The Child That Never Was (NaNoWriMo 2014)

Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

Laughter rang throughout the room, making my head pound.  My body felt fatigue as I lie upon some cold, hard surface.  I couldn’t see anything for my eyes were closed and I felt too weak to even open them.  My breathing was staggered and my body felt dry.  All I wanted was to just relax my body and stop suffering through such pain.  What was even wrong with me?

I could hardly even remember anything.  All I remembered was Langer kissing me in front of Ashley Wince, as well as the rest of the whole school body.  I remembered the embarrassment and anger I felt, and how I had lashed out at Ms. Greper and shut myself out.  The last memory I could recall was of me lying on my bed, beginning to fall asleep.

Sticking with that train of thought, why had Langer even kissed me in the first place?  What gave him such authority to put his lips to me?  He was nothing but a loser in the classroom; just a huge school nerd that no one wanted to associate with.  Sure, he had helped me boost up my average in Algebra class, but in what way did becoming a tutor give someone the right to kiss you?  Being a tutor isn’t exactly attractive.  It just means that you’re someone’s last hope to pass a certain class.  People only get tutors when they are completely desperate to pass something, not desperate for love.  I may be the lone ranger in class, but I could definitely get a man way better than Langer to kiss me.

I mean, who would even want a goody-goody for a boyfriend?  Certainly not me.  All my life, I had been known as Miss Goody Two-Shoes, and as soon as I am old enough to get married and move out, I’m going to find a man who would be willing to go on some life-threatening adventures with me.  Then after we’d have our fun, perhaps we’d settle down and have children, who we wouldn’t neglect or believe to be failures in life.  Children that we would love and give them anything.  We would be the perfect parents with perfect children, not to say that they have to have the highest average in the class and be the best at everything.  Our standard of perfect would be for them to exceed at their own pace in whatever they enjoy pursuing in the most.  Our life would be, through our perspective, perfect.

All I really needed in my life was something perfect to hold onto and maintain with its perfection.  Something to say that went right in my life, and that I wasn't a complete failure.  Because I wasn't truly a complete failure… Right?  No there was absolutely no way that anyone could be a complete failure.  There's always room for improvement because no one ever fails, but no one ever perfects things either.

Click, click, click.  I heard the sound of high heels approaching me, following the rendering absence of silence.  My mind drifted back to reality and the suffering I was feeling, but I still didn't open my eyes.  I didn't want to see what was going on or where I was.  Perhaps I was in a hospital and this was just a nurse coming to check up on me.  But what had happened to me to make my body so limp that I needed medical assistance?

“You can open your eyes now,” a feminine voice giggled.  I groaned and did what I was so told, eager to find out what was happening.  Slowly, my vision blurred back to life.  When my eyes were finally opened, I saw a beautiful girl, about my age or so, with long, bouncy blonde curls and dazzling bright blue eyes.  Her complexion was so fair and perfect.  She looked somewhat like perfection.

“How do you feel, darling?”  She sat on the edge of my bed, looking over me with a girlish smile glued to her face. 

I shook my head and tried to sit up, but only my head lifted.  I fell back down onto my pillow and moved my head from side to side.  I gently shrugged my shoulders.  “Confused.  I don't know.”

She put her hand on my shoulder, giggling again.  “As you should be.”

My forehead creased the slightest bit, but doing so only increased my headache.  I relaxed the muscles in my forehead and closed my eyes.  “Where am I?  What happened?  And who are you?”

“Look around,” she said, softly.  “Where do you think you are?”

I sighed, allowing for my eyes to open once more.  I looked around and saw nothing but blank space.  I was lying on a bed, but it felt as hard as a rock.  The scenery around me kept fading in and out; one minute it was a hospital room, and the next I was in the midst of a space of nothingness.  My eye met the girl’s and I felt a bit calmer.  There was just something about her that seemed so familiar, giving me déjà vu, but I just couldn't put my finger on it.

She smiled gently.  “I know, honey.  It keeps fading.  We are in the middle of realms and can't continue on until you've been nursed back to health.”

“Continue on, with what?  Life?” I asked.

She shrugged.  “Something like that.”  After a moment’s pause, she sighed.  “Kaylie, I'm so sorry.  I never meant to take it this far on you or Bethany, or Benny.  However, I must crown you MVP so far; you've really helped the team and got them out of some super sticky situations.”

I shook my head feeling the headache worsen.  “What are you talking about?  And who are you?”

She smiled with her perfectly straight teeth sparkling behind her peach lip gloss.  “My name is Kairi.  Now Kaylie, tell me, do you not remember anything?  Do you not remember the arena and the lion?  Bethany?  Benny?”

I laid back on my pillow and shut my eyes, thinking hard.  However, the only thing I could think of was the pounding of the headache pulsing in my brain.  I signed.  “Kairi, I don't recall.”

Kairi clasped her hands together.  “Well… That's just… Great,” she announced in an irritated voice.  Sighing, she continued on with her gibberish.  “Kaylie, open your eyes and look around.  Now sit up, we need to make you feel better.  Then, I can hand you off to your friends, and you guys can help each other get over your amnesia.  If you even remember each other that is.”  Kairi walked over to a table near the window left of my bed.  With the fading in and out of the room, it looked as though Kairi was just floating about in mid-air. 

“Kairi, I don't understand.”  I finally sat up in bed, feeling all woozy, trying not to topple over back onto the mattress.  I didn't want her to think me a drunk or something.  The room around me was still fading in and out, only causing me to feel dizzy and a bit nauseas.  Kairi just paced around the room, attending to different aspects of it.  I wasn’t sure what she was doing, but there was something about her that made me trust her.  Whatever she was doing to the room was for my benefit.  Although I knew her name, I still wasn’t sure of who she was, in relation to me.  Was she friend?  Was she there when I had the accident that put me in this queer hospital room?

She walked back over and sat on the edge of my bed again.  “I know that it probably doesn’t make much sense to you right now, honey, but I promise that it will.  You just need to trust me and allow me to do my magic.”  She put her hand to my forehead and kissed my cheek.  “Now feel better and if you see anything strange happening, go discover it.  That’s the only way you’ll learn anything and get out of here.”

“Thanks,” I mumbled.  She nodded, and stood up, walking towards the faded door to the room.  She gave me one last glance and a nod, before heading out of the room, disappearing through thin air.  I stared after her, wondering if she was going to return or had she left me for good?  It had sounded like she was leaving me on my own to figure out what had happened, and to get better all by myself.  I sighed, and moved my head around my pillow, enjoying its fluffiness and comfort.  The softness made me not want to leave.

Especially when something queer did occur.  From the corner of my eye, I could see some glow of light beginning to grow out of nowhere.  It became bigger and bigger, eventually so big that it was blinding me.  My eyes fluttered open, staring at its luminous glory.  My mind suddenly flashed back to other memories revolving around those big globs of light.  It had once appeared in my bedroom and some village.  Curiosity killed the cat, as they say, so I pulled my sheets off, revealing myself covered in a hospital gown.  Slowly, I walked towards the glob of light, wondering what in the world it must be.  My breathing became staggered, as if there wasn’t enough air in the world to fill my lungs, but I lifted my hand up to touch the light, realizing what it was.

It was a portal.