The Explorer's Apprentice

13: Jamie

Hello, my lovilies! And thank you for readin this far!! I hope you enjoy it! Don't hesitate to let me know what you think!:) Happy trails!

Isabelle Claiborne

 The muffin falls apart, piece by piece, crumb by crumb, until a little pile of oats and currents has collected on the rich green carpet. She stares at it with rapt interest, like a toddler. Pick. Drop. Pick. Drop. And when there’s no more muffin, she swirls around the pile with the pointy, pointy heel of her shoe. She feels nothing.

Numbness.

“Stop that! What on Earth has gotten into you today, Arabelle?” The lady sitting next to Isabelle is trying to talk to her again. The lady mostly talks to the other lacy, powdered women at the table. She has enormous hair, Isabelle notices. Billions of curls. Far more fascinating than the muffin crumbs. “And stop staring. It’s not polite. Finish your tea, Belle. There’s a good girl.”

Don’t call me Belle. Belle is Jamie’s name for me. Isabelle wants to scream. But the confusion clogs her throat. It freezes her tongue.

A few minutes ago, there had been nothing but red, hot, fear. The backwards emotion gave her the strength to run, and scream, and tear at these strange new lacy clothes, in the strange new world that rocked and roared with strange new voices. Horrible, never-ending, shrieking voices.

Now there is nothing. Isabelle’s energy has expired. She feels cold. She’d run smack into this lady with the big hair, who’d gushed in a silly, frilly voice about thanking the heavens she’d found her, and Isabelle had let herself be led away. She was too tired to do otherwise.

And then it was like a hidden part of her mind was opened up. Something in that woman’s face, the one who called her Arabelle and sat her down at a table of other women for tea, had triggered something dark inside her. Isabelle can’t put her finger on it. It’s thoughts that come out of her. Sounds.

Isabelle calls it Strange Isabelle.

Strange Isabelle puts life in her mouth. “Yes, mother,” Isabelle finds herself saying. “Of course, mother.” And all the while Isabelle is screaming inside her head, No! Shut up! Go away! What am I talking about? You’renotmymother. You’renotmymother. You’renotmymother!

Of course she is, Strange Isabelle thinks. I love my mother. Strange Isabelle always has an answer. Sometimes its answers are louder than Isabelle's, and that scares her.

“So, Belle,” says the heavily pregnant woman across the table. She tries to disguise it with layers and layers of lace, which instead makes her look like a cream puff. Her heavy powder and ruffled hat emphasize the dessert-ness. Strange Isabelle wants to call her Aunt Harriet. “What are your plans for America?”

“Oh, nothing really,” Isabelle mutters. Because I'm already in America. You didn't really ask me that question. Because you're not real, and your ugly dress isn't real, and this tea biscuit isn't real. I need to focus. I need to wake up. I need to find the light, and go towards it. Or away from it.

When I get to America, I'm going to practice my needlepoint. Isabelle realizes suddenly that she knows over a dozen different stitches. She’s never learned those stitches.

No! Shut up! I'm in a coma. Remember! What can I remember?

I remember Titanic. No, not this Titanic. Not this imaginary Titanic, full of horrible noise and horrible smells, an imaginary unsinkable boat that's going to sink in four days. The play Titanic, at my school. And there was an earthquake. You know what happened? This is what must have happened: the earthquake shook loose a ceiling beam and it hit me on the head and now I'm in a coma. A coma. Only a coma. And when I wake up, I'll be surrounded by friends and family and balloons and flowers in a nice, cozy hospital. Jamie will be there. I need to wake up for Jamie.