Week 8 Journal

Aha!

Every time I passed by her house, the old woman watched me. It was like walking past a painting. Never once did she take her eyes off of me, not even to blink. I tried to ask my parents about her, but they said they didn’t see any old woman, and that, as far as they knew, no one lived in that house.

We moved to the neighborhood only a few weeks ago, and I was still getting used to it. I once lived in this town when I was younger, but we moved away about five years ago so that my mom could take care of my grandmother, who was sick with dementia, and later, cancer. My mom was her only kid. We lived with her up until very recently. My mom couldn’t stay there. She sold the house, and we packed up and left.

My parents found a cheap house to move into. It needed a lot of work done on it. The windows had hairline cracks in them, the sinks were rusty, and the front door was falling off its hinges. We didn’t have the money to help fix it, though, as we once did. My grandma had taken that from us, too. I missed our old house, but I knew we could never return to it.

As I walked home from school, I saw the woman again, watching me from her porch. She wore a white cardigan, and the wrinkles on her face were clearly outlined in the bright sun. She rocked back and forth on her rocking chair. I slowed down my pace. I wanted to say something to her, but I was scared. Shouldn’t she say something first?

“Hello?” I finally asked.

She didn’t say anything, but a friendly smile appeared on her face.

“Who are you?”

She looked familiar, like an old friend. Her head followed me as I continued past her house. Why wouldn’t she say anything?

I got to my house and set my backpack down on the ground. As I was preparing to relax after a long day at school, the telephone rang. I picked it up.

“Hi?” I asked.

All I heard from the other end was static.

“Stop playing tricks on me.” I was about to hang up the phone, when I heard my name being called.

“Ellie,” the person on the other end whispered through the static.

I put the phone to my ear again. “Who is this?”

“I miss you.”

“Mom? Dad?”

“I never got to say goodbye. Will you say goodbye to me? I wish I had gotten to know you.”

“Granny?” I almost dropped the phone to the ground. I stood in shock. Was that the old woman? Was that why she was so familiar? She came to say goodbye?

“Say goodbye, Ellie.”

“Goodbye, granny,” I said.

The phone hung up, and I set it down. I had barely gotten to see her before she died. I hadn’t recognized her. But how had she done that? She was dead.

Trauma

“Drive!” I looked back to see them catching up to us. “Drive!

“I’m trying!”

“Wait, no. Look!”

With all the twists and turns, we couldn’t see the road in front of us. Annie slammed on the breaks, but it was too late. The car had already slipped off the edge of the cliff.

For a split second, it felt as if I was flying. I’d never been in a plane before, so I had never felt what it was like. My parents never wanted me to fly. In fact, they hadn’t wanted me to do anything. The first time I went out was when they gave me to Annie to take care of me.

Then came the falling. My stomach flew to the ceiling while my body remained paralyzed, too shocked to move. Out the window, all I saw were the dark rocks that flew past. I knew that, inevitably, the car would hit one of them. It would only be a few seconds.

We would never be here if I hadn’t brought too much attention to myself. I now understood why my parents had kept me hidden away. Annie wasn’t careful enough. I only walked to the corner store. I wanted to experience what a normal life was like, and she never kept locks on her doors like my parents did.

It was my fault. I should have known better. My parents taught me better.

I could never live a normal life. I didn’t know why, but I couldn’t. I didn’t know why these people were after me, but they were. They wouldn’t be after me anymore, though, unless they wanted my dead body.

When I returned to my house after my trip to the corner store, I found Annie sitting at the table, staring at the door, waiting for me to walk through.

“Maya, we need to go,” she had said.

“Why?”

“They’ll be after us. Come on,” she stood up and handed me a bag with only essential items in it; none of the things I had taken from my parents’ house. Nothing of personal value, just some food, water, a toothbrush, and a change of clothes.

She started off on the road, none of us saying anything at first. I didn’t understand why she was freaking out so much. Then, we noticed a few strange cars that were following us. There were at least two black vans. When Annie sped up, they did too. She turned into the cliffs to try and throw them off our trail, but it didn’t work so well.

The rocks sped up as they rushed past us. This was it. I wouldn’t ever know any of the answers. Everything would remain a secret.

No, it couldn’t end like this. I had to do something.

“Stop!” I yelled. It was pathetic, but the only thing I could think of.

I shut my eyes, preparing for the landing, but the car was stopped. “Annie?” I asked. No response. She was frozen, too.

I opened the car door, and saw we were only a few feet from the ground. Only a few feet from our deaths.

Had I saved us? What had just happened? I jumped out of the car onto the hard rock below us. I looked up to try to see the people who were after us, but it was too dark to see anything. There weren’t any headlights, so they must be gone now.

Time was stopped. It was frozen. I froze time.