AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Do you want to talk about it?” Frost asked quietly, gently. By his tone, I thought he seemed afraid I would shatter if he didn’t use a certain pitch.
“I don’t know,” I whispered through tears.
Frost was silent for a moment, digesting that. “I can take it, Poe. Just like I could take everything else you’ve told me. You can trust me.”
I swallowed back the tears and shook my head. “I can’t remember.”
He frowned and I knew he didn’t really believe me, but I did not want to tell him about the nightmare. He had already done so much, given so much, that it was ridiculous to ask for anything more, much less a confidant. I already owed him my life, my sanity, and a glimpse of a world that made sense, if only for one meal. He’d shown me how normal families, normal people were. He’d shown me that there were good people out there, something I had stopped believing in. I owed him everything I had and so much more. I couldn’t ask for anything else without amplifying the guilt I already felt.
“I know you remember, but I’m not going to push it,” Frost said softly. “I can understand if you don’t want to talk about it.” He stood up and stepped away, then eased down into a chair I hadn’t noticed before.
“What are you doing?” I asked warily.
“I’m staying here with you. I’m a light sleeper. If you start having that God-forsaken nightmare again, I’ll wake you.”
I lied down slowly in bed, shivering and pulling the quilt up to my chin. For a long minute, I stared at the ceiling, wondering what kind of awful thing could have happened to him to make him sympathize with me. As my mind revisited every broken look he had given me, every word betraying his past, I heard his breath begin to slow into a steady rhythm. It could not have been more than five minutes before I too fell asleep, listening to his soft breathing and wondering why I wasn’t afraid of him.
----
I managed to have the same nightmare twice more before morning mercifully arrived. Each time the nightmare returned, Frost woke me right after his name flashed across my eyes in sharp white letters, engraved into my retinas. I didn’t have to see my family either time because of his help, but his name on the tombstone was pounded into my mind and I could not seem to extricate it.
Both Frost and I nearly fell asleep in our pancakes; the night before had worn us both down. His icy blond hair had finally gotten out of its perfect, messy arrangement. The shimmering, nearly silver spikes were pointing every which way from his scalp. I felt horrible for letting him wake up with me for every nightmare. I should not have been his responsibility.
After Frost dropped me off at my apartment, I called in to Starbucks only to find that in the interim of my absence, I had been fired. I had missed work unexpectedly for several days in a row and when I tried to explain to the manager that I’d spent one day sick and another in the hospital, it didn’t make a difference. I still had not called in and I had never been good with customer service anyway.
The next call I made was to Janie at the restaurant. We had been coworkers and acquaintances for several years, so she was far more forgiving and gave me my usual shift for that night after ensuring that I was fit to work. I spent the rest of the morning, my would-be Starbucks shift, trying unsuccessfully to catch up on sleep and work on job applications. As much as I appreciated being able to keep my waitressing job, my minimum wage earnings and scanty tips could not possibly pay my rent, much less my tuition bills. The idea I had been entertaining of saving up and buying better food than peanut butter and soup was now completely dashed. I would be lucky if I could afford milk and apples anymore, much less improve my diet.
In the spaces between naps and applications, as well as throughout my waitressing shift, I thought back over the adventures of the past few days. Most prominent in my mind were the nightmares and the concussion-induced Edgar Allan Poe hallucination. Was it really possible? Could I be the descendant of Edgar Allan Poe? I did have the last name. Unless my brain had disfigured Edgar in the hallucination, I even had a lot of the same facial features, especially the shape of the eyes, passed down through one-hundred and fifty years’ worth of generations. Was it possible?
But Edgar Allan Poe had no children. It was not possible.
But what if that wasn’t really true? Suppose he had an illegitimate child that took on his last name? Or perhaps a sickly child that was hidden from the world? Such things were not so uncommon in his time. Maybe he had even had a mentally-unstable child. The mentally-ill were heavily persecuted well into the nineteenth century and beyond and he would have had to hide such a child to protect him or her.
The hallucinatory Edgar had claimed that Mrs. Aaron knew the answers to such questions. Determining my sanity had effectively fallen into the hands of my fragile, hare-brained foster-mother.
----
The next morning, after a night haunted by the same monstrous nightmare, I called Mrs. Aaron. Watching a small pot of Ramen noodles boil on the decrepit rummage sale stove, I dialed her number and waited as the phone rang once, twice and thrice before she picked up at the last moment. “Hello?”
I cleared my throat and answered in a disfigured voice, “Hello ma’am. I’d like to speak to Jonathan Aaron.”
“He’s not here. He left on a business trip last night and I don’t expect him until tomorrow evening at the earliest. I can take a message for him if you’d like.”
Clearing my throat again, I said normally, “Actually, I was thinking of dropping in. We need to talk.”
“Poe?! My God, honey, I was so worried! Are you alright?! I came downstairs to help you as soon as he left, but you were already gone! How did you get out? Are you okay? Dear God, Poe, I am so sorry….”
I allowed her to stammer on until the Ramen noodles were finished boiling, then softly cut her off as I pulled the pot from the hot burner. “Mrs. Aaron, please, it’s okay. I know and I forgive you.”
“I am so, so sorry. You were right when you said those things about our family. I’ve never been a good mother for you, Poe, and I’m so sorry…”
My eyes tightened as the migraine I had been fighting for the past few days reared its ugly head again. “Mrs. Aaron, really, I forgive you. I need to talk to you about something, though, so…”
“Please come over as soon as you can, dear! I need to apologize in person and see that you’re okay. I am so sorry.”
I sighed sadly and leaned heavily against the kitchen counter, rubbing my temples with the hand not holding the phone. “I know. I’ll stop by sometime early this afternoon.”
Mrs. Aaron seemed to be putting great effort into holding back tears, which I admired her for. She was the sort of person who spent a great deal of her time crying. “Okay. I’ll see you soon, Poe. I really am…sorry.”
