Lost Town, a place featuring the bleakness of its name. It's the kind of town that most folks would forget about. The kind that leaves no great impact compared to the city below it. It's kind of fitting that it's in the middle of a small island that's also in the middle of the ocean. Considering all those points, there's no wonder why there's only a few who visits and a few who leaves.
During the summer, there's supposed to be at least the largest number of tourists for the year. It's still a beautiful cradle of nature with its beaches, but those are mostly from the city. Here in Lost Town, there are hardly any visitors. And yet miraculously, a possible tourist is beside me at the moment, walking towards my home. To my home. With me. Alone.
I stopped on my tracks. "I forgot!"
"What?" he asked. "Did you left something up there?"
"No!" I yelled.
"Then what?"
I forgot that we'd be sharing the apartment. What's totally wrong about that is the fact that he's a boy. I'm a girl. The space is small. There's only one bed.
"This is so not happening." I grimaced at the thought and frowned even more when the dumb part of my brain retorted and actually liked the idea. Ridiculous!
There is no way I could let a boy share the house with me. Especially now that he is incapable of caring for himself. And what would the neighbors say? They would rat me out to dad or boss, or even Melissa!
It was only a matter of time before they will notice and my already messed up life would be ruined into bits. Maybe by the time I leave for college, I'd be marked as someone rumored to be taking birth pills or aborted a kid I never had.
Spreading juicy stories is a thing here especially with the lack of technical equipment. I'm quite used to it honestly, but that doesn't mean I want to escalate the things they say about me even further! They're already talking a bit too much.
This won't do. I have to think of something. But what?
I gave him a long look as he, in turn, eyed me curiously. He's wearing the shirt and pants I found in my pile of unused clothing, supposedly from when my dad would decide to take a visit. But dad never had the time, says he was too busy. I never expected him to come by anyway so it was no big deal. Except maybe for a light sting that I deem as nonexistent.
Dad is a bit small for his age, so it was no surprise that the clothes fitted Rigel so well like it was made for him. Or him prepared for them. The shoes were also dad's. While the clothes were a perfect match with his body, the shoes were a different matter. My eyes almost literally popped out when I found that it was just the right size.
Standing in front of me, he looked like any ordinary boy I know, except that that kind of normal was for the high tier teens in school. He didn't look weird, or crazy or psychotic. He can just be Rigel, not Patient 01 any longer.
"How come you're not that weird anymore?" I asked, totally unaware that the question itself sounded weird.
Fortunately for me, he didn't take it as a bad thing. Perhaps he doesn't know a thing about insults and compliments. We can get to that.
"What do you mean by weird? What does that mean?" he asked.
I heaved a sigh the smiled. "Well, for starters, you don't act that out of place anymore. It's like you're finally getting the hang of things here. You were a bit of a wacko when you came through." He frowned at this and I fought the urge to comment about the change of expression. Looks like he finally got that I'm teasing him. "Anyways, you haven't been making a scene since lunch. Though we might have to go and fix your inner dictionary."
"I've been... observing." He scratched the back of his head, uneasy, rubbing his sides with the other.
I nodded, knowing exactly what he means. He's IQ must be pretty high, or I'm just being quite positive about this. If he's finally out of the crazy mode, maybe this would work.
I don't think he's a pervert either. Though I might be the one to be accused of such.
*
Rigel laid rather peacefully at the cushions I sprawled on the floor, just beside my bed. When we got inside, finishing the food inside my cupboard I kept for dinner, I decided that we should clean up.
The place was still in chaos. Rigel acted all sorry that I had to look away to forget he was the reason for all of this.
He looked like a different person from the weirdo I dragged from the hospital. He changed into this, a whole new cuter level of what was there before. I kept thinking that it had something to do with his name, like a new identity equals to a new him. Like how baptism works, or so as I speculated from random Google searches.
I'm pretty sure he's asleep, unlike me. I'm wide awake and humiliatingly conscious that he's here, inside my own apartment. The very same place that I took as my own, exclusively for myself.
No one has ever been here, much less stayed for the night. Dad along with Melissa only took a peek when I first moved in for vacation, and that was it.
I reached for the my phone on top of my study table. I didn't bother sitting up, stretching my arms till I could touch it, grabbing it before it can fall.
Swiping the screen, it showed the picture of blackness, literally a photo I took in the dead of night. It was one of those days that something unknown had struck me. I couldn't name it. I just know that it was heavy and I couldn't get it off my head or my chest. It was just stuck. It's still here inside of me, didn't really went away.
Whenever I feel it surfacing, I'd just open my screen, staring into a solid black picture at first, till I focus and discern faint details, one thing I wouldn't be able to do if I still couldn't calm myself down.
When I opened it awhile ago, Melissa texted me. It was a follow up from the one my dad sent. I didn't want to read it, but I did, still into the whole Rigel fiasco that I forgot about the things I so wanted to keep in the back of my head.
I was opening the door, getting my keys all ready, when my phone buzzed and I opened it without a second thought.
'I got a new phone and cell number and I just wanted to check in. Did you read what Robert sent you? I hope you agree. Beth would like it if you'd be there with us. Save my number and text me soon, Melissa.'
What did dad sent me? Are we going somewhere? I have yet to know. I know that I just have to open my inbox right now and then I'll get my answers. But it seems like I can't pull myself to do that. So simple, yet so hard.
I liked Melissa, used to. I still like her though, but I can't bring myself to admit that wholeheartedly, or else I'd be a hypocrite. I like her as a person. She's kind and she made my dad laugh, though she couldn't pull off even a smile for me. But the word 'mom' didn't sit well with how she and I were. I couldn't call her that.
I first saw Melissa, Beth in tow, at the café. She liked coffee and low calorie cakes, health wise. Bubbly and over the top with her jokes, she was so warm that I thought I'd melt.
The thing about her is that she'd make sure to string you up in her conversation. The problem about that lies on me. I am so not into conversations.
Or maybe along the way, I just hated her, a plain prejudice for taking a spot she shouldn't have. For taking the only thing left of a family far away from me till I couldn't reach him anymore.
I closed the screen, sighing at how mean I can be to a woman who only wanted to fit in between us. I even hated Beth, who despite being a non blood relative, treated me as a real sister. Sometimes I wish we could just trade places, then maybe I could take up that role again. Just plain innocent and not this wreck of a teenager who saw behind the lies and the drama.
The two of them, like me, also felt incomplete. Dad filled that missing piece. But how about me?
Both of them found their part of the puzzle in each other, while I couldn't find it in them. Unfortunately at the same time, I lost the one thing left.
I placed my phone on the spot where I got it. I sat up to erase the thoughts in my head for awhile, only to see Rigel staring at me, wide eyed and unmoving.
I almost shrieked. If not for the hand I immediately covered my mouth with, the neighbors might have woken up and assume that I was being murdered.
He grinned at me while my heart thumped loudly inside my ribcage. My lungs struggled to breath in air, racing up and down in a tiring loop. "You scared me!" I half shouted and whispered at him, backing away and covering myself with a blanket.
He chuckled and also sat up, muffling his laughter with a tight-lipped smile. He rested his back on the side of my bed, exhaling after a couple more muffled laughs.
"I thought you were asleep?" I raised my left eye brow as my tone did as well. He couldn't see me, and I couldn't look at him too, but I felt that he was smiling—sure of it. He's probably teasing me as a payback for calling him weird. "Why aren't you?"
Rigel paused for awhile before answering, thinking things through like it was some kind of math problem. "I could ask you the same thing, then maybe you would get what I feel on the question."
"Or maybe you could answer me with a simple I-have-no-idea to put things in a simple way," I said. I eased my body and slowly returned in the middle of the sheets, fixing the disarranged blanket and beddings.
He turned his head and peered at me. "Isn't that more complicated?"
"True," I admitted. "But then it isn't that uptight or too wordy," I pointed out.
Another flash of a smile. "Right," he agreed. I smiled at him too.
Rigel turned around and faced the wall again. His muscles relaxed and tensed alternately, making it hard for me to grasp if he was anxious or relieved, and of what.
I couldn't read him. What he wanted and what he was thinking, I couldn't decipher it with just the look on his face. I thought that it was easy for me to understand what he's feeling, thinking that he was this open book of awkwardness like I was, or at least I appear to be. But he wasn't.
He's hiding things. Stuff I didn't want to pry about to respect his privacy, but also secretly needed to know so that I may satisfy the growing questions inside of me.
Secrets are fine, like totally. I had a lot of underlying mysteries as well. But something about him made me want to ask.
"I was thinking about who I am—was." Surprised that he talked, I kept my mouth shut. Could he be a mind reader or a telepath? "I know I'm someone, and of course I am, but it feels like there's more to it. It's like I need to do something important. I just don't know what." The pain in his voice shot through me.
Knowing nothing about what you were supposed to do, what was needed and what was not, I've been there. It was like the time when I was asked by my dad if I could accept Melissa into the family, catching me in a pincer attack. I wanted to refuse, but some voice told me I had to accept. It was like I had nothing else left to do. Till it continued and more unsolved equations appeared; what should I call her, whether I should fit in or not, or how to even do it, and so on.
"You can't actually find that out if you don't remember who you are first. We'd get back to your personality tests tomorrow. Right now, we need to sleep." I laid back on bed again, burying most of my body under the blanket until my head was the only one left uncovered. "Besides, I shouldn't have forced you to remember anything. I was a bit too hard on you. I'm sorry about that."
"You don't have to." He disappeared from my view, his body falling flat on the covers. After a while, he spoke again. "By the way, can I ask something?"
"Maybe." I yawned.
"Who wrote the notebook you had? The one with names and all. It didn't look like your handwriting—"
"Shut up and sleep Rigel. Goodnight," I said, closing my eyes shut as I drifted in my dreams again.
"Night..."
Silence.
I thought I'd finally sleep. I was feeling drowsy and out of control, half in slumber and the other still conscious.
Before I did doze off, my tongue slipped off a whisper, a part of the nightmare that slowly engulfed me.
"Mom."