Chapter 3

Remembrance

It was mid-June and the sun was shining in all its boiling hot glory. My first year of high-school was coming to a close and summer vacation was right around the corner. So you can imagine why any student in their right mind would be staring at the nearest clock like their life depended on it. At least that's what I was doing as I sat at my desk in fourth period. My Science teacher was scribbling something on the overhead projector, but I wasn't paying attention. If anything, I was itching to get out of my seat and leave my classroom for the last time without looking back.

Then I heard it, the dull tone known as the bell. I got out of my seat and packed up my stuff before walking out into the hallway.

Students were walking in every direction as they met up with friends and emptied their lockers, all while looking for an exit. This resulted in the biggest student-made traffic jam in my freshman year. I would've liked to take the long route through the court yard to avoid it, but doing so would've taken longer than braving the mob. Besides, my locker was on the east side of the school by the Home Economics Wing, which was in the opposite direction of the West Exit where I usually met up with my friends.

My locker that year was a half locker, and it was the only year that I both had a half locker and actually used said locker for storing my backpack and textbooks. Once I reached my locker, I spun the dial of my combination lock until it landed on the final digit. Tugging down on it, I releasing it from the locker. I then proceeded to open the locker and pull out my backpack, packing in it my worn binder, pencil case and combination lock. Just as I was about to turn and leave, I noticed the strip of tape that was plastered on the inside of the locker door; a space that others used to hang small mirrors, photos and various other knickknacks; a space on my locker door that was occupied by a single tape strip. "Hey Aiden, I hope that both Kayla and I can get to know you better and become good friends. - Sam" is what it read. It instantly reminded me of the hell hole of an art class that I had been sitting in only an hour and a half earlier.

Friends my ass.

Grabbing the right end of the tape, I steadily pealed it of, crushed it into a tiny ball, and tossed it into a nearby garbage can as I walked down the hall towards the West Exit.

A couple of minutes later, as I passed the cafeteria, I ran into my friend Natt. He had just bought a bag of chips from one of the vending machines and was about to rip it open when he saw me.

"Hey man, can you believe it! It's the last day of school!" Natt was grinning ear to ear, clearly happy to have made it through his first year of high-school. His short, black hair was sticking up in the air like it always did; as if he'd forgotten to comb it. He was a bit shorter than I myself, which made sense since he was a year younger than me, and had a pair of glasses that he refused to wear to school due to the multiple occasions that they almost broke.

"Oh, I can believe it," I said enthusiastically, "What I can't believe is that you bought chips with the two bucks you owe me."

"Man, this summer is gonna be awesome!" Natt said in a louder than normal voice, clearly avoiding the subject.

"Wish I could be there." I turned around to find Tyler standing behind me. He was slightly shorter than Natt despite being the same age as me. His brown hair was its usual buzz cut and he was wearing his trademark Stewie Griffin hoody.

"Why? Are you going somewhere?" That was Natt.

"Yeah, my mom's sending me to cadet camp. After that I'm gonna spend most of the summer on the island with my dad."

"I didn't know your dad lives on the island."

"Yeah, it wasn't really something that seemed relevant."

"So, when are you coming back?" That was Natt again.

"I don't know if I will be."

"What do you mean?" That was me this time.

"I'm thinking of moving to the island."

My alarm clock was blaring. It had to be the first time I'd heard it in weeks. I turned it off and lay in my bed. I was waging war with my eyes, trying to keep them open. I must've dozed off at some point, because the next thing I knew, my other alarm clock was going off. I forced myself out of bed and walked over to it. I set it on radio and went back to bed. I lay in my bed for about an hour, listening to the radio as I drifted in and out of consciousness. Eventually, my older sister opened my bedroom door and asked to borrow my copy of 'Back to the Future.' I'm pretty sure I said no, but she took in anyway. Not long after that, I forced myself back out of bed and walked down the hall to the bathroom. My sister was watching 'Back to the Future' in the living room, which is right next to my room.

It was Saturday again, and just like last weekend, I had plans. At the time, though, one of the things I was looking forward to had already fallen through. Tyler was supposed to come by on Friday so we could hang out. That didn't happen. I sent him a message on Facebook to see what had happened. He sent a reply saying: "Oh I forgot to tell you I had an exam week this week and had to cancel my ortho appointment I will be there the week after next week sorry about that."

He never uses punctuation.

At least I could still go to the flea market. That's what I thought, anyway.

After I got dressed, I went downstairs and into the Rec room. Closing the door as I entered, I approached my shelf of games and selected Silent Hill 2 for PS2. Putting the disk into the disk drive, I grabbed the controller and started playing. One underground prison, row boat session, and weight restricted elevator later, I glanced up at the digital display of the VCR. It read 2:57 pm. I quickly saved my progress in the hotel lobby and ran upstairs to get ready. Time flies, and I tend to hate that.

We were on our way to Vancouver. My mom had taken route 10 this time instead of Fraser Highway, part to save time, part to drop my sister off at her apartment in Burnaby. I stared out the window from the backseat. The dream I had had that morning had got me thinking. No, it wasn't a dream. It was my brain replaying what happened just before summer break last year. My alarm clock had stopped it before it could further remind me, but it didn't stop me from thinking about. It was then, on the last day of school, that my social life was threatened with a knife and then stabbed repeatedly over the course of that summer and remaining year. I tried to push it to the back of my mind and read the book I'd recently bought, but it kept pushing back. Then, the image of that girl popped up in its place. She was seemingly normal, yet she also had weird things about her. She was ignorant, aggressive and shy within the span of a minute, and then there was that thing where she disappeared, reappeared, and then disappeared again.

The words, Is she from the future or something?, crossed my mind. I couldn't help but grin. Oh sure, and she's here to tell me that I'm an alien and I have to save the world or something.

The words, "He's not interested in it!" broke my train of though and brought me back to reality.

"Of course he's interested." That was my mom. While I was thinking about Houdini and how much last summer had sucked, my mom and sister had gotten into another argument. From what I could gather, they were going on about the estate again.

"Are you guys talking about the estate?" I was fishing for confirmation.

"Do you want part of the estate?" That was my sister. She had suddenly turned around in her seat and was staring at me with her brown eyes; her long, brown hair tucked behind her ears.

"Of course."

"See?" My mom said as my sister settled back in her seat.

"What do you want from it?" my mom asked.

"Didn't we already go over this?" I was pretty sure we had.

"I forgot what you chose."

I sighed.

"I want uncle Jack's place above the store."

"You can't have that!" my sister objected, "It's Rafael's!"

"If he wanted it, then he shouldn't have chosen the old chicken farms on the hill. Besides, aren't the chicken farms a better deal for him since he can build whatever he wants on the property?"

"Who said he's getting the chicken farms?" My sister had turned around in her seat again.

"Didn't we settle this already? Rafael gets the chicken farms and we get grandma and grandpa's store, their house, and uncle Jack's apartment."

"Well, it's starting to look like it hasn't been settled yet." I could tell my mom wasn't happy about her statement. The last thing we needed was more unnecessary drama.

"Hey." My sister was still turned around in her seat, "What would you do with uncle Jack's apartment?"

"I'd use it as a vacation home."

"Yeah, 'cause you'd ever go to Portugal for vacation." She settled back in her seat.

"Who says I can't."

That was the end of our conversation.

We dropped my sister off at her apartment and made our way to the flea market downtown. We would have made it to, if the main doors hadn't closed at 4:30 instead of 5:00. Two weekends in a row, it had to be some kind of cruel joke.

In an attempt to salvage my day, I decided to go to the CHQ Arcade at Metrotown, and after being dragged around the city for three hours, my mom dropped me off there. She gave me ten dollars along with her cell phone before she left to go visit a friend for a couple of hours. All I had to do was be waiting at the mall entrance when she came back at 10:00 o'clock.

I entered the mall and climbed the deactivated escalator to the second floor. The mall was buzzing with activity; movie goers were climbing the stairs to the Silver City on the third floor, shoppers wondered around as they purchased things like food and clothing, and the arcade was filled with a majority of Asian teenagers looking for their videogame fix. As I walked towards the arcade, I noticed a store call 'Sakura Media.' It was an Anime store, and one that I had tried to find the previous summer. For some odd reason, it had never occurred to me to check the mall's second floor. Then there were the many times I had walked past it as a child and didn't notice it. Interesting how that works.

I stood there for about ten seconds, trying to decide whether to go in or not, before setting foot into the store. I glanced at the Gandum models, scanned the shelves of manga, and went through the anime one by one. I recognized a number of the anime, such as 'The Girl Who Leapt Through Time,' 'Kanon,' and 'Initial D.' I then left the store and headed for the arcade, not wanting to waste a lot of time window shopping.

Entering the arcade was like stepping into a soundproof room with a party inside. The place was full of teenagers, moving about as they went from arcade machine to arcade machine. I waded through the crowd and up to the main counter. There was an older Asian gentleman sitting behind it reading a magazine.

"Uh… hi. Could I get some change?" I asked, holding up the ten dollar bill that my mom had given me. The man looked up at me for a brief second before returning to his magazine and pointing towards a white rectangular machine about a metre away on my right. I figured that it was one of those Token machines and promptly delivered an awkward "Thanks" before getting out of his hair. Of course, the machine the man had pointed to was out of order. Well not quite. It still accepted coin currency in exchange for game tokens, but the slot for dollar bills was out of order. So, I walked around the arcade, searching for another Token machine, and I found one, on the wall, two feet from the main counter.

Thanks a lot, Asian guy at counter, thanks a whole friggin lot.

Needless to say, I exchanged my money for tokens and went about playing arcade games. A little Initial D Version 4 here, a little House of the Dead 2 there, a little Metal Slug 6 over there, and a lot of Rush San Francisco Rock Alcatraz Edition in the back. All in all, I had a great time, and as I made my way back to the mall's front entrance, I got an idea.

My friends and I and the arcade, perfect.