Flashbacks and Memories (Part 4)
By Jenny Taylor
Jaycee looked at the boys, she can see that they are waiting for her to speak. She sighed, cleared her throat and starts to speak.
"I guess that you boys want to know what happened to me." She looked around to see that all the boys nodded and waiting anxiously, she sighed again and begins her tale.
"It all started 14 years ago…"
14 years earlier in Manhattan, New York…
Two young 5th Grade students met each other outside Hunter College Elementary School, a 10-year-old Virgil Tracy and a 11-year-old Jaycee Anderson, one filled with joy, the other filled with fear and sadness.
When people, who did not know them, saw these two as best friends, but to the Tracy family, particularly to a 13-year-old Scott and a 9-year-old John, these two were in a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship.
On a normal school day, these two youngsters are filled with joy when they met each other, causing some jealousy from classmates and other students from the High School on the same site.
This however doesn't faze the young lovers and ignore those who makes fun of them and continue to see each other during school, after school when all six children (all five Tracy brothers and Jaycee) return to the Tracy household until she leaves to return to live with her mother's parents, during the weekends with Virgil visits Jaycee's home and stays with her for the regular sleepovers and during the school holidays these two will spend the day at the Tracy household and then at night Virgil returns with Jaycee to her house to spend the night together.
But today, unknown to the young lovers, will be the last day that they will ever see each other, despite Virgil promising her that he will protect her and bring her back to his place for protection and to live with him and his brothers permanently and away from whoever it was who planned to take her away from him and his family the next day.
Jaycee, despite her, Virgil and their class being told by the teachers that today will be her last day at school made her very, very angry, exploded and told everyone that whoever told the teachers that she's leaving is a lie and will be back at this same school on Monday.
At the end of a normal Friday, she would go with the brothers and stay at their place for a few hours and then Virgil would accompany her back to her place to stay for the weekend. But today is no ordinary Friday.
Instead of the brothers and her walking back to the Tracy household, Jeff Tracy, ex-astronaut and up-coming billionaire, came up to the school and picked up his sons telling them that there's something important that involved all the boys, which meant Jaycee couldn't come round to visit.
Both Jaycee and Virgil protested in despair with the former filled with sadness and fear and the latter filled with anger and fear. But sadly, Jeff ignored his second-born son's protest and ordered him to take his place in the car.
With the anger filling him at the fact that he couldn't refuse his dad when Jeff used 'the voice' and he's being forced to be apart from the one he loves, Virgil turns to Jaycee. Jaycee's eyes had turned red from crying in fear and sadness, his own eyes are starting to fill with unshed tears, Virgil gave Jaycee a big long hug.
Both of the lovers are filled with fear from this unexpected event, despite their age of being 10 and 11 years respectfully, they were completely grown-up, doing things that's normally reserved for mature teenagers/young adults, the duo gave each other a deep meaningful kiss.
They ignored the wide-eyed looks and opened mouths of the small audience while they continue their encounter. This would have continued longer, if Jeff didn't intervene by barking out his son's name.
After the kissing, Virgil's honey-coloured eyes looked deep into Jaycee's sky-blue eyes, the former filled with determination, the latter with fear and sadness. He then went close to her ear and whispered.
"Jaycee… Whatever is happening back at my place, I promise that I will come to your place on Saturday, to protect you and if possible to bring you home with me." A tearful Jaycee pulled away from him slightly, but her grip still firmly held onto him.
"Thank you Virgil… That's mean a lot to me… I love you Teddy Bear."
"Love you too Songbird."
And with that the pair separated, with Virgil reluctantly joining his family and Jaycee being forced to walk home alone after watching her lover and friends being driven away, dreading and fearing that this might be the last time that she'll see them again.
She returned to her home where she lives with her grandparents. The house was empty which is condition normal for Jaycee, because her grandparents neglected and ignored her since she was 3, why she did not know, but she feels that it might have something to do with her mom, whom she never met.
Frowned at the empty darkness of the place, she turns right and walks into the small kitchen. The small rectangular kitchen had the floor mounted and overhead cupboards lining the wall opposite the door, with a break in both rows of cupboards in a form of an electric floor-mounted, grey oven with an electric hob and an overhead, stainless steel extractor above the appliance.
To the left of the door there is a small wooden square table with two wooden chairs, one on each end. To the right of the door is the other large electrical appliances, which consists of a refrigerator/freezer combi, a washing machine and a tumble dryer. She turns to her right towards the refrigerator, opened it and pick up a small handful of white seedless grapes.
This sadly will be her final meal for today, knowing the abuse that she receives from her grandma will make her starving the next day if she picked out something bigger from the kitchen to eat.
She takes the handful of grapes and heads towards her bedroom. Her bedroom is on the second floor of the apartment which her grandparents had owned for years. She walks up the stairs, which faces opposite the front door, carefully, since she didn't want another incident involving them after that terrible day nearly 4 years ago.
As she reached the top of the stairs she turns right. Her bedroom on the immediate right of the landing, with the spare room next to hers, while her grandparent's bedroom faces the spare room on the other landing and the bathroom faces her bedroom.
Jaycee reaches for the handle and opens the door. Her bedroom is a medium-sized room with two identical single beds, one on the left, unused and the other on the right with a window on the wall between the beds.
The room hadn't been painted for years and had darkened over time which shows when the light of the sunset shines through. There were two identical bedside tables, one next to each bed, which were sat nearly underneath the window. At the foot of each bed was an identical wardrobe, with an identical big and heavily secured box on top. Above both beds were an identical set of shelving and storage boxes. The room looked like, once upon a time, been used by a set of identical female twins.
Jaycee sighs and shakes her head. She knows that, given she's living… well if could call it living, with the maternal grandparents, her mom used to sleep here and guessed that her mom could possibly had a twin sister. But that thought is just speculation, given the fact that she doesn't know, let alone met her mom, and since her grandparents refused to speak to her, let alone talk to her about her mom.
Tears starts to fall as they had done so for many years, in fear, sadness and loneliness as she sets her school backpack at the foot of her bed, places her handful of grapes onto a saucer on her bedside table and then turns and heads towards her wardrobe. She had these feelings before she met Virgil and those feelings had slowly disappeared the more she hung around with the Tracy brothers, especially with Virgil.
But this time is a different set of those feelings. She's afraid that she'll be taken and never see her beloved Virgil again. She's feeling sad because she's afraid as well as not being able to see her lover again but his adorable, fun-loving, even chaotic family. She's feeling lonely, because her knight in shining armour isn't here to protect from whoever this person is who's taking her away from them.
She had got sub-consciously changed into her PJ's and then opened her backpack. Normally she would have homework to do, but someone had told her tutor's that she's leaving and they didn't give her any, much to the annoyance for both her and her classmates for different reasons, so she had come home with nothing to do.
She gave out a slow sad groan, closed her bag-pack and shoved it under her bed. She pulls back the covers, sits on the edge of the bed, picks up the saucer, picks up a grape and starts to eat the tiny bright green fruit slowly as she looks up towards the window.
Next Friday would officially be the end of the school semester for the summer holidays and she would have plenty of time to spend with the Tracy's, especially celebrating Virgil's 11th birthday on August 15th, but now… these plans have been smashed and she's worried about tomorrow, hoping that Virgil will be here to fend off whoever they are who's planning to take her away from him.
When these people are coming she doesn't want to know and prays that they won't be coming and all this nightmare and lies is just a fake. She looks fearfully out of the window and then to the alarm clock on her bedside table, which the Roman numerals read 4.30pm.
She sighed again, she knew that she's going to bed too early again, but there's nothing to keep her occupied now that she's 'officially' leaving the school meaning no homework, plus Virgil's dad wanted all the boys for something important, so playing and hanging around with him is out of the question today.
She looks down at the empty saucer and places back next to the alarm clock, got up and walked back to the kitchen to get herself a glass of water. Once she returned to her room and placed the glass on the bedside table, she reached to grab the curtains when she looks out of the window once more.
She can see the northern part of Central Park and she knows that it looked beautiful during sunset, she couldn't get enough of it and to make it more special was sharing these moments with Virgil.
Although sunset isn't due for another 4 hours or so and that her grandparents won't be back home until nearly 11pm, she pulled the curtains closed and got into bed laid on her side with her head on her worn-out pillow and cried herself to sleep.
The next day went slowly as she is sadly reminded on what the weekends used to be like before she met Virgil, she'll try and sneak into the kitchen when her grandparents aren't looking, just to get something to eat, which is no bigger than a piece of fruit and to refill her glass with water.
Other than risking getting a beating from her grandma, she spent most of her time in her bedroom, waiting…waiting in both hope and fear. Hoping that Virgil will come to comfort and protect her and fearing that if, for some reason couldn't come, she'll be facing whoever is taking her away alone.
She sits on her bed with her knees to her chest and her arms wrapped around them, her eyes were red from crying as she had trouble sleeping during the night and she felt the only way that she can sleep is in the comfort of those small, but strong arms of her teddy bear boyfriend, Virgil.
She sits there quietly, her fear growing and her hope fading at Virgil's absence, not that her grandparents couldn't care less that he's here or not, but his presence meant everything to her and now it's getting late as the sun is setting about 10pm, she feels that her knight in shining armour should be here, but sadly for her, he isn't.
As it's starting to get dark, she pulled her blankets over her, crying. She sensed that something is wrong, like someone or something is deliberately preventing Virgil from seeing her, from protecting her, but she doesn't know who or what is doing this and why.
She looks at the clock, it reads 11.30pm and it won't be for another hour until her grandparents come back from bingo, when suddenly, the front door opens. Jaycee froze, someone's got the key to the front door, the only people she knows who got access to the front door is her grandparents, her and Virgil.
But, it's too early for her grandparents and Virgil would have call her name as soon as he entered the house, but there no sound of voices, except for the footsteps walking up the stairs.
Panicking, Jaycee opens the top drawer of her bedside table and withdraws a pair of handcuffs, which she uses to attach her left wrist to the left-hand corner of the headboard and waited in fear for the stranger to enter her room.
The stranger somehow knew the layout of the house, because all the lights have turned off and knew where he/she's going and they're heading straight towards her bedroom. Jaycee had her back to the door so she couldn't see who's entering as the door opened.
Suddenly, the room went bright as the stranger flicked the light switch on, Jaycee curled herself tighter into her little corner of the bed, hoping that the stranger would go away. Sadly, this was wishful thinking on her part as she heard some scrapping noise coming from the top of her wardrobe and what sounded like a grunt and then a sad sigh?
Jayce turns and peaks though the covers just to see what's going on. The stranger was a female, tall with ginger hair tied back in a ponytail. Jaycee held her breath as the woman turned slightly towards her, the woman's eyes were honey-coloured just like Virgil's and her face looks similar to his, and her hair is the same colour and brightness as John's!
Is this woman related to Virgil? She had been told by him, John, Scott and even Jeff himself said that she looked like Lucille Tracy, the late mother of the five sons and late wife of the ex-astronaut. She doesn't know how this could be, since she knew nothing of her mother, let alone her father nor family, but she had seen pictures of her and this woman looked like the deceased Lucille!
Fear gripped her as the woman took down the box from the other wardrobe and placed it on top of the first. Why is she taking these boxes? And what's inside them? That's a few of the questions that went through Jaycee's mind, until she froze. The woman is approaching her.
The woman gently grabbed the tops of her blankets and gently pulled them off her. Jaycee turns to look at her in fear, which in a space of a second turned into confusion. The woman looked sad and upset, looking into her eyes, Jaycee can see unshed tears in the woman's eyes as the woman knelt next to the bed.
Why is this woman crying? Why do I have feelings for her? Is she related to me? More questions filled her mind as she watches the woman who had just turned away to fiddle with something out of sight, which made her frown with worry. She's about to get more worried when the woman looks up at her, her face filled with regret.
The woman slowly lifts her left hand, reaches over to the young girl, she gently, but firmly grabs the youngster's free arm and gently and firmly pulls her so that Jaycee is laying on her back. She stood up so that she can put some weight onto the arm pinning Jaycee's free arm and then in her right hand was a piece of cloth.
Jaycee wide-eyed at the sight of the cloth as she realises what the woman is going to do. She started to struggle in fear and before she could scream for help, the cloth had been shoved onto her nose and mouth. After a few seconds she felt sleepy, the smell emitting from the cloth that she's forced to breathe in is overpowering.
She felt her eyes are beginning to close, try as she might she couldn't resist the smell which is sending her to sleep, then the room became blurry as her body became weak and helpless and then she succumbs to the darkness of endless sleep.
"…and that's how I got kidnapped." Jaycee said sadly as she looks up towards boys with tears streaming from her eyes.
The brothers are open-mouthed in shock. They had no idea that she was kidnapped, the elder two remembered that she was leaving around that time, which Virgil protested against furiously at the time, but not in the form of kidnapping.
Guilt starts to build up in Scott, wishing and cursing himself on not doing more to help Virgil to save and protecting their best friend. He knows deeply in his heart that Virgil will do anything to protect her once he knows that the love of his life is still alive, after 14 years believing that she was dead.
But this had led to a new question. How did she start from being kidnapped, to being presumed dead to being alive and well? All four boys knew that this is only the beginning of this mystery and they are sensing that Jaycee has more to tell.
They wait for a few minutes to let Jaycee regain her composure, before asking that one vital question and which that duty to ask fell onto the eldest of the Tracy brothers, who spoke with comfort, reassurance, curiosity and concern.
"Jaycee… I know that this is hard for you and a massive shock to us, but… I have to ask you this… What happened after you woke up?" Jaycee sniffled as she tries to control her emotions. Scott rubs circles on her back to comfort her. She takes a few deep slow breaths before she continues with her story.
"When I woke up…"