Living in the Pages Read online

Living in the Pages

  By

  Mindy Haig

  Copyright © 2015 by Mindy Haig

  License Notes

  This novel is fictional work. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the authors’ imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, or persons, living, dead, or otherwise is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

 

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  Table of Contents:

  Author Notes:

  1. Hendrix:

  2. Kyra:

  3. Hendrix:

  4. Kyra:

  5. Hendrix:

  6. Kyra:

  7. Hendrix:

  8. Hendrix:

  9. Kyra:

  10. Hendrix:

  11. Kyra:

  12. Hendrix:

  13. Hendrix:

  14. Kyra:

  15. Hendrix:

  16. Hendrix:

  17. Kyra:

  18. Hendrix:

  19. Kyra:

  20. Hendrix:

  21. Kyra:

  Author Notes:

  The following work was originally published in the Gateways Anthology for Breakwater Harbor Book. The theme of the Anthology was to create a “Gateway” story from a previous or upcoming novel as an introduction to the larger work. Living in the Pages was my Gateway from the novel Hidden in the Pages, which was published in November, 2013.

  In Hidden in the Pages, Jantzen Burke was given a tattered old journal by his grandfather and told that the book could find his perfect match, the person he was meant to love. So while his life fell apart around him, he wrote in the magic journal and dreamt of a future with the girl who answered.

  In the end, when the magical promise was fulfilled, he vowed to get rid of the journal.

  But objects made of magic have a life of their own.

  I imagined that journal’s journey as it made it’s way to the hands of the next man meant to write his words inside. It may have been dumped in a Salvation Army bin and traveled to another town in a collection truck. It might have fallen from that truck at another pick-up location. It might have been picked up by a child running for a school bus, and unknowingly dropped again. It might have traveled a thousand miles to be washed down a street in the pouring rain just to lie under a purple table outside a bakery on Harris Street as it waited for the next man in need of it’s magic.

  And this is his story.

  Objects made with the magic of love can never be destroyed. They simply disappear and find their way into the hands meant to hold them.

  1. Hendrix:

  The rain was coming down in sheets.

  A heavy curtain of water pounded the cars, the sidewalk and me, as I hunched into the hood of my sweatshirt and plodded toward the drugstore on the corner. The automatic door opened with a faint whoosh, which was lost in the drumming of the storm outside.

  Sun shower, my foot.

  I pushed the dripping hood off my head, wiped the wetness from my face and pressed my palm to my eyes as I squeezed my temples and wished the pounding in my head would stop for just a few moments.

  Pain Killers.

  This place had a whole aisle dedicated to just one product. If only those little pills did actually kill pain. How great would that be? But no, they just dulled it for a little while, when I really needed mine exorcised like the unruly demon it was.

  Oh, how I wish.

  I squinted a little as I searched the shelves. A small sigh of relief escaped my mouth when I found what I was looking for. I didn't even wait to pay for them. I tore the box open, pushed my thumb through the safety seal and swallowed well over the recommended dose of blue capsules in the hopes of stopping the wrecking ball that seemed to be crashing around inside my head.

  The pills hit my empty stomach like I'd swallowed a fistful of lead pellets.

  I felt nauseated. I thought I might get sick.

  At least I wasn't thinking about the headache anymore.

  I paid the cashier and walked back out of the store.

  The rain had slowed to a lazy drizzle.

  My last day home and the weather was miserable. Seriously, it would have been nice to leave with one good memory. It would have been nice to have a reason to come back. It would have been nice have that dream come true.

  That dream.

  I was walking toward the place before I'd even made a conscious decision to go there. It was a bakery over on the corner of Harris Street. Well, it was more of a deli than a bakery really. They had good sandwiches. I knew that because I'd been there nearly every day for the past two weeks, ever since the dreaming started. There was a little patio outside. Every table was a different color and the umbrellas were red and white striped. In the dream, she was always sitting next to me, but facing me, telling me something that I couldn't hear. She was so exuberant, gesturing with her hands. And when she began to laugh, my heart would pound against my chest. Then she would slide her hand over mine on the table. I could almost feel her touch.

  I longed to feel that touch.

  The dream was always in color, vivid color. Maybe that's strange. I sort of remember hearing that people don't dream in color. I could be wrong about that, obviously I was wrong, because every detail of my dream was in color. My dream girl had green eyes and hair the color of honey, a deep amber color. So deep. She was amazing. For some unknown reason she was sitting at that purple table under the red and white umbrella and she was happy to be with me. I mean, she wasn't really with me. She was only a dream.

  But I still came to sit at the purple table to watch the crowd, waiting, hoping, and knowing she wasn't going to show up.

  She was only a dream.

  The sandwich made my stomach feel a little better. The place did have some really good sandwiches.

  The sky had cleared up to where patches of blue were visible. Weak rays of sunlight tried their best to brighten the day, but my sweatshirt was still soaked, my sandwich was gone and the girl from my dream did not magically appear.

  I had a thousand things to do before I had to report for duty.

  As much as I wanted to, and believe me, I wanted to, I couldn't sit at the table all day hoping for a fantasy.

  I stacked the trash on my tray, pushed my chair back, and very nearly cracked my skull on the table when my foot slipped on something lying on the wet ground.

  The trash went all over the place. It was definitely not my day.

  I squatted down to pick up the mess I'd just made and take a look at what I'd stepped on.

  It was a book, a journal. The leather cover was wet from the rain, and a bit tattered, but the pages were all blank, and strangely enough, perfectly dry. I shoved it in the bag from the drugstore, and took a final look around. It would be at least six months in the desert before I got another chance to sit here and dream. But she was just a dream.

  I bussed my tray. The clouds begin to merge overhead again.

  I pulled my da
mp hood back over my head and went home.

  2. Kyra:

  "Do you have to go, Daddy?"

  He laughed a little. "Yes, I have to go. But this is the last one, Kay-Kay. Six more months and I can retire."

  "But the news has been so bad. I have a terrible feeling, a really nervous feeling in the pit of my stomach, that something is going to happen to you."

  "I've been doing this for twenty-four and a half years, Kyra, I can make through six more months. I promise you it will be fine. You need to worry about school. You've got a tough schedule this semester. I put the money into your bank account for the term bill and there should be plenty of money in there for your expenses. Are you still seeing Matthew?"

  "Nice redirect, Dad. No, I haven't been seeing him for three months."

  "Well, I just want you to enjoy some of your senior year. I know your courses are hard, try to have some fun. Don't worry about me, I'll be fine."

  "I always worry about you. You're my Dad."

  "It's only six months. Maybe we can take a nice trip together when I get back. It'll be a whole new world. We'll both be starting new phases of our lives. I'm looking forward to it, Kay-Kay. I really am."

  "I'm looking forward to it too. Promise me you are coming back."

  "I promise!" he laughed.

  3. Hendrix:

  I really hated having my head shaved.

  It wasn't that I had any great love for my hair. It was sort of wavy and unruly. For the most part it had a mind of its own and I just let it be. But when they shaved it, it was sort of like being branded. And the room where they sheared us has that poster of Uncle Sam pointing his big ass finger at me, taunting me with his full head of hair.

  Clearly I had issues.

  I lay in my bunk that night tired from the brutal workout, but unable to fall asleep. I wished for sleep. I wished I could dream of her one more time. It just wasn't happening.

  I pulled that old journal out of my duffle. It was sort of intriguing because for as wet and tattered as the cover had been, all of the pages were perfect. Not a mark on them. My smeared footprint was still on the cover but the pages were pristine. I began to wonder what would happen if I tried to write on those pages, and before I'd even really made the decision to write, I had my pen in hand and words I could not say aloud began to fill the page.

  Today began the first day of my service to my country. I look around the barracks and I see soldiers but I wonder what they see when they look at me. Can they tell that I don't have what it takes? I'm the fourth generation of West Point graduates. It's a family tradition. All my life I have been hearing the stories, seeing the medals and the flags, the folded flags of the sons and brothers who didn't make it back. My family is well respected and this was not a choice, it was the expectation. I just don't know if I can live up to that reputation. Sure I have the education, I have the years of training. Physically, I'm a soldier. I've had to be, my whole life has been about getting to this point. I worked hard, I really did. One does not walk the Gray Line without giving one hundred percent. So I gave it. I trained harder than anyone. But in my heart, I never wanted this. As competent as I appear, and for all the courses, the responsibility, the leadership experiences and the commendations, I still don't know if I am man enough for real combat. I can't admit that to my father. I can't tell him that I don't think I have what it takes to pull that trigger. I can't tell him that I'm afraid. He named me after a guy who dove on a grenade to save his peers. My cowardice is a disgrace to my namesake.

  And I don't know if it's enough to make it back alive. My line is heavy with war heroes. They didn't just make it back alive, they made a difference or they died trying.

  I'm not ready to die.

  I haven't even lived yet.

  I'm about to be deployed into a combat zone. I can't sleep. I keep praying for God to give me the strength to be more than I am, but I don't know if he's listening.

  I read the words. It was my deepest, darkest secret, written there. I acknowledged my fear. I told myself I would sleep on it and in the morning I would tear the page out and destroy it. That was what I planned to do. So I tucked the journal back into my duffle at the foot of my bunk, lay down and let my mind rest for the scant few hours until the bugle called us back to reality.

  4. Kyra:

  I loved Mondays.

  I knew that was weird. My friends were constantly reminding me that any sort of joy over the arrival of a Monday made me certifiably insane, but I guess I thought of Mondays as a clean slate.

  It helped that my favorite class was on Monday. Professor McKay was fantastic and interesting. I'd taken two of her other classes already, and I was probably the happiest person at registration when I found out she was teaching this one. And, just to make things that much better, her Teaching Assistant was really, really attractive. Not that he was remotely interested in any of us Undergrads, but just his presence made the class that much more, hmm, imaginative.

  Really, I needed the happy thoughts and the distraction because I knew my dad was about to be shipped out and, if tradition stood, which for military men it always did, he was not going to call or write at all, while he was away. I wouldn't know if he was alive until the day he returned, or he didn't. Then only a letter would come...

  I needed to stop thinking about it.

  It was Monday.

  I was in my favorite lecture. The T.A. was writing the assignment on the white board. He had really broad shoulders. I was wondering what they would look like if he wasn't wearing that shirt as I absently flipped through my notebook.

  One moment the page was blank. I touched my pen to it, about to write the date and the new assignment when out of nowhere, words appeared. They filled the page.

  And I did a masterful job of gasping in surprise, while slamming the book closed and knocking it from my desk.

  The whole class turned and looked at me.

  Even the T.A. looked, though he sort of sneered and rolled his eyes.

  He was pretty, but clearly he was a prick.

  Professor McKay started the class as though nothing at all happened. I quietly picked up my notebook, opened it and read the message that appeared.

  The hairs stood upon my arms. Cold fear like I have never felt ran through me.

  Oh, Dear God, please don't let him die.

  I have dealt with my father leaving for as long as I can remember.

  I never felt the way I felt when I read those words.

  I don't remember any of the topics we discussed in class. I was, I don't know, lucid, enough to take out my phone and snap a photo of the assignment. I couldn't write it down. I couldn't write anything. The words on the page were so touching, so honest.

  'I haven't even lived yet.'

  I don't know why that sentence affected me so deeply.

  But I lay in my bed late that night and I opened the notebook again, just to read it one more time.

  And that was when it happened.

  5. Hendrix:

  I was exhausted.

  Every muscle in my body ached. My eyes felt like they were shriveling up in their sockets. I forced them closed, praying for sleep, but hoping that even if sleep eluded me maybe my eyes would be able to re-hydrate themselves. It wasn't likely, I was too tired to even cry or I would have forced some tears out to help my eyes stop burning.

  I was useless. What the hell good was I going to be in the desert?

  Berating myself wasn't getting me any closer to sleep so I pulled out the journal. I hadn't had a chance to destroy that page like I intended. My hands were raw from the chin-ups and that ridiculous rope. It was hard to squeeze my fingers together, but that was nothing compared to trying to get the page out of the book. It would not tear. It would not come free of the binding. It felt like regular, run-of-the-mill paper, but hell, I couldn't even crease it.

  I closed the book. I turned it ove
r in my hands and examined it from every angle. There was nothing remarkable about it, and yet, it was remarkable.

  I opened it again and picked up my pen. I honestly didn't know what I was going to write when the pen met the paper.

  'I wish I could dream of her one more time.'

  And then I began to draw on the page.

  I was moderately talented on a good day. But what my pen made was a masterpiece.

  She was so beautiful. Her smile was filled with joy.

  I kept thinking she would always be with me because the page was definitely not going to come out of the book.

  Then, she spoke.

  6. Kyra:

  It was happening again. The writing just appeared out of nowhere.

  I wish I could dream of her one more time.

  But it was more than writing. It was a picture. I turned it over and over, watching as it took shape. The face, the details, the smile, I was looking in a mirror.

  It was me.

  How could that be?

  I threw the notebook off my bed. Yes, I purposely opened the notebook to read the mysterious words, and then I, once again, freaked out when they appeared and threw the notebook. In my defense, it was startling. I mean, what the hell was going on? Who was doing this? Was he stalking me? I was afraid.

  And angry.

  But I needed an answer.

  I opened my notebook, and there I was looking back at me. I was happy in the picture. I hadn't been happy in a long time.

  ‘WHO ARE YOU? WHY ARE YOU DRAWING ME? HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?’

  Yes, I did write in angry caps. I wanted an answer and I sat there glaring at the page, impatiently tapping my pen waiting.

  ‘You? Is it you?’

  ‘The picture. You drew a picture of me. Why?’