Chapter 2

"…and remember to finish the assignment for Monday," the teacher drawled; before he finished his sentence he had to raise his voice to compensate for the noise made by the blaring school bells that signaled the end of the day. Wordlessly, Ashley gathered her things and stepped briskly to her locker: once there, she deposited her binders in her backpack and grabbed one of its straps. With a single fluid motion, she rested the strap over her shoulder, pivoted on her heel, and slammed the locker door shut, walking nonchalantly away from the metallic clamor that the impact had produced.

As she walked through the building toward her bus, her mind wandered off – before long, she was ruminating about the essay draft that she had handed in to her English teacher near the middle of the day. Did she catch all the stupid mistakes she had made while frantically writing it? Were all the pages in order, and flipped the right way? Were all the papers actually in the stack? She bit her lip a little nervously: she hadn't had the chance to actually check, past the episode of this morning. She had been much too busy trying to keep her heavy eyelids from anchoring themselves closed. She almost whimpered out loud, but bit her tongue at the last moment.

She had emerged into full daylight and mounted her bus before long, and took her customary seat near the front of the many rows of seats. It was still pretty early, and the bus had only a sparse sprinkling of people in it; but that soon changed, as students started filing in, filling the vehicle in near record time. The relative silence exploded into noisy chatter, and as Ashley sat there she tried hard to block the voices out of her head – to no avail. Inwardly, she groaned. She couldn't understand how people could be so loud and talkative – I mean, she thought, how much could there be to talk about?

Still… it might be nice to have someone to chatter idly to, perhaps. Heavens know that she didn't really have anyone to talk to except Jessica, and, truth be told, their conversations together were starting to grow old. And, her father… she wasn't even comfortable speaking with her father. Whatever they said to each other just sounded awkward, after the mutual apprehension of being hounded by a certain Bill back in a certain island had dissipated.

Really, she had no real friends.

D…

…No. D was gone. He had passed on; and even if he hadn't, Ashley doubted that he could have left that creepy island anyways. Her heart hurt a little to think about him again, but somehow it was also oddly comforting, as if the very thought of him eased her innate loneliness.

But… D was gone. And nothing could bring him back. Just like my dream last night reinforced, she thought bitterly. And the only thing she had to remember him by – to remember her one true friend by – were mere memories. Wisps of thought that could be blown away with any number of methods, or at the very least be dulled with age.

Oh well. There was really no use in sulking about it now; besides, she had other things to worry about – such as homework.

By the time she snapped herself out of her reverie, she realized that the bus was nearing her stop. Once it screeched to a stop, she hauled her backpack off her lap and pounded down the steps, muttering thanks to the bus driver as she hit the sidewalk and started padding down its length towards her house. Behind her, she heard the bus sputter, then crawl away.

It was a hot day, uncharacteristically so for the time of the month. It was mid-May, and where Ashley lived the air should have still held a chill in its winds – and yet, the sun was high up and blaring down upon the suburban area, with nary a cloud to cover its unusually merciless assault. She shielded her eyes from the glare of the sun while she strolled back to the house: the third one to the right from where the school bus had stopped.

Reaching the small two-story house, she walked briskly over to the mailbox – a white, plastic thing supported by a thick wooden stave – and popped open the cover. Inside there was a bunch of letters: she grabbed the stack without preamble, closed the cover, and hurried up the driveway, fumbling in her pockets with her free hand for the house key. Just as she found the warm piece of metal, she came to the end of the driveway, and turned abruptly towards a narrow path that led to the front door. Ascending a short flight of three steps, Ashley finally reached the stark red bulk of the door.

She fumbled for a moment with the lock, then when the key was successfully inserted and turned with a soft click, she opened the door and entered the house.

The place where Ashley and her two relatives, Jessica and Richard, lived was relatively tiny. The foyer melded almost immediately with the dining room cum kitchen, which was nestled to the left of where Ashley now stood. Inside the kitchen there were all the necessary appliances: oven, refrigerator, dishwasher, sink, and cabinets. In the same room, sitting on the polished hardwood floor, was an oblong wooden table, just big enough to fit four people. As if to emphasize that point, there were four chairs tucked close to the table – two on each of the longer faces. Beyond the kitchen was a living room, which contained a worn old couch and TV (and the entrance to the laundry room); and to Ashley's right there was a narrow staircase that led upstairs.

Ashley pocketed the key and closed the front door; then she walked to the dining table and deposited the stack of mail upon it. She didn't bother sifting through them to see if anything was for her; she never got any mail, and she never did anything to elicit even a simple letter of acknowledgement from anybody.

Without a backward glance, Ashley called, "I'm home!" and proceeded to bounce up the staircase, backpack lounging on one shoulder. Once she crested the flight of stairs, she slowed to a leisurely pace and started walking down the little hallway. There were four rooms on the second story: two on the right, Ashley and Richard's room, and two on the left, Jessica's room and the bathroom that they all shared. Ever since Ashley's father had moved in, sharing the only toilet and shower in the house had been a nuisance at best, and complete agony at worst. With a wry and secretive grin, she remembered how Richard had been the one most hard-pressed with this task. I mean, she thought, entering the room – her room – closest to the stairs on the right, it's not like a mansion would have only one bathroom.

Her room was unremarkable: the walls were white-washed, just like the rest of the house; she had a small dresser pressed against one wall; a twin-sized bed stood on the opposite wall, accompanied by a dusty old nightstand; and right next to the nightstand, her desk had been squeezed in. Sunlight streamed through the single window the room sported, lighting up the tiny dust motes floating in the air around her.

She walked up to her desk and dropped her backpack onto the hardwood with a clunk. Pulling out the rolling chair from the desk, she sat heavily into it and yanked the bag open. She rummaged through the stack of folders and books with a slightly impatient air, her long white hair falling off of her shoulders and slightly obscuring her view. She pushed the locks away and grabbed at one of the objects in her backpack; then, with an unceremonial grunt, yanked it cleanly out.

For the next hour or so, she worked diligently on her homework, pointedly ignoring (or rather, fighting back against) the increasingly loud yawns and heavy eyelids that her body seemed to enjoy forcing upon itself.

Halfway through a rather complicated math problem, though, her fatigue finally overcame her desire to get the work done and over with. Almost without thinking, Ashley dropped the pencil onto her desk – it rolled down and dropped to the floor – and, nestling her head in her arms, fell asleep right where she sat.

When Ashley had announced her return, she hadn't gotten a response – but, tired as she was, she didn't spare a single thought about this.

Back before she had been pulled into the mystery of Blood Edward Island, Ashley had always been home alone for a couple hours at most (after Jessica had deemed it safe for her niece to stay home alone); her aunt had always needed to stay at the school for some reason or another. In most cases, it was to offer her students extra tutelage in Chemistry.

Ashley had been used to being alone when coming back from school: even now, she found it strange to find her father at home, tinkering with some piece of technology or other. It just seemed unnatural for her to arrive back at the house, expecting someone else to be inside before her.

So the combination of her tiredness and her idea of the household norm had stayed her mind from wondering why no one seemed to be at home – but, truth be told, someone had indeed been in the house when she got back.

He just hadn't been awake to greet her.

After watching Ashley's hasty retreat and waving Jessica goodbye, Richard had retired to his room to do some experiments with the DTS – or, rather, a replica of the original DTS. Even though he really had nothing more he needed from the machine, he had decided to continue working on it to see if he could improve it any further. The only problem had been, and still was, that Jessica's funds from teaching were a bit too low for any swift progress to be made. Therefore, after two years, he had made nearly no progress on it and was just starting to contemplate getting a part-time job (though heavens knew what grocery store or fast food restaurant would want a self-exiled scientist for). Still, he tinkered with the DTS every day with what limited resources he had been able to muster; and that activity alone usually took up most of his energy.

And so, shortly before Ashley's school had let out, Richard Robbins had himself given in to the desire to sleep and sprawled out on his bed. Within moments, he was deaf to the world, and to Ashley's voice.

Richard yawned and blinked his eyes open. His vision came out as blurry and unfocused, and the sunlight spilling in through the windows of his room lent to his eyes a dull pain as they adjusted to the new brightness. He brought up a hand and scratched at his cheek, which he found was rough with a 5 o'clock shadow. He probably should have shaved this morning…

Nevermind that. Adjusting his glasses – he'd worn them to sleep – with one hand, he hauled himself up with the other and stumbled off of the bed. Luxuriating in another long-drawn yawn, he glanced at his wristwatch –

Oh, man! It was so late!

Hurriedly, he walked briskly out of his room, smoothing the wrinkles out of his clothes. Ashley should have been back from school by now – that meant that the mail would be in the house. "Ashley?" he called as he all but ran down the stairs; there was no answer. A bit baffled, he pulled up to the dining table and picked up the small stack of mail.

He leafed through the mail, sorting the letters: bills, coupons, junk. He mentally took a tally of all the junk mail that had mixed themselves in with the rest, wondering fleetingly if there was anything he could do to stop at least some of the unwanted letters. There probably wasn't; these companies just never listened when you told them to –

He was so caught up in his reflections that he nearly sorted a rather bulky envelope into the junk pile. He stayed his hand halfway through the motions, though, and reversed the action, bringing it closer to his face. He squinted, reading the tiny print that represented the mailing address. On the top, written in capital letters, was one name: "MS. ASHLEY M. ROBBINS".

Well, that was a surprise. Richard glanced at the rest of the envelope's front: nothing. No return address. He flipped it over, wondering if it had somehow gotten printed there. Again, nothing. He had half a mind to open the package, feeling his rusty paternal instincts kicking in; but he refrained at the last moment, his fingers nearly touching the sealed flap.

Ashley would be rather pissed if he touched her mail.

Setting down the rest of the pile, Richard turned from the table and loped up the stairs.

He didn't know why, but he had a feeling that his daughter would be in her room doing homework instead of outside. Even though nobody had answered when he'd called out, it just didn't sound right to think something like, oh hey, Ashley probably went for a walk. She just didn't seem like that type of girl.

So when he turned the knob and opened the door to Ashley's room, he was only mildly surprised to see her at her desk, fast asleep and arms cradling her head. He favored her with a small smile and, taking care not to make the hardwood floor creak so much as to stir her from her nap. He placed the parcel at the edge of her desk, hoping that when she woke up she wouldn't accidentally knock it onto the floor; then, as quietly as he had come in, Richard exited the room, closing the door behind him.