Who was that Ethan guy and why did it happen when he walked in? Could he be the same five year old who nearly popped my arm out of its socket? No, there wasn't a resemblance at all. And although the feelings were similar, they weren't exactly the same. It couldn't be him, it just couldn't be him.
But I couldn't listen to myself. No, my younger and older self started an internal conflict. Little me kept saying that Ethan was him, just that the feelings were stronger than before because he grew. The older me was saying that it was probably because I got close to the church that caused the reaction and that Ethan could actually be my chance of ever getting close to a guy.
My eyes fluttered open and the first thing I noticed was a blinding light. Shortly after I woke up, I noticed that I was in the infirmary, with Barry, Lucas, Dawn, Leaf, Gary, Brendan, and May circling my bed.
"She's awake!" Leaf cried out in utter glee.
I tried sitting up in the bed, but I fell back down to my laying position. Gary and Brendan fluffed up a pillow and set it behind my back while helping me sit back up. They were clearly worried about my little scene in the classroom, but they were glad that I woke up.
"We were so worried," Dawn told me. "You suddenly fainted in class. It was a miracle that he saved you."
"Who saved me?" I asked her.
"Actually, we can't tell you who it is. But he did tell us to tell you that you should meet him back in the classroom at the end of school," Leaf informed me.
"I don't agree with you, Dawn," May stated, letting Leaf finish answering my question before she brought up the topic yet again. "Sure, I'm grateful that he saved Lyra and all, but there was something about him that felt off."
"May is right. Lyra started her little spasm/panic attack when he walked in," Gary said. "For all we know, he could be the same guy that caused that to happen to her back then."
"Wait, what?" Brendan asked. "This happened to you before?"
His ruby eyes were boring into me, wanting an answer to his question. The rest, except for Gary, followed his little action, building the pressure on me so that I would give in and tell them.
"Back when Brendan was protecting May, the two of you were too caught up with your own problems that you didn't notice me. When that happened, Barry, Lucas, and Dawn were already out of the theater. Only Gary and Leaf were left to see it, and because Leaf was freaked out, Gary was the only one who saw the scene…"
"Why didn't you tell us?" May asked. "We're your friends, right?"
"I know you are, but I didn't want you guys to know. That's all," I answered.
"But-"
"I wouldn't blame her for keeping that from you guys," Barry stated, becoming serious in order to adapt to the situation. "I mean, that's some scary thing that happened to her."
"Besides, do you think she would have wanted you guys to worry about her?" Lucas asked, not expecting an answer since the question seemed rhetorical. "All of us have our own problems to worry about, so she just didn't want to be a burden."
"Surprisingly, they have a point." Dawn looked at the two of them and nodded. "We should be getting back to class, after all, I'm sure Lyra just wants some alone time."
They followed Dawn out of the infirmary, leaving me and the nurse here. At first, I didn't mind the silence, but it wasn't long until it started to bother me.
After the incident, I can swear that I never spoke for years. My mom decided to teach me at home while I was still mute. During that time, I never spoke with anyone else. I didn't see them either. But that wasn't the reason that silence bothered me.
When it was silent, there was nothing to do but think. When that happened, my mind would recall what my mom told me about everything. Although I was in total denial with what she told me, I knew it was right, and I finally accepted the facts when I fainted again.
Thinking about everything that happened, I recalled the time that I saw them after my five year absence. Dawn was finally running around on the playground, trying to catch Barry and Lucas, who stole her favorite plush toy. Gary and Leaf were casually walking around on the grass, the former usually looking at the leaves in the trees and the latter looking up at the sky. May and Brendan were on the swings, May happily pushing Brendan as she tried to get the swing Brendan was on to make a full 360 circle.
All of them changed over those five years of not seeing them. Dawn finally looked happy again unlike the fake smile she wore as she was wheeled out of the hospital. Leaf was finally becoming the Leaf that I knew, but she seemed much calmer, especially when she was with Gary. (This drastically changed when the two of them hit puberty, which was evident with the way they acted towards each other nowadays.) And both May and Brendan were starting to change into the other, while it seemed like their personalities were sucked out of them and transferred to the other.
It wasn't long before I started thinking about the mysterious dahlia I received. For a flower to not die after nine years meant that there was something up with it, so I took it to every florist in town, even sending DNA samples of it to renowned scientists around the world. Each time it came back, they said they couldn't find anything wrong. Eventually, I accepted its uniqueness and gave it to Winona so that she could turn it into something that I could wear since the color red complimented me.
When I heard music in the infirmary, I stopped thinking and focused my thoughts on the music. It was a mixture of percussions and strings with a heavenly voice accompanying the instruments. After listening to the song some more, it started to sound familiar and soon enough, I remembered it as the song back then.
"Nurse, what is that song called?" I asked her, hoping that she heard me.
"The song's name is 'Dahlia'," she answered.
"Do you know the artist?"
"Actually, no one knows. It appeared on the web only recently, and the origin of the song is clearly unknown. But that didn't stop it from becoming the number one song in the world!"
"What do you feel when you hear the song?"
She appeared in front of me in her rolling chair, checking my temperature before she answered my other question. "Although it's in Japanese, I get this feeling that it's a sad song, but at the same time, the composition of it is just amazing."
"One last question, what time is it?"
"It's nearing the end of school. Would you like me to call your mom or are you fine with walking?"
"I'm fine with walking."
I sat up from the bed and stood up, slipping my sock-covered feet into my shoes before I walked out of the office, thanking the nurse for taking care of me. If it was near the end of school, it meant that I had an appointment in the classroom.
The bell rang, and I saw Dawn running out the classroom with her phone pressed to her ear. It was odd how she didn't have Barry or Lucas trailing after her, but I saw them a while later, talking about stand-up comedy acts. Leaf and Gary passed by, giving me a simple wave as they silently walked through the corridors side-by-side. The same thing happened with May and Brendan, just a simple wave as they skipped through the hallway side-by-side.
When I got to the classroom, it was nearly empty. The only person left there was that Ethan guy that I briefly saw earlier that day, holding something red in his hand. Everything that I felt earlier was gone and as I got closer to him, the more I started to feel at ease, which was clearly a contrast to what happened when he got closer to me.
"So, you're the one that saved me from also suffering a concussion," I said without much enthusiasm. It was evident that my words were dripping with disgust, quickly catching his attention as he stopped examining the item in his hand to look at me.
"You're tone tells me you have a problem with that."
"That's because I actually do. When you walked in, I started feeling the same pain from back then when the theater exploded. It was similar to the feeling I got from the guy who nearly tore my arm out of its socket."
"And that has anything to do with me because?"
"I haven't felt that way ever since it happened."
Silence engulfed the room as he returned his attention to the red thing. "Would you like to come to the theater with me?" he suddenly asked.
"No."
"Why not?"
"I'm sure it's pretty obvious why not."
"I just want to know what happened to you at the theater. You can show me and I can understand it easier."
"And you care because?"
"I'm just curious, that's all. And another question."
"Yes?"
"Why did your clip grow bigger when I caught you?"
He threw the red object in his hands and it turned out it was the clip. At first, it looked like a jumble of fabric, but after looking at it some more, the amount of petals increased that the clip it was tied to wasn't visible. Oh my god, what the heck is up with this flower?
I clipped it back in my hair, glad that I finally eased the feeling that I lost something. My eyes darted over to where Ethan was, and then looked out the window to see the humungous hole in the theater. All I had to do was go there with Ethan, tell him what happened nine years ago, and then head on home…
Wait; go to the theater with Ethan? To me, that sounded more like a date or something, but I wouldn't know. I've been secluded from the world for about a third of my life, and I wasn't interested in things like this. But a girl like me going somewhere with a guy for the first time can't help but worry, right?
"You're face is red," he nonchalantly said.
Returning back to Earth, I looked in front of me to see his face only a few inches in front of mine. I'm sure that my temperature skyrocketed when I realized this because I felt my face heat up, my brain went into hyper mode, and my heart started to beat like crazy.
Is this an effect because of my special condition? Everything I felt seemed so overrated and exaggerated that it must have been an effect. But, oddly, I really didn't think it was. There something else weird about it, too.
It was as if it didn't belong to me.
The edges of Ethan's mouth lifted as a smile formed on his face. Soon enough, he was laughing, like he was enjoying my little moment. Although I was angry at him at first, it wasn't long before I ended up laughing, too. That Ethan was contagious. I think he was the first person to ever get that much emotion out of me.
"So, shall we?" he asked as he stopped laughing, offering me his hand.
"We shall," I answered with a smile, playfully taking his hand as he led me to the theater in a gentlemanly way.
…
The theater, despite its nine years of being graced with a hole in one of the walls, never lost its grandeur. Although the white was now more of an ash and the red seats were covered in a thin layer of dust, it made the building mystical, as if it was an ancient ruin being revisited thousands of years later.
"So this is the place that caught the attention of people everywhere…" Ethan slid his finger over one of the red seats, inspecting the dust that accumulated on the tip of his finger before wiping it on his pants.
"Yeah, amazing isn't it?"
"Not really, I mean, that hole kind of ruins the image." He pointed to the hole in the wall, which, in truth, really did ruin the image.
"Well, you had to be here before that hole was there to get what I mean!" I told him.
"Back to the point, mind reenacting the scene?"
With a sigh, I led him out of the theater into the ballroom. Around me, tables were turned over, tablecloths were sullied, and shards of porcelain tableware were scattered on the floor. Instead of the subtle smell of roses back then, the scent of dead, wilted flowers wafted throughout the room, degrading the magnificence that this room once held.
I started the tale by telling him of the time that the boy announced that he lost sight of the boy with glasses, which the majority of the kids back then were in pursuit of. Being the ever moving little girl I was, I emulated the way I walked through the ballroom, trying to look utterly mesmerized in the interior as I skipped across the room with Ethan close behind.
It wasn't long before I pushed the mahogany doors open again, before I told Ethan about the music, trying not to bore him with too many details. I skipped the part of waiting for Leaf, May, and Dawn to the time when all the kids were seated in the theater.
Up on the stage, I described how the boy with glasses went about the room, jumping off the stage, heading to a random seat where that girl was around before walking over to where my friends and I were sitting. I acted like I was each of them, acting like Dawn, Leaf, and May before moving to my part, which was essential to the whole story.
Ethan's interest in the story was wavering when I noticed him yawning, so I decided to have him play a role in this story. He pulled me like that boy did, until I told him to stop so that I could explain what happened.
I pointed over to the wall, explaining that there were adults dressed in black going in, dragging children out by force. Around me, there were supposedly children who couldn't make their escape. After that, I motioned towards the stage, telling him that the other two on there were trying to run away with the rest, but in the end, their attempt failed.
By this time, I told him that I was squirming out of the boy's grasp, making Ethan let go so that the story could progress. Then, I retold my feelings concisely, leaving out my friends' situations before I ended the story with an "I fell down here, unconscious."
"Did anyone save you?" Ethan asked, his attention caught by my last sentence.
"Well, my mom said some kid with glasses did, so yeah."
"Was it that guy who hurt you or something?"
"I guess, but I don't exactly know…" I replied. "Sure he was the only guy wearing glasses that I recall, but for all I know, it could have been someone else."
Looking around the nearly empty theater, I noticed that it was now colored with an orange hue from the sun setting off in the distance. Although I could have sworn that the story didn't take more that thirty minutes to tell, time probably decided to flit by faster.
"Anyways, I'll be going now." Ethan was heading for the entrance to the theater with his hands in his pockets, leaving me all alone in the theater.
With a sigh, I headed back to the school to get my stuff, stepping through the hole in the wall to get there. The school was already deserted, the teachers and students were probably back at home, or somewhere else other than here.
And then I exited the school building as the sun was nearly gone and the night was dawning, driving away the red, orange, yellow, and pink hues from the setting sun.
…
I was already at home in my pajamas, lying down on my bed. Dinner was already served, the homework was finished, and all I that I had left to do was nothing. Well, technically, there were some other things I could do to pass the time, but I wasn't in the mood to do anything.
I rolled on my bed until I was lying on my stomach, taking the picture frame from my desk to get a better look at it. The picture was old, something that was taken back when I was four or five. In it were me and my twin sister, smiling at the camera with our dad in the background.
Back then, I was a jumpy little kid, often smiling without a care in the world. With my twin sister and tow, we would parade around the town, finding new things for us to discover. If we had the other kids along with us, we went over to the bayou to either swim or catch bugs, which Dawn would usually head on home if we decided to do the latter.
Before the whole theater incident, that was how our days went, carelessly spending them with the others. One day, we were at the library, having stories told to us, the next day, we would be at the candy shop, spending our money on penny candy. It was never boring here, and there were new discoveries laid out for us each and every day.
I thought it was weird that Dad and Crystal disappeared the day before the wedding, but my mom kept telling me that someday they would come back. Since I was a child, I believed her, but it was all a lie.
Dad never came back. Every time I would call his cell phone number, he would either say "I'm busy sweetie," or "Not now." As I grew older, the answering machine picked up, and I wasn't surprised when the number finally became unavailable. I always thought that he brought Crystal with him because he loved her more than me, but that was a lie.
If I were to count all the lies in my life, it would be impossible because there were so many.
My mom lied to me before, back when I was a child. Although she knew that lying to me at my current age was not the wisest idea, I couldn't help but feel that sometimes she was. But she wasn't the reason why there were so many lies in my life.
In fact, I'm the cause for so many false statements. When everyone else asked me how I was after my five year absence, I replied with a simple "I'm fine." In reality, I wasn't because of the burden that I had to bear. But I guess lying to them was the best course of action to protect them.
I heard my phone vibrating on my desk, so I reached over and picked it up.
"Hello?" I asked.
"Lyra, I have something to tell you…" It was May on the phone, and she didn't seem too happy.
"Sure."
"You know what happened this morning, right?" May asked.
"Some elaboration is needed if you want me to understand."
"I'm talking about you fainting and stuff."
"I'm all ears, so go ahead."
"You know how Ethan saved you, right?"
"Yeah,"
"Well, Dawn took a picture of him with her cell and decided to ask the other kids if they knew him."
"And?"
"They said that he looked exactly like the guy with glasses back then."
"No he doesn't," I told her. "He's not wearing glasses."
"Lyra, our modern world has something we like to call 'contact lenses'. Besides, you didn't see him without the glasses."
"What do you mean?"
"When you passed out, he removed them. And those who so happened to see his face said that he looked exactly the same."
"You're lying."
"I'm not lying, Lyra. You need to listen to me!"
I pressed the hang up button before tossing the cell phone back on desk, causing a huge clanking noise when the metal touched the wood. It wasn't long before I heard it ringing again, but I ignored it. There was no way that that could be true, just no way.
I looked back at the photo frame with the photo that was taken when Crystal was still here, Dad was still loving all of us, and I was still as innocent as innocent could get. My past was just an ephemeral dream to me now, filled with happiness and joy that could never be achieved from here on out.
"Crystal," I said, talking to no one in particular, "why do you think this had to happen to us? We could have been a normal family of four, with mom, dad, you and me, so why did dad leave? And why did you go with him?"
This soliloquy wasn't helping, and it wasn't long before I started crying, with my tears falling down like crystal waterfalls. Everything that I tried doing to cheer myself up wasn't working, whether it was reading anything from my collection of humorous stories to making fun of the soap operas that were shown at this time.
But the tears wouldn't stop falling. And that was how I fell asleep, my face streaked with tears.
…
The next morning, I wasn't feeling good, so my mom decided to let me stay home. I thought that I was being a drama queen last night, so I told my mom that she shouldn't baby me and make me go to school, but she only replied with a disapproving look.
"I know what you were crying about last night," she said as she entered my room with my breakfast on a tray.
"But it was probably the hormones from puberty and stuff!"
"No, it wasn't," she told me with her voice stern. "I know the difference between drama queen crying and sad crying. Last night was a definite sad crying."
"Mom, I'm not even sick! People usually go to school, even if they have problems like these!"
"Yes, but your school ties in with that past. Like I said, I'm not letting you go to school today."
"But-"
"No buts. Now" –she placed the breakfast tray on my lap forcefully- "eat your breakfast."
She left my room, clearly upset with my behavior the past few minutes. I'm kind of glad that she actually cares about me, but it was pretty annoying to have her baby me just because I was "special." And trust me, that special wasn't a good compliment at all.
I started to dig into my breakfast plate, tackling the eggs and bacon first before moving on to the toast and then the hash browns. In the middle of the fried potato goodness, I heard my phone vibrate. Being careful not to topple my breakfast tray (which also had a glass of orange juice on in, much to my dismay since I spilled things easily), I picked it up.
"Hello?"
"Lyra, I'm-"
"If you're sorry about last night, I forgive you. I overreacted, but I still don't believe you."
"You don't have to believe me," May said. "I'm even doubting if it was true or not. After all, they had to recall an incident nine years ago."
"True that!"
"So, are you coming down?" she asked. "We're all waiting for you."
"Nope, mom wants me to stay home."
"Oh, okay. See you soon!"
Before I could even reply to the sentence that meant what I think it meant, I heard the beeping on my cell that meant that the line was disconnected. Shortly after, my door swung open to reveal May, whose grin was nearly touching her ears.
"What the?" I was speechless at May's acts for her friend (me) who acted rudely to her the night before, but she was May.
And knowing May, she never liked it when her friend was down, even if they never showed it in public.
…
A/N: Whoops, I forgot about my author's notes on the first chapter (or prologue or introduction, whatever you would like to call it), but I do hope that you enjoy this story. If possible, any constructive criticism is accepted for this story with open arms. And if possible, I would love to have someone beta this for me. I'm not so confident in my grammar, even if I do get hundreds in all the grammar exercises we do in class. .
Emmychao: Sorry for beating you to the punch! Actually, I intended not to put this story up, but my friend wanted to read it since I couldn't send it over to her e-mail (it has problems) so, yeah. And I'm glad that you like it. Also, I'm looking forward to your multi-chaptered EthanxLyra story! But, that's only if you're going to post it…
MidnightheartXxX: Was it really that intense? I mean, I'm not very good at drama and prefer writing in the comedy genre instead, but I'm thankful for your review. =D