Meeting Someone Familiar

Once school is over for the day, I waste no time heading back home. I am too tired to do anything else. Once I have eaten a snack and taken an hour's nap, I begin reading for the tests I would write the next day. So far, I have been doing well on my tests– from what I could tell– and I wanted to keep it that way.

I read until late in the night when I stumbled to the kitchen to eat dinner. I devour the food quickly and go back to my room. As soon as I touch the bed, I fall asleep.

When I wake up Wednesday morning, I feel like I have been running laps around a football field. I don't get up immediately, choosing to lie still, fantasizing about the weekend. After some minutes, I force myself to get up, or else I would just lie on that bed all day.

"You look tired," Emily says as she walks into the kitchen. I am already eating breakfast."Are you sure you don't want to stay at home and rest? You are still recovering after all."

I give a slight shake of my head. Even if I stayed at home, I would only be delaying what I have to do in school. As it is, I only have two more days of tests before I could begin normal classes. Better to finish it all in one go than to stretch it out for more than I need to.

"Okay," Emily says, "how's your head by the way."

"It's okay. I think it's almost fully healed." Apart from a slight ache from time to time, it seems okay, something I am glad about.

I touch the bandage on my head, I would be taking it off today, once I am back from school.

"Where's mom?" I ask Emily. By now mom should be eating breakfast, or at least taking that tea of hers.

"She's in bed. She worked until really late last night, so she got permission to go to work a bit late today."

"Oh," I say, my face not betraying any emotion. But inside, that feeling of helplessness comes back with a vengeance. If I could just have a way to help her, to just be able to tell her to rest while I do everything for her. I take in a deep breath and smother the emotion. I could not do anything now, but I will figure out something once I'm done with school.

I finish up with breakfast and head for another long daily torture in a place called school.

Though the day still felt long, it is still better than the two previous days. That is probably because I am almost done with my tests, whatever it is, by the time lunch comes I am not feeling as tired as I usually feel.

Cassandra does not come to sit with Drew and I today, but she does wave at me as I walked past her table on my way to my usual one. The action was small, but it left me feeling warm and bubbly, as well as putting a stupid grin on my face.

Drew does not talk about anything else but a movie that was coming out this weekend. He asked me if I wanted him to go watch it with me but I denied it. For some reason I don't know, I prefer watching a movie two weeks after it has been released, no matter how much I love the movie. That extra two weeks give me a feeling of excitement which sometimes makes the movies better. Even if it does not make the movie better, the excitement is something great on its own.

After lunch, I have nothing to do – I have done most of my tests – so I decided to go to the library.

"Ian!" the librarian exclaims as I walk into the library. I am a regular visitor to the library so the librarian and I are something like friends."How are you?" she asks.

"I'm fine."

"I hope you didn't get any lasting damage?"

"No, apart from losing some of my memories I'm good."

A worried look appears on her face."You're suffering from amnesia?"

"Well, it's not ex–" her phone rings, cutting me off.

What I want to tell her is simple. I have no idea what I'm suffering from, some weird type of amnesia perhaps. Until Cassandra called my attention to it yesterday I always thought amnesia was a simple thing. You lose your memory due to some head trauma and later you get it back.

Turns out, that amnesia is a bit more complicated than that. First off, not everyone loses their memories, some just get new fake ones. That's not even the bad part since most people recover their memories within a month. The bad part of amnesia is that it can affect your ability to learn and create new memories. But the crazy thing is, apart from memory loss, I'm not suffering from anything else, which just makes me wonder if I am lucky, or not truly suffering from amnesia itself. I am probably just lucky though.

As the librarian speaks on the phone, I realize it may take some time before she is done. I decide to go into the library.

I turn around to leave and bump into somebody. As I stumble backward, the person reaches out and grabs my shoulder to steady me. A moment later my shoulder receives a shock that jolts the hell out of me.

"What the hell!" I hiss as I shake out of the person's grip. I touch my shoulder which feels numb.

"Sorry." the person says. I look up and stare in surprise. It is my neighbor. The male one who just moved in recently, according to Emily.

"No problem," I say.

For a moment I imagine he smiles."Excuse me." he says before walking past me.

Isn't he meant to be at work? I ask myself as I turn to look at his back. After a moment, I shrug to myself and go into the library to browse the books.

After some minutes of wandering through the bookshelves, I finally find a book I can use to pass time until the final bell rings. I take it to a cubicle and begin reading.

As time passes, my body temperature begins to increase. I do not notice at first until a bead of sweat drops on the book in front. That is when the pain starts. It builds up slowly in my abdomen, from the point when it is inconsequential to being so terrible I see stars. Then it all stops, as suddenly as it began, leaving me feeling cold as beads of sweat drip down my chin.

A few minutes later it begins again, starting with my body temperature. That's when I begin to worry. Am I sick? Did I eat something I should not have? I turn my mind in circles trying to figure out what could be causing what I am feeling now but my answers turn out to be nothing.

The cycle continues, and each time the pain in my abdomen ends up worse than it was the time before. At a point, I try to go to the school's clinic, but as soon as I stand up a sharp pain pierces through my body, causing me to black out. The next thing I know is that I am back on the chair.

Time passes as I stay on that chair, unable to move or speak as pain racks my body, praying for someone to notice and come to my rescue but no one does. Then all of a sudden, it stops.

I wait, teeth grinding in anticipation of the horrible pain to come, but time passes and nothing happens. Finally, I let out a shaky breath of relief. It is finally over.

I open my tightly shut eyes and stare at the book in front of me. The urge to read has long left me. I stare at that book until the final bell rings, telling me it is time to go home.

My body trembles a bit as I pick up the book and return it to its shelf.

I do not waste time packing up my stuff and heading home. My stomach had twisted itself into knots and I wanted nothing more than to relax; the best place to do that was at home.

When I get home, I make myself eat a little snack – which serves to relax my stomach a bit – before heading to my room to rest.