* *
*
The day he told me his feelings started out just like any other day. He came over on my day off of work as he always did. I opened the door to the same short, light brown, spiky, wild hair. The same big green eyes with a yellow, golden sparkle that danced around the inner circle, and a smile on the face that was always there for me. Perfect full lips hugged immaculate straight white teeth all surrounded by light, smooth and beautiful skin. Small dimples pierced his symmetrical oval face supported by a p
erfectly chiseled jaw
.
He was wearing a button-up shirt under a tan sweater (that accented his skin so magnificently) and a faded pair of blue jeans. Leaning against my doorframe, he looked more like a model posing for a high-profile photo shoot than just one friend smiling at another. As it always did, my heart thudded at the mere sight of his angelic face.
“
Hey, Chris.”
“
Hey, Alexander,” I smiled.
I was the only one allowed to use his full name. Everyone else called him Alex. He rolled past me, whirling his scent throughout my mind. He always smelled of the same cologne I bought for him a few years earlier, and the scent made my head spin. He flopped down in his usual spot on my couch and flipped on the TV.
“
So, whatcha wanna do today, Alex?”
“
I don’t know. I thought we would just hang out here today.” His eyes darted once to my face, but stayed on the TV the rest of the time. I sighed. Another afternoon in my house with the perfect man.
I ran over and hopped on the couch next to him and snuggled up to his chest. It wasn’t
exactly
a romantic gesture though. We had always been that way. Anyone who saw us together always thought we were a couple.
We laid on the couch watching a lot of nothing on the television and chit-chatting.
Besides Mom, Alex was the one person I could talk to and truly never shut up. I was always interested in what he had to say. He was the one person who knew as much about me as I did, maybe even more.
He jumped up m
i
d-
sentence and said he had to go to the bathroom. He picked up a small black bag I didn’t see him carry in and darted around the corner.
“
Okay
,
” I stated about ten
seconds too late. “Weird.”
He came back a moment later with a small
,
wooden box in his hands.
“
Happy Valentine’s Day!” he exclaimed.
I smiled hugely, but it quickly turned into a frown. “But, I didn’t get you anything,” I pouted.
He sat
next to me and shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Will you be my valentine?” His eyes sparkled that devilishly handsome
bright green and his face lit up.
This was a t
radition all of our child years.
H
e always asked me. Every year we traded valentines and he was mine and I was his—except of course the last three years that I was gone. I hesitated and he looked nervous.
“
Come on, Chris. Don’t leave me hanging here….”
I giggled and took the box.
“
Of course I will,” I smiled.
I noticed the box for the first time. It was a family heirloom he had once told me about. His father had given it to him the year before he died. A
lex was fifteen
. We were already best friends, but after I held his hands for the first hard three weeks after his father’s death, we were inseparable.
I took off the lid and my jaw dropped. Inside were a number
of valentines, the kiddie kind
. They were the very ones I had given him from the first Valentine’s Day we started
our tradition to the very last.
“
Christina Marie,” he looked deeply into my eyes, “I lost my valentine three years ago, and I decided this year I wasn’t going to let her go.” And then we had our first kiss.
*
*
*
He wasn’t the reason I came back to Indiana, well
,
not all of it, but he was the reason I stayed. Still to this day, I know in my he
art
there will never be another that I will love with the
same
intensity that I feel for him.
Of course I hadn’t seen him in o
ver a week
since he was in Texas visiting his mother. She remarried some years after his father passed away and followed her new husband there. He wouldn’t be back for two more weeks. I wanted so badly to tell him about my dream and about the money. Maybe he could help me make sense of it all. I couldn’t tell anyone else, nooooo way.
Although Alex phoned me regularly, I wouldn’t tell him until he came home. There was no reason to worry him. He would have just come home early, and I didn’t want him to miss out on his time with his mother. He had always been a bit protective of me, and he would be worried.
I was blow-drying my long, light brown hair (Mother had always loved my hair and never let me cut it) when my phone rang. I knew who it would be before I reached for it.
“
Hey, Mom.”
“
Hi, honey.”
“
I was just getting ready. Are we still meeting at 11:30 at La Madeline for lunch?” La Madeline was our favorite restaurant. It’s a charming little Italian Bistro in town, and it was somewhat of a tradition to eat there often just the two of us.
“
You haven’t been outside yet, have you?”
“
No. Why
,
Mom? What’s up?”
“
There is about a foot of snow outside, and I was calling to see if you wanted to try to go tomorrow instead.” My mother hated driving in the snow. She would never leave the house when there was snow on the ground if she didn’t have to.
“
Oh. Umm, sure,
” I said as cheerily
as possible, but I knew my voice sounded off.
“
You okay, honey?”
“
Yeah, I’m fine
,
Mom, just had a long night. And I miss Alex,” I lied.
“
You wanna talk about it?” Mom had always been, aside from Alex, the one person I could talk to about any of my problems, no matter what it was. She was my best friend. I couldn’t tell her about the dreams though, and definitely not about the money. She would flip out as badly as Alex would. Who was I kidding, who wouldn’t?
“
No
,
Mom, it’s fine. I’ll just clean up
the house a bit and finish reading my book.”
“
Okay, Christina. I love you.”
“
Love you too, Mom.”
“
Same time tomorrow?”
“
Yeah sure.”
“
Okay, bye.”
“
See ya.”
I fumbled my way through the next few hours trying to keep myself busy—laundry, dishes, dusting, vacuuming twice, and I finally gave up. I decided to finish reading
A Farewell to Arms
. I had a goal set for myself to read all of the books on the top 100 list of best books of our time, and with Alex gone, I was actually making pretty good progress. I read only a few pages when suddenly the images in my mind shifted.
* * *
I was back in that city, the oval city of dirt roads and concrete buildings. Again, it seemed totally abandoned. Fear
consumed
my body as I forced myself to slowly turn to see what I knew would be in front of me. And there she was, there
I
was, in the same robe as the last time, but with the hood pulled back. We stood staring at each other, but this time she didn’t speak.
“
Who are you?” I whispered.
“
It is time,” is all the booming male voice said.
“
Time for what?” I yelled frantically.
Then, in a barely audible voice that sounded more like ringing bells than that of a child, she shrieked, “You must save us! You must come back!” and then bright red blood flowed from her eyes and she collapsed.
* * *
A loud ringing in my ears awoke me, and at first I didn’t realize it was me screaming. Again tears were flow
ed
from my face. I was terrified.
Two
My head was pounding when my breath caught.
“
Ugh, another headache,” I complained. I
’d
ha
d
them as long as I could
remember.
I rolled over and closed my eyes, not
daring to sleep again and stayed there the rest of the day. I didn’t know what else to do. My headaches
we
re an unstoppable force of nature—the kind where you get the blurred vision and see spots and
everything.
A
n aura, I think they call it. I have been on every medication known to man and nothing helps. Just sleep and darkness.
I was startled when I woke to a dim light shining through my window. It was morning again. I sighed, relieved to have survived a night free of my nightmare.
* * *
Meeting Mom was uneventful, aside from t
he way her eyes studied my ever-
bland appearance and my lack of a jacket, but the cold never really seemed to bother me as much as it did her.
See, while I
was
perfectly content with my average and typical blue
-
jean and a tan
k-t
op kind of appearance, accented by my
boring but b
eautiful long hair, my mother wa
s the exact opposite.
She has wild, but beautiful curly dark brown hair and stunning chocolate eyes, while mine are a light, almost fluorescent, blue. She has very tan skin and curves in all the right places, while I am much skinnier. She is also always dressed for a runway, a trait I obviously got passed by on the DNA train. All in all, I look nothing like her. She always tells me I look like my father, whom of course I have never met. I had never even seen a picture of him.
We talked about Alex and Michael, my stepfather, and she held me a little too long when we parted. I guess she sensed I wasn’t quite myself a little bit better than I wanted her to.
I went home in fear of what the night would bring, but I awoke again Monday morning
from
a restful night. I was hopeful I had put the girl behind me for good.
I was anxious to get back to the bank that morning. I rushed through my morning shower, didn’t even blow-dry my hair, had a quick bowl of cereal
,
and darted out the door as fast as possible. The whole way, I silently prayed I had dreamt the bank error. I pulled up to the ATM and my hands were shaking. I put my card in. Please, please, please….
“
NO!” I shouted. Not possible, not possible. The amount wasn’t the same. Not even close. It was now $1,674,389! It was more. A lot more…
I pulled around to the front of the bank and idled for a while. How could it be more? Who was doing this to me? When I finally calmed, I opened the door and walked slowly into the bank. As I walked, I don’t know why, but I got angry. It wasn’t a normal emotion for me. I’m not a happy-go-lucky type of person, but I don’t let my emotions rule me either.
With each step, I was more infuriated than the last. I walked to the rear of the line and waited. And waited. I was grow
ing impatient. Finally, I was at
the front of the line and Emily, in her always bubbly and happy personality, greeted me in the same manner she always had.