Hiya everyone! Back again, to bring you up to date with this fic. Personally this is my fave fic but its still so hard to write. I know where I want it to go but its just getting there without rushing thats the problem. So please bear with me while I sort myself out. Please keep up your amazing support, you make me dudes! Luv ya all
R&R and Ill love ya more! ;0)
Maura x-x
Luka POV
I sit in my room, listening to Dmitri and Cat arguing about something small, just like every night since I've been here.
I hear a soft knock and Leioa pokes her head around the door.
"Uncle Luka, can I toggle?" Her four year old speech makes me smile. I nod and open my arms and she curls into my lap and sighs.
"Mama and Tata are shouting again. It's not nice." She frowns. "And Lilia is being nasty and shut me out of my room."
Lilia is the exact replica of Dmitri- bossy. But she has Cat's softer side too which redeems her.
"Well, you stay here til supper then maybe she'll be in a better mood." I say, looking in the mirror. I stop suddenly as memories flood back.
A photo in a frame; a young girl's face upturned and smiling, her father laughing and happy- the picture of perfection.
Jasna and me on the sofa exactly a year before the bombing. She was three and Marko was 6 months.
"Uncle Luka…Uncle Luka!" Leioa tugs on my hand. "Mama is calling. Supper." I shake myself.
"Okay squirt. Come on." I carry her downstairs as she giggles.
After dinner Jak, Lei and I go to the park across the street to play catch. We asked Lilia but she's grounded cos she trapped Leioa's fingers in the bedroom door.
Jak is surprisingly patient with his sister seeing as he is nearly 12 and she can't catch cos of her swollen fingers. It takes about 15 minutes before they get bored and ask to play on the swings. Whilst Jak swings the highest he can, I push Lei who seems content with getting to about waist height and giggling a lot.
We traipse back just as the sun is setting.
"Uncle Luka, look!" Jak points at one particularly bright star. "Wow!" Leioa bounces on my shoulders.
"Jak that one is your guardian star. And Lei, that little one next to it is yours." They both gaze up into the twinkling blanket of stars. "And that one on the other side of Jak's is Lilia's."
"Where's yours?"
"Mine's in America." Her name's Sam, I say under my breath.
I sigh. "Home time." We cross the road and I take Leioa off my shoulders as we walk into the house.
"Guess what Mama. We have guardian stars!" Leioa exclaims as she throws herself at her mother. "We all do. Even Uncle Luka. But his is in America." Her face turns up to me. "Where's grandpa's?"
"It's under his pillow cos he's sick and he needs it close." She nods like she understands. "Where will it go if he goes to heaven?"
"He takes it up with him and wears it round his neck."
Lei nods again and wanders over to lay her head on my leg. I smooth down her dark curls and she pats my knee.
"Is it bedtime Leioa?" I whisper. She nods and sits up.
"Will you read story?"
"Yeah, sure; which one?"
"Blippy."
"Okay. Does Lilia have to go to bed too?"
"She'll come up on 10 minutes." Cat says, kissing her baby daughter good night. Dmi kisses her too and goes back to watching wrestling on the telly with Jak sitting next to him.
Me and Leioa trek up the stairs to her bedroom and I help her put on her pyjamas, brush her teeth and comb her hair before she snuggles into the pink covered bed and lies back to listen to the story book.
"Once upon a time there was a monster called Blippy. Everyone was frightened of him but they didn't need to be because Blippy was only a baby and anyway, he was a nice monster…"
I keep reading long past she falls asleep as I remember all the times I read this story to Jas. She loved it, and so did Marko.
Sam's POV
I lay on the huge bed that Luka bought two months ago and stare at the ceiling. It's about 8pm and I can hear Alex playing computer games in the living room, but I don't care cos it's Friday night and I'm full of ice cream. Tonight would be a good night to sort out the junk I have stored in the attic.
"Alex, I'm going to the attic." He grunts a reply and I ascend the ladder.
Our old attic used to be creepy but this one is quite light since it has a window at one end and isn't full of weird stuff.
There's a small pile of boxes labelled 'Alex and Sam" with various items such as 'clothes' and 'books'. Pulling open the top box labelled 'other stuff 94/95', I come across a whole lot of my things from when I was 14 or 15. A pair of purple flares and a badly sewn t-shirt with a unicorn on, some old books that I loved back then, pictures of my friends- Jaime, Lydia, Helena and me in my back yard, at the beach, at a fair, outside school hugging, in costumes dancing and one particular one I remember taking of the four of us lying on the field with our heads together in a ring. We're all laughing and look tanned so I guess with was in the summer. We were almost inseparable, us four. We went everywhere together, did everything together…until Steve came along.
I put the pictures in a pile next to me and reach in again, this time pulling out a small hardback note book. In pink bubble letters on the first page was the words 'Sam's Diary. KEEP OUT, JESSICA!' Then followed the start of a diary-
Hiya, my name is Samantha Louise Taggart, I'm 15 (today) and I live at 1218 primrose drive. I have one younger sister called Jessica who is 11 and a total brat, a mom called Sandra, a dad called Frank, one dog called Rex, a cat called Echo and four fish who are nameless since we can't decide on their stupid names. Fish 1, 2, 3 and 4 seem to suit them fine!
Right now, I'm lying on my bed listening to music. My room is pink with pink and white accessories like a stereo, a TV, book case and a white and pink cow print beanie bag.'
It carries on like that for pages and pages, full of what I seemed to think was useful stuff, then the pages get stiffer and I turn over to see that I've stuck in a good number of pictures. Four or five are of the gang again, one is of me, Jess and our cousin Tara on holiday (I drew devil horns on Jess's head), and then there are abut 10 or 11 of me and Steve.
The pictures are spread out over a space of a few months- my hair gets longer and lighter and his stubble gets darker- and we actually look happy in all the pictures. A lot are of him with his arm around me, hugging or kissing me, or picking me up in some way. But one catches my eye, and I remember the exact day it was taken.
We were in the park near my old house, laying on our tummy's facing each other, nose-to-nose. Steve's best friend Tim was taking the picture and suddenly I can almost smell the grass and hear the birds.
It was the 21st of August 1994, the day before I found out I was pregnant. I stare at the photo, and the one next to it of just me in the park, standing at the bottom of the slide. I scrutinise it for signs of a bump or anything but I was my usual rakish self back then.
There aren't any photos after that page, and only three more diary entries: one saying how I took a test and found out I was pregnant, one detailing how I missed my appointment at the clinic and the last one, written in thicker pen in writing sloppier but more adult than before, detailing my life as a single teenage mother to what I called 'a screaming pink brat with no hair and a huge mouth.' I tell the invisible reader about how mom keeps hassling me to breast feed, how all my baby does is cry, eat and poop and how I haven't slept in four days. I jabber on for almost nine pages before saying I must go and 'bath the baby brat' to which I must assume I either haven't decided on a name or can't come to terms with having him.
Then I remember it's the first one. I didn't name Alex until he was three weeks when mom dragged us both down to the naming place, told me to choose a name or else she would and it was done. I dread to think what she would have named my poor baby.
I put the diary to one sign and root through the box. As I dig deeper I find less of my teen stuff and more of my mom stuff-books about baby care, diaper rash, walking and other stuff I expect my mom gave me. There are tons of baby things like dummies, little toys and soft books. Alex's shoes and his first sleeper suit, 'Baby's first book' and millions of pictures of him growing up- Alex as a newborn, Alex's first tooth, Alex's first full night sleep, Alex's first hair cut. I keep them out to show him.
Getting up off the floor I realise I've been up here nearly an hour. I scramble back down the ladder and find Alex in the same position he was in when I went up there- laying on the floor chewing on popcorn, only the bowl is nearly empty now.
"Hey Alex, time for bed."
"What? Oh mom, five more minutes." He whines.
"No, come on. I wanna show you some photos." He stands up regretfully, flicks off the TV and heads to his room. I follow and sit on his bed as he changes, turning away when he moans that he's almost 11 and I'm still a girl even if I'm his mom. Finally he gets into bed and wriggles down. I lie down next to him but on my belly and show him the photos I found.
"That's you when you were…" I turn it over, "8 weeks old." He takes it off me and looks.
"I was a bit skinny."
"Yeah well we hadn't got feeding quite right. You're tubbier in this one." I hold out a photo of him when he was 11 weeks sitting on my lap at my cousin's wedding.
"Mom, you look so young."
"16…that was 3 days after my 16th birthday."
"Did you go out after I was born?" Alex turns his head towards me.
"I went out 3 times with my friends in the first year of your life. One was for my birthday, and I can't remember what the other two were for." He bites his lip and looks at the ceiling then speaks.
"Did you ever wish you never had me?"
At that, I stop smiling and lay for a second.
"There was never any way I wouldn't have you. It was scary especially when I brought you home for the first time. I hated you for about a week cos you never stopped crying and you weren't named for three weeks."
"What did you call me til then?" He says, laughing.
"It, thing, brat, the baby. I think there were more but I can't remember them now." I laugh too, "I even climbed out of my bedroom window one night when you were about 8 days old and tried to run away but Grandma caught me cos I got my foot caught in the drain pipe and you were screaming."