Chapter 1

Chasing Lucy's Echo

 

             “I have often asked questions like ‘Why am I here?’ ‘Who am I?’ and ‘Where am I going?’ More often, I have asked why I ask those questions. In the end, my answer is that it is more important to be than to know who I am. As I once said, “Life is like a painting, each stroke is part of the bigger picture.” There is no going, there is no reason, there is no destination, there is not a journey and death is certainly not its destination, but there is a Me. I have thoughts, emotion, and although controversial, I have a life. So, when I do sit and decide to analyze concepts like who I am, I must take these thoughts into consideration. Here is written not who I am, but what I have done. I am not the same person that I reflect open now, just as I will not be the same person when I am done writing this. What makes it important is that it is the same life, the same painting.”

-- Jamison

                 

 

Act I: The Journal

 

Chapter 1

 

            Edward sat as his desk, thinking about everything that happened. He had the idea for the book all day. Now was the first time he could start. He had finished his homework and the rest of the night was free. He would work in secret -- Nobody at the moment could see what he wrote.

            He got out his notebook and booted it up. It didn’t have a keyboard or a mouse. There wasn’t even a stylus to touch the screen with. He just laid it on the desk, flat, like a piece of paper.

            He held his hand above the notebook as if he were holding a pencil. He began to move his hand as if it were forming letters with an invisible pencil. Words began to form across the page. He repeated a few times. Each time he wrote something, he waved his hand across the page and the words were deleted. After about seven tries, he had what he wanted – the perfect first sentence:

 

I saw another world.

 

Edward looked at the words, making sure that they were really what he wanted. Perfect. He was sure; that was how he was going to start. Satisfied, he began to write more:

 

I saw it somewhere. It was different from this world. I do not remember where I saw it. But, I know that I saw it. It was real. It was very real.  I was there and I stepped foot on its land, smelt its air, and saw its sky. It was brilliant – more vivid and real than this world could ever be -- as if this world was the dream and that world was the reality.

When I was there, I looked up into the night sky. I saw it tinged lighter blue and dressed with stars, millions packed so tight that there was no such thing as a constellation. I saw hills of magenta and gold tinged grass and sunsets that seemed to last for hours. There were some people there. There were fewer of them, but they were peaceful. I did not see war. I only saw simple lives, simple people, and a simple society, about to branch out into its full potential gaining knowledge and technology similar to what we have in this world.

I saw a small town by the ocean. Just to the east there were large rolling hills of grass. On one of them was greatest object in the universe – a grand tree, old enough to tell all of history. But, to me, it seemed like something to sit under and watch the time. And, even further to the East, there was a forest. It was deep and dark and I wanted explore it. I wanted to see who dare live in that mysterious forest. But, before I could look any further, I realized the truth of my problems. I had seen this seemingly beautiful world -- This other world. I was drawn by its differences. I was curious. But, I became too attached. And so, I became part of that world. Yet, I was still part of this one. I could not live in both, and so I decided to leave that world and stay here. I now regret that choice, and as I left it, it began to slip away.

For each second I looked at it as I left, it became harder to look away. I stared at it for hours. And then, I fell asleep. And when I woke up, it was no longer there. Just hours before, it was there, right there, in front of my eyes. But it was now gone, forever. It was my decision. I don’t know if it was the right decision, but it was the only decision. And it was made already.

I tried to recall it. But I could not even remember where it was. I tried to remember how to go back and see it all again. But, with each second, I remembered less and less. It faded until it was a mere sensation, nothing more than an idea of the mind. I even tried to write down any last hint of it in my memory, but each time I tried, the memories would fade even further or I would distort them with my imagination, trying to add detail that never existed. Eventually, maybe after a few days or maybe a year, I do not remember how long exactly, I stopped trying. It had completely faded from my memory.

Some time passed. Every once in a while, images would pop into my mind. I didn’t know where they were from. They were mostly trees. They were all oak trees with blue leaves and green branches. I couldn’t remember what each one looked like. But, gradually the concept of these images grew in my mind. I tried to draw these images. I was not good at drawing and the best I could do was in the form of stick figures. I kept drawing, nonetheless. I improved somewhat, enough so that you could at least kind of sort of tell that I was somewhat trying to draw trees, or maybe something that looked closer to a telephone pole. Although, squinting seemed to always magically turn them back into trees. Eventually, I stopped dedicating full pages of paper to drawing. I scribbled here and there, sometimes on homework or napkins. It was really an unconscious effort. On many occasions I had seen the teacher catch me scribbling in class, but it was never of any serious disturbance. About halfway through the fall semester, a new girl transferred to my school. She sat behind me in homeroom. I didn’t really talk to her. She seemed normal, no crazy hairstyles at least. But, there was something that didn’t seem quite right. One day, a few weeks after winter break, she asked me about the scribbles and asked if she could take some of them home. No one had really noticed them before, so I was slightly surprised, but I gave some to her. Then, a few weeks had passed and she spoke to me again. She handed me a drawing. It was from the trees that I had scribbled, but it far surpassed my scribbles in every which way. They were simply amazing, and they were perfectly realistic. But, they were not my trees, only a great interpretation. I thanked her for the drawing and asked her for her name. I know that teacher must have called her name every day during role, but I was never good with names, and had a hard enough time remembering my own name. She laughed slightly and then told me that her name was...

 

Edward stopped for a second. What was her name? She reminded him of someone he knew. But it just didn’t hit him at the moment. So, he thought for a bit. Agitated by his sudden writers block, he got up and when downstairs to get a drink of water.

The ice was out. Warm water just wasn’t the same. Wanting ice for the morning at least, he search the cupboard for a tray, filled it with water, and stuck it in the freezer.

By then, he still didn’t have a name. So, when he went back upstairs, he decided to just go with instinct. It didn’t matter what the name was; he just needed one to keep writing.

Without thinking, his hand moved and name Katie attached itself to the end of the most recent paragraph.

 

Katie and I would talk ever once and a while from then on. We ate lunch on the other side of the school from the lunch area. It was quiet there and free from high school drama. A few weeks had gone by and I picked up the drawing, and traced it. I then changed a few things on the traced version. I moved a few branches, changed the type of leaves, and added a small stream to the side of the main tree. It was not the same quality that Katie drew it the first time, but it was far better than any of my scribbles. I did the same thing again about five or so times. Eventually, I was fairly happy with the results.

One day, I took it to show Katie. She did not have the best reaction. At first she was perhaps upset that I had altered her drawing, which she in turn remembered that she had based it off of my scribbles in the first place. She asked if she could draw it one more time, and I said yes. After another week had gone by, she came back with the finished masterpiece. Somehow, she had reached into my mind and pulled out that world more clearly than I ever could.

We continued to trade drawings. In only a short amount of time, we had reached point to where I think she knew more about these trees than I did. At one point she had asked me where I saw these trees. I couldn’t tell her. I said that maybe I visited a park when I was small or just came up with them out of the blue. But, something was there in the back of my mind telling me that it was different.

One day, Katie stopped coming to school. I asked around to see if anyone knew where she had gone. She may have transferred again. But no one knew where she had gone. I checked with school records even, but they said that for whatever reason, it was confidential. So, I stopped drawing for a while. It was also around that time that construction began in the place that we ate lunch. I was forced to sit where all the ‘normal’ people sat. I probably could have found some other place to sit, but I didn’t. This group was familiar to me, and I didn’t really see much difference between them and the average lunch group at school. They were a mix of acquaintances I had from middle school and some of their friends. They all sat outside on the grass hill next to the parking lot.

Perhaps a nice way of saying things is that I had different interests than them, and so I did not contribute much to conversation. But, in truth, I just did not fit in and was not seen as a very popular person. I sat above them so I could see them if I looked down and to the right. I listened to them chatting and reflected on my own thoughts. Their conversations were always filled with drama and crude jokes and something about them made me feel uncomfortable. There were a few times when I tried to sit closer, but I just found it harder to concentrate on my own thoughts.

I remember one day when Lana, one of the overly optimistic, trying to include everybody but is really only interested in knowing everyone else’s business kind of girls, asked me why I sat over there most of the time. She asked me if I was lonely over there. Like always, it was hard to tell how much sarcasm was filled in her voice, but I answered her. I told her that being alone and being lonely are not the same things; maybe someday she should try reflecting on her thoughts for once to see this. I realized that what I said and how I said it were rude, but I did not have to deal with too many consequences because of my distance from the group. Though overtime, I do not know if I changed or if I had become slightly more accepted, but I would find myself talking more and more to people in the group. Ironically, when I become more familiar with all of them, I realized that Lana did not have a bit of sarcasm in her, and she probably did care when she asked me about sitting away from the group.

Perhaps the person I talked to the most in the group was a girl named Lynn. I knew her in middle school as somewhat of a bully. And at the time, I really did not see her as any different. But, as long as I found other people for her to laugh at, she was nice to talk with. And even if I couldn’t sway the conversations away from myself, it helped to beat her to the punch line.

There was one day when Lynn stopped talking to me. I asked Lana if she knew why. She said that I had committed some taboo. She wouldn’t tell me exactly what I had done, even though I thought that I had gain a little more trust from them over the last few weeks, just that it was something that I kept doing and it was getting on Lynn’s nerves. I never found out what she meant by that. I still felt bad about whatever I did, but even more importantly I have now taught myself to worry less about those things and that it must not have been that important if they didn’t want to tell me what it was.

I stopped talking to the people in the group on a normal basis and started sitting lower on the hill. I didn’t know the people there, but I soon made friends with a small group of four people. They were slightly insane. Unlike the group on the top of the hill, they were lesser know people and for some reason they just wouldn’t sit still. They were always running around or doing something, except for Andrew. He liked to sit still and be quiet. It actually took me a week to make the connection that he was the same person who Lynn and I used to make fun of because he sat in the back of our algebra class reading history text books. Nevertheless, we talked. Or rather, I talked and tried to get him to say something once in while. Perhaps if I had been right there a month before, I may have been just as quiet. But, I had changed. The more I moved around to these different groups of people, the more I realized how different they were. On the other side of that, I wonder how I was so able to move around between these groups. Maybe it was the fact that I always stayed just on their outskirts, not really getting involved. But, deep down, I began to fear that with each group I went to, my personality changed. Andrew’s quiet, shy personality annoyed me. But, after a while we started to talk about philosophy, possibly something where his interest in history and my interests overlapped.

Occasionally Natalie, the second most hyper person in the group, would join in on the conversation. Amy and Holy, the other two people in the group didn’t ever join. They to bust gabbing and laughing about random subjects. And I think that Amy had some sort of dislike towards me. Although it wasn’t very obvious, Andrew did not think much of Natalie being intellectual. Often, Andrew would be annoyed at the concepts that he would have to try repeating over and over again for her to get them. Natalie tended to feel frustrated about this and tended to think slightly less of herself whenever it happened. But, in return, I noticed myself having to repeat concepts over to Andrew at times where he did not understand. And, for the same these same concepts that Andrew did not grasp, Natalie handled them perfectly. I saw Natalie as smart, smarter than Andrew in many ways. I might have even seen her as smarter than myself.

There was one day when Natalie brought up the difference between the words alone and lonely. Although this was something that Andrew might have thought as obvious, he did not think too much of it and dismissed it in not the nicest manner. I did not know the real reason why at the time; at the moment I though it was because I was defending Natalie after the many time that Andrew had been frustrated at her for not getting something. I got mad, angry, my tone changed and I yelled very loudly. I shouted that he should listen to her; that she always allows himself to try to say his idea again; that it was not fair. And then I realized why I was angry at Andrew. I told him that was wrong.

I was wrong to yell. Maybe Andrew would have looked more closely at what Natalie had said later. I apologized and then walked around, away from them, until the end of lunch. Despite that, I was a little proud of both myself and Natalie. Despite the ways that I had changed in the weeks sense I first told Lana that being alone and being lonely are not the same things. And, I had found someone that shared this concept with me.

The next day, I came back. Natalie and Holy were helping Amy with one of her sudden onsets of depressing. Andrew was the only person to talk to. But, there just wasn’t anything new that came up. Eventually, he got up and went somewhere. I also got up. I went over to see if I could help with Amy, but three people were too many. So, I stepped aside and stood aside. And then, that’s when I saw her. That’s when I saw Katie walking across the grass.

 

Edward stopped and looked up at the clock. He had written all that he could come up with for the day and felt that he must have stayed up past twenty-four. But when he saw the time, he didn’t believe it. The clock read twenty-one. “And I wrote all that?” he thought to himself.  He started at twenty, only an hour before and he was able to write a full chapter. In school he couldn’t even write a three paragraph essay in hour. This was beyond normal; for once he had found something that he must have enjoyed writing.

Reviews

[Hayame]

Great story so far. I only have one question, is Holy supposed to be your colloquial spelling of Holly? :)

One suggestion as well, with a font that utilizes serif, a larger font size strains the eyes. Maybe try using a sans-serif font like tahoma if you're going to keep the font size. :)