3: Re-beginning

I headed to the door which might be located in some part of the darkness. I found it. A wooden one with the faintest ray of light shedding through the gap.  I stared at the lone door surrounded by the blackness. 

The pounding got louder and the voice which was a somehow familiar one, got more impatient.

I felt pressured to open it. So grab hold of the brass handle. When I opened it, it became my eyes. No, you hadn’t read it wrong. I found myself opening my eyes though what I opened was a door.

The light was so blinding I closed my eyes.

“Okay, something is wrong. Definitely wrong,” said the earlier voice. “ Break the door, Ed. Something happened to my baby. Oh, no!”

I opened my eyes again. “Mom?” I wondered. “Edmund?”

A man who had the same name and same voice as my stepfather was telling the woman who sounded like my mother not to worry.

The ceiling was pastel blue, and the light fissure was a very realistic dolphin. I would recognize it everywhere. How could heaven have exactly same ceiling had which my room in my parents’ house had? Or hell? But hell shouldn’t give me fluttering feelings in my chest.

BANGGG!!!

I sat up in a fright as figures broke in. I gawked at Mom and Edmund, unable to speak. It was really them.

“Oh, you’re okay….” My mother sighed, pressing her chest. 

“She must had a seizure or something,” remarked Edmund.

Helene, my mom, approached my bed and put the back of her hand on my forehead. “Do you have a fever? Okay, a little warm.” She looked over her shoulder at my stepfather. “Ed, could you go grab the thermometer? I think it’s in the bathroom.”

“Yep, right on that.” He left the room.

My mother had always fiercely loved me and Ed, who I only called Edmund because I hated him, had been devoted to both of us. I didn’t know what I was doing in my memory lane because it was not just the room. Both of them looked younger than I remembered, still in their early forties. 

Sadness choked me, tears streaming down my cheeks before I knew it. Regardless of why I was here in this memory bubble, I hugged my mom. She went rigid. “Oh, sweetheart. Please tell me what’s wrong. Did someone do something to you? Who is it?!” 

Yes, Mom. Someone had done something to me. Very bad things. But I didn’t tell her, about the memory mom wouldn’t understand.

Edmund was back with the thermometer and they took my temperature. Sitting down on my cozy bed with pink and white floral sheets, I thought I would take this break even if these were all illusions instead of heaven. Heaven, I might not go to heaven. Even though I hadn’t been a horrible person, I hadn’t been particularly nice and kind either.

My temperature was normal. I didn’t have a fever.

Still, my mother and my stepfather seemed to think I was emotionally hurt somehow. 

“What are we going to do about the exam?”

“Exam?” I asked, the first word aside from yes, no, and non-commital noises since I had opened my eyes.

“It’s 8: 10 now, already late if you don’t hurry. But if you’re feeling really unwell…” she paused. “Education is important, but not as important as your health.”

I glanced at the desk on my right near the window. Found a stack of books and my old phone. I got down from the bed to head over there. Edmund had left. 

When I picked up my old smartphone.

Thu, May 20

I slid my homescreen to check the year, but I didn’t know the password.

“What year is it, Mom?”

“Year?” she asked in surprise.

“Yeah.”

As the same time she answered 2012, my own reflection on the darkened phone screen registered to me. I looked much younger, 17 year old to be exact.

I should’ve got into shock but I told her, “I’m going to take the exam.”

My plan was to visit Blackriver High, reminiscing my past. I entered the bathroom, not bothering about being late since this was not a real life anyway. Real life had gone. 

My wardrobe was full of off-shoulder blouses. Some with straps, the rest without. I didn’t know why but I was obsessed with them at the time. 

I no longer liked them much but since I no longer cared how I looked, I grabbed nearest one. And a plated skirt for the bottom. I basically had three hundred sets of shoes. I had spent so much money on them when I was seventeen and I hadn’t worked any part-time job either. 

I had hated Edmund and wanted to waste his money.

I clicked my heels out of the room: creating unfortunate noises, and went down the stairs. 

“Good luck! Take care!” My stepdad, chopping something, shouted from the kitchen. 

Sure I had noticed how eager he was to be on my good side in my real life. However, never had I considered the possibility that he had wanted to be so because he was also somebody with emotions. He could also be hurt, and he had wanted my approval. 

I had always believed he wanted to compete my awesome dad, which would be an impossible thing. 

Sure my dad had been so awesome, handsome, smart and kind, but Edmund had not been bad either, not in any aspect.

I stopped in my tracks, turned around to him fully and smiled at him. “Thank you, Ed.”

I was an adult, having being through so many things. My way of thinking was different from a seventeen-year-old Tyler.

He stopped chopping…carrots, and stared at me. He looked like he wanted to say something but for the first time, he was slow in his response.

I decided not to wait. He’d figure out something later.

Adjusting my backpack, I opened the front door and bumped into a hard body. I remembered this scent: woody, masculine, and something green or grassy. I had lied to myself that I was disgusted with this scent in my real life.

“I cannot believe this,” he muttered before shoving me out of the way with his shoulder and slamming the closing door open behind me. I staggered, nearly tripping, but luckily I didn’t fall. 

“Watch your manners, Louie,” barked Edmund inside the house. “She’s your sister. Fix yourself before I do it.”

“If she is my sister, I’m the god of nicety,” he spat. “And how are you going to fix me?”

I shook my head and went to the bus stop. Many parents would remarry and occasionally their spouses would bring their children from their previous marriages. And few of them would make them blink at the first meeting because they were either super smart or super gifted in looks aspect. Louie was both and he moved out of our house after one week and my protests.

I had been drawn to him, just like most girls at my age, but another part that dislike anything related to ‘stepfather’ had won. Somehow the part turned my attraction into some sort of rivalry and jealously. When he moved in, he had been perfectly polite to me despite his bad boy tendencies. 

He had been 17 and I had been 15. He seemed to consider I was like his younger sibling and one time I remembered he gave me puppy-dog eyes, giving me a Barbie. I couldn’t believe he gave me a Barbie because I hadn’t been a child and he hadn’t been my real brother either. 

So I tossed it into the bin right before his eyes, and tell him,

“Get out of my house. You can’t live here. It’s our house. My mom’s and mine. It doesn’t belong to you and your father!”

Before that, I had pulled several stunts of leaving dinner tables and slamming several doors. But that latest attempt must have done the trick. That very night, he packed his duffel bag and left the house. It was raining to make matter worse, and he had taken no umbrella with him. I had watched from the my bedroom window and my mom had run after him.

Edmund had brought her back into the house. He looked sad that night, but he hadn’t scolded me or hadn’t said a bad thing to me. 

Now I wondered, Louie had only been only 17 at the time, and no way he could’ve been able to stand on his own feet.

“Tyler, I didn’t raise you to be like this,” said my mother that night before the bedtime. “I caught up and persuaded him to come back. He told me he was ashamed to live in the house if you didn’t allow him. Since it was not his house, yours, just like you told him.”

Well, then this was not heaven. Maybe a test before I went to somewhere else. I don’t know…

***

The corridor was empty when I arrived at the school. I sat down at my desk. After flipping through the paper, I remembered this was the last day of exam. In my real life, I had never met Louie that day and as far as I knew, my interactions with my parents had been different.

Good thing it was the last day because I didn’t remember any homework from my junior year. Except that this one was French which I ended up learning more after high school. I was about Intermédiaire while my level when I was seventeen had been lower. 

So I did a good job at this test. 

I stretched my limbs. This test, as in ‘the test’ before I could move on to whatever awaited me, felt pretty realistic. The surroundings felt real. Sensations were real. Voices were real. 

Another test was ecosystem, which I only had basic knowledge off. But over my adult years, I had read, we all had read the destruction of ecosystem all over the news. So I did decently in questions that relied on my critical thinking but did badly in choices or definitions. 

At lunch break, I set out to canteen. Alone. I used to have so many insecurities about what my friends, Sherynn and Fern, thought of me. I had cared so much about what everyone thought of me. But, those two, they hadn’t wanted to hang out with me much, something I had ignored. It wasn’t like they hated me but more like I was not their type.

They were kinda more popular than me in school. I had approached them and acted like them so that they would like me. Now I found the reason behind me owning too many off-shoulder blouses, because they had been crazy about those stuff.

Now I wasn’t a 17-year-old Tyler, a grown-up woman. Besides, I was in no mood for clinging or pretending to be someone I was not.

Footsteps alerted me before I heard their voices.

“Tyler! Where were you the entire morning, slut?!”