The Lost Daughter

CHAPTER ONE.

A little boy with a flash of white hair, children's laughter, playing in bright green grass.

I wake up with a sharp intake of breath and a pounding heart. It's not even close to the first time I've had those dreams, I've had them at least once a month for as long as I can remember, but it doesn't stop the pangs in my heart every time I do.

I even asked my mom about him once, about the boy with white hair like mine, sure the dreams were somehow memories. It was the first time she really hit me. I was seven and she told me I was too old to have imaginary friends, so I never asked again. The dreams never stopped, though.

I take a minute to fully wake up and clear my head, squeezing my eyes closed and timing my breathing with the familiar (if not at all comforting) sound of deep sleep coming from the direction of the motel's twin bed, trying to ease the phantom pain of unknown longing in my chest. It's always like this when I have these dreams. Like my subconscious knows I'm missing some critical part of me, something just on the fringes of my memory, and it's punishing me for forgetting.

Taking one last deep breath, I sit up—dislodging the cheap blanket I scavenged from the room's closet, not that it was doing much to keep me warm anyway—and blearily take stock, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. Glancing at the alarm clock on the bedside table I see that it's 5:15, forty-five minutes until I'm due to start my shift. I blow out a small breath of relief that I woke up a few minutes before the actual alarm would have gone off, Mom has a tendency to be especially unpredictable after late nights.

She didn't get home until a couple of hours ago. I was woken up to rattling from the door letting me know she couldn't, or forgot how to, get her key to work. But thankfully she had been alone. I definitely wasn't in the mood to go sleep in the cracked bathtub to escape my mom screwing whatever drunken idiot she'd found still in the bar at 3:00 A.M. who was willing to pay her. It wouldn't have been the first time for that, either.

With a quiet sigh I heave myself off the hideous couch that was shoved in the corner of the room. When we checked into Paradise Cove (I still roll my eyes every time I see the burnt out sign in the parking lot) a few weeks ago I was praying for a pullout, it had been too long since I slept in some semblance of a real bed, but I know I should have been counting my blessings the room had a sofa at all. We had stayed in plenty of places that didn't have anything but a lone bed which my mom always claimed and it is not easy trying to sleep on a motel room carpet, imaging what you could be laying on top of. It made my skin crawl.

Making my way to the bathroom after disabling the alarm, I take my work uniform from where I left it hanging on the shower curtain rod after hand washing it the night before and move it to hang off the door instead so I can turn on the water and begin my morning routine.

After I'm done my lukewarm shower (the water never really heats up in this place), brushing my teeth at the same time, I make sure to squeeze as much water out of my hair as I can manage so I won't have to go the coffee shop with it soaking wet. There were times like now when I would have really appreciated a blow dryer, but that was just a luxury I couldn't afford. Especially not now in July when I have to save as much as I can to make it through my senior year, because I can't work two jobs during the school months.

Peeking my head out of the door to check the time, I see that I have just enough to finish getting ready before I have to get to the bus stop to make my first shift.

I pull on the required black pants and burgundy shirt that will go under the black apron that makes up the Deb's Coffee uniform, making sure to pin my name tag in place on the left side of my chest. Willa J., it reads in a no nonsense font.

There, just about done.

I look in the mirror long enough to throw my, now damp, long white-blonde hair in a messy bun, knowing there's not much else I can do with it. I see my familiar pale blue eyes staring back at me.