a hand and pointed to the television just as Chris came into view.
"Look, Look!" She cried to Angela. Erina jumped up off the couch and paced around the room.
"What?" Angela asked, not seeing what Erina was seeing. It was a show on Disney, big deal. "Erina, what's your problem?"
Erina turned towards her, fire blazing in her eyes. "What's my problem? What's my problem?" She asked incredulously, not believing that Angela still did not see the problem.
She pointed to the screen again as Chris came into view again and then turned to watch her friend's expression. She figured that as soon as Angela saw Chris she would recognize him as Erina, herself, had. But, Angela just shrugged, as she still did not see what the big deal was.
Erina stopped pacing and stared at Angela. "I dumped coffee on Christopher Ralph!" She yelled so loud that Angela's two younger brothers ran in from the kitchen to see what the commotion was.
Reilly looked at her in awe, not noticing the pure panic building in Erina's eyes. "You are so lucky," she said breathlessly.
"Oh boy," Angela said.
Whew! Okay, so what did you think? Please review this and let me know if you liked it or not. I'll try to get the next part out soon. School stuff is starting to get in the way, though. And I just started another semester. Anyway, thanks lots.
"Ohhhhhh," Erina groaned as she slouched on Angela's couch. One of her hands rested lightly on her forehead as if its mere presence could pull out the dull throb that had started there.
It had all started just moments before when Erina and Angela had been innocently watching television. Erina had gotten an idea for her book and she had wanted to write it down in her notebook before she forgot it.
She had gotten up from the couch, in search of her backpack, where the notebook was located. Usually, when she came to Angela's house, she would drop her bag next to Angela's own by the front door. So, that's where Erina headed first.
It was not there. After a quick search of the whole house and an intense interrogation of Angela's younger brothers (two little fiends, who made sport of hiding things on people), it was decided that the backpack in question was, in fact, lost.
At that point, Erina had started to panic. Her backpack was, well, everything. Erina had never been the kind of girl to carry a cute little purse on her shoulder. No, they were always too small and the strap always fell off Erina's shoulder. So, she carried everything in her backpack. It was more spacious. Plus it stayed put on her back; she did not have to worry about it falling off. Everything was in it.
At that thought, Erina groaned again and ran her hands over her face. How could this have happened, she wondered. She was usually so careful about where she put it and so forth.
Angela, Erina's best friend, hung up the phone that she had been talking on and crossed the living room to sit next to Erina on the couch. She pitied her friend, who thought that the end of the world was at hand just because she had lost her bag. Couldn't she just buy another one, Angela couldn't help but wonder. Angela just could not understand the sudden 'sentimental attachment' that Erina seemed to have towards the missing backpack.
"Erina," Angela started, and she watched as Erina slid her hands away form her face and turned dazed eyes toward her friend. "The woman at Barnes and Noble said that she'd check to see if a bag was turned in and that she'd call us back when she knew."
Erina nodded, a troubled look settling on her face. She turned her gaze away from Angela and stared straight out in front of her. But, Erina saw nothing. How could this have happened, she wondered again.
Angela watched her friend, her brow furrowed in worry. Erina sure seems to be taking this hard, Angela thought. "Can't you juts buy a new bag?" Angela asked innocently.
Erina looked back at Angela. She did not say a word as she stared at her friend in surprise. She realized suddenly that Angela had no idea how horrible the situation really was.
Abruptly, Erina stood from the couch and paced across the small living room. "You don't understand," she said fiercely to her friend. "That bag had everything in it -my wallet........my money............Oh, my license.......And.....my manuscript."
With her last words, Erina stopped pacing and looked at her friend with pure desperation. "What am I going to do?" she asked, not really expecting a satisfactory answer.
..............................................................
"What do you mean it's not your bag?" Chris asked, startled. Of course it was hers. It had to be.
"Just what I said. It's not mine. I didn't take a bag into the bookstore," Jackie replied calmly.
"Well, then whose bag is this?" Chris asked, his voice rising a bit with panic. How could he have ended up with a complete stranger's property?
Jackie shrugged her shoulders and then watched as Chris leaned back against his seat, startled. "Well, why don't we just take a look inside and see if we can find anything of interest?" She suggested lightly.
Chris nodded his consent and Jackie slowly unzipped the larger compartment of the bag. Immediately three black pens fell into her lap along with a small notebook labeled 'Thoughts And Good Ideas For Stories'. Jackie flipped through the notebook, looking for the written name of its owner. No names were written, though, so Jackie handed the small notebook to Chris to hold and she reached into the bag again.
This time, she withdrew a folder, which seemed to be bursting with papers. The volume of papers made the folder look fat and curiosity overwhelmed Jackie as she realized that the folder had not distinguishing marks on it. She opened it up and her eyes immediately fell upon the printed words on the top sheet of plain white printing paper. 'Silver Dreams', it read. Jackie flipped to the next page.
"Hmmm.....," Jackie said quietly, as she read. This, she knew, was apparently someone's story that they had spent a great deal of time writing.
"Interesting," she whispered as she flipped to the next page and continued to read.
'What?" Chris asked, leaning over in his seat to get a better view of what Jackie was looking at. "Did you find something?"
"No," she answered, reluctantly closing the folder and handing it to Chris. "Not yet."
Jackie unzipped the small compartment on the front of the bag and let her fingers wander through more pens, a few scattered pieces of paper and a pack of gum. Suddenly, her fingers skimmed the surface of a smooth, cloth object, way down deep in the bottom of the small compartment. Jackie smiled, knowing what she had found. Her fingers closed over the wallet and she pulled it out of the backpack.
"Jackpot," she said to Chris as his eyes widened at the sight of the wallet. "This is bound to have some kind of identification in it."
Jackie unzipped the wallet and opened it slowly. She smiled brightly as her eyes met with the face of a young girl around her own age. Through the picture, the girl smiled back at Jackie as if they both shared a secret that the rest of the word didn't.
"Know her?" Jackie asked Chris as she showed him the driver's license she had found in the wallet.
Chris' eyes widened and his face drained of all color as recognition pounded into his brain. "Oh no," he groaned and then slumped back into his seat again. This cannot be happening, he thought. It just can't be.
"So, I'm guessing that you two have met," Jackie remarked, trying to bite back a grin. She had a pretty good idea of who the girl in the picture was. Jackie had seen Chris talking to the girl in the café.
"She's.........," Chris stared and then turned to look at Jackie. "I met her at the bookstore," he said as a way of explanation.
"The coffee girl," Jackie said, not even bothering to pose it as a question. She already knew the answer, even before Chris nodded his head in response. She shook her head and smiled. This was just too perfect, in her opinion. She had seen the way that Chris had watched the girl even after she had accidently spilled coffee all over his shirt. Well, Shawn's shirt. Oh, the plot thickens, Jackie thought as she looked at the girl's picture again. This, she knew, would be good.
Suddenly, the seatbelts sign flashed off and people all around Jackie and Chris stood up to stretch their achy bones. Jackie remembered that she had wanted to go hang out with her friend, Reagan. But, now, there was something a bit more important to deal with. I'll talk to Reagan later, she thought decisively. Then she turned to Chris.
"Why don't you tell me exactly how you managed to get this bag," she said, a slight grin starting on her lips.
.............................................................
Angela approached the couch cautiously, wondering with every step how she was going to accomplish the task set before her. Erina is going to totally freak, Angela thought knowingly. You see, the lady from Barnes and Noble had just called Angela back and she had not had good news.
"Erina, honey," Angela started as she sat down on the couch next to her friend. Erina turned her head to look at Angela with so much hope in her eyes that Angela almost blurted out the whole thing. Break it to her slowly, Angela commanded herself.
"Well, that was Ba-" she started, but was cut off by a younger version of herself rushing into the room. Her younger sister, Reilly, came to a halt right in front of her, the remote control to the t.v. clutched tightly in her hand.
"Oh, Angela, please can I change the channel? My show is coming on in just a minute. Please? Please?" Reilly pleaded with her older sister.
"Reilly, we were talking here," Angela said, annoyed. Really, sometimes her younger brothers and sister could be pains.
"Sorry. Please, please, please?" Reilly, continued, all but kneeling on the floor to beg.
"I don't care what you do," Angela answered, shrugging. All she wanted was for her sister to leave them alone so that she could tell Erina what the lady from Barnes and Noble had said before she lost her nerve. "Just don't interrupt us again."
"Okay," Reilly excaimed in excitement and she rushed across the room to sit in front of the television. She aimed the remote and clicked to the channel that her show was on.
Angela shook her head as she watched her sister for a minute. Then she turned back to Erina, who watched her expectantly. "Erina, honey," Angela started again. 'That was the lady from Barnes and Noble on the phone." She searched her friend's face for any trace of a reaction, but saw nothing. Yet. Erina simply looked at her, waiting for her to continue.
"Now, don't worry or anything," Angela remarked, knowing that that was exactly what Erina would do. "The lady said....well, she said that one of the employees..............gave your bag to someone else, thinking it was theirs or something."
Still no reaction from Erina. She continued to stare at Angela, not fully comprehending what she had just been told. The only sound in the room came from the television that Reilly watched. Then, Erina exploded emotionally.
"Oh no!" Erina moaned and covered her face with her hands. Someone else had her bag, she thought. Someone else had her manuscript. Oh why hadn't I been more careful, she berated herself.
"It will be okay," Angela said doubtfully. Erina looked at her slowly with a glare that clearly told Angela that Erina didn't believe her either.
"It doesn't get much worse than this," Erina mumbled.
As if on cue, Reilly's favorite show came on television. The theme song was light and upbeat, while pictures of the crisp, clean young actors flashed across the television screen.
Erina watched with only a slight interest. Her mind was still overwrought about all that she had lost. Sure, she could have her license remade and she did have her manuscript on disk. It was just the thought that someone else could turn the story in as their own that scared her. She had worked on it for so long, she couldn't bear to think of seeing someone else's name on her story.
Oh, Reilly's favorite show is 'In A Heartbeat', Erina thought vaguely. I've seen this show before. It's pretty cool.
Erina and Angela watched as the names of the actors slid by with their faces. Shawn Ashmore. Reagan Pasternak. Danso Gordon.
Hmmm, Erina thought suddenly a bit more alert. He looks kind of familiar.
Then someone else was smiling out from the television screen and his name flashed across the bottom of the screen. Erina's heart stopped beating. Christopher Ralph, the screen said under his perfect smile.
"Oh my god," Erina mumbled, hoping that no one had heard her. But, Reagan turned around from her perch on the floor and smiled knowingly. "Isn't he dreamy?" She asked a stunned Erina.
The last face and name flashed across the screen and Erina was almost certain. Jackie Rosenbaum. Erina's mind was a whirl of thoughts as everything fell into place. The three familiar looking people in the café. The guy who called himself Chris. He had mentioned his friend Shawn. Perhaps Shawn Ashmore? Suddenly, Erina knew why Chris and his two friends had looked so familiar to her. And, suddenly, Erina knew what Chris did for a living.
"Oh my God," she said again, louder this time.
"Are you okay?" Angela asked, wondering what was wrong with her friend all of the sudden. Erina's eyes were as wide as saucers and they seemed to be glued to the television.
Angela looked back in forth between Erina and the television, trying to decide what the connection between the two was. Erina looked as if she had seen a ghost. Then the cherry red color started to inch its way up Erina's cheeks again.
Erina could not believe what she was seeing. There, before her on the television was the guy she had spilled coffee on. She had sat in the café and talked with him too. And all of the time, she had had no idea as to who he really was. Slowly, She raised a hand and pointed to the television just as Chris came into view.
"Look, Look!" She cried to Angela. Erina jumped up off the couch and paced around the room.
"What?" Angela asked, not seeing what Erina was seeing. It was a show on Disney, big deal. "Erina, what's your problem?"
Erina turned towards her, fire blazing in her eyes. "What's my problem? What's my problem?" She asked incredulously, not believing that Angela still did not see the problem.
She pointed to the screen again as Chris came into view again and then turned to watch her friend's expression. She figured that as soon as Angela saw Chris she would recognize him as Erina, herself, had. But, Angela just shrugged, as she still did not see what the big deal was.
Erina stopped pacing and stared at Angela. "I dumped coffee on Christopher Ralph!" She yelled so loud that Angela's two younger brothers ran in from the kitchen to see what the commotion was.
Reilly looked at her in awe, not noticing the pure panic building in Erina's eyes. "You are so lucky," she said breathlessly.
"Oh boy," Angela said.
Whew! Okay, so what did you think? Please review this and let me know if you liked it or not. I'll try to get the next part out soon. School stuff is starting to get in the way, though. And I just started another semester. Anyway, thanks lots.