Lynn was looking into all records of fires that happened eighteen years ago. In her findings she saw that forty-two fires occurred across the country, in that year alone. Seven of them were commercial building fires while the rest were residential.
"This is gonna be one heck of a work," she said to herself, "Okay let's see...which one could you be in, Ria?"
••••••
Down the long, elegant hallway, the slim, tall and beautiful, tanned skin woman strode down in a fitting panel dress of black and white stripes and fabulous Gucci heels. Her long brown hair was always up in a perfect bun, her lips in thick red lipstick, eyes and high cheekbones free from wrinkles, making her look half her age. Then whenever she walked, she always walked like a boss that no one would dare to mess with.
She entered the front hall and found her daughter coming in from the front door.
"Mom," Alesia smiled as she walked into her stunning mother's arms.
"Hello, darling. How was school today?" she spoke.
"Okay. How was your trip in the weekend?"
"Oh, Berlin was beautiful," the woman rolled her flashy eyes that Alesia had obviously inherited. "But Amsterdam was way too congested."
"Oh I cannot stand crowded places like that!" Alesia cringed her nose, "So suffocating."
"That's why I didn't stay too long," she said, then she took a look at Alesia's face. "Your under eyes are showing some dead skin cells, darling. Try seeing Dr. Stephen about it tomorrow."
"My under eyes?" Alesia stated in horror as she held her face up then turned to the big carved mirror on the wall.
"Mother!" the woman called to Alesia's fashionably looking grandmother, who had just come out of the grand dining room.
"Back so soon, Devie?" the old woman asked as her daughter came up to give her a kiss on the cheeks.
"Yes. I had to come back in time for our second family white party," she answered. "Wouldn't miss the launching of our new whiskey brand, for the world."
"Hhm," the old woman smiled.
"Just as I look forward to the will press conference?"
"Now Devlin, there's no need to rush into that,"
"Oh Mama. Then how are we supposed to know whether we have any shares in this company at all? I think it's been long overdue, Mama. Don't you think so too?" Devlin replied. "We need to confirm our place as the most powerful women in Norton city and the most successful in the world." Her mother gave a sigh, before looking back at her.
"We can't rush your father," she just stated.
"How is he by the way?"
"The doctor's say that, they need to do another surgery on him soon to slow down the cancer," she answered.
"I hope grandpa will be fine," Alesia said sadly. Her grandma stroke the side of her chin and gave an assuring smile, while Devlin gazed out the windows with a thoughtful look as she folded her arms. "Well, I'm also looking forward to the next white party coz this time, I'm definitely bringing Hayne!"
"Your imaginary boyfriend?" her grandmother asked.
"My official, boyfriend grandma!" Alesia rolled her eyes.
"That boy you've been chasing since twelfth grade?" her grandmother let out a smile.
"You're gonna love him, mom,"
"I thought you were over him, darling?" her mother questioned.
"You can never get over your first crush mom! He's just........too irreplaceable, unique and special to me," Alesia replied.
"Well, I look forward to meeting this young man that's captivated my granddaughter's heart," her grandmother stated, before they each dispersed from the front hall.
••••••
During lunch in the cafeteria the next day, when Bianca turned her head around, she saw Ria passing by with a hope that they wouldn't notice her. "Who would have thought that plastic surgery would actually turn a duck into a swan?" Ria continued on despite her loud words. "So magical."
"Ugh," Alesia rolled her eyes in a disgusted expression. "Looks like someone's just trying too hard, to get out of the U-G-L-Y zone!"
"Hey umm......Ria? Is it?" Bianca called out. Ria slowly turned around to face them, "So, which doctor did you go to? For that face?"
"My face?" Ria asked. "What do you mean-"
"She actually got it from a doctor called, God! And it's from a surgery called, 'born with it'," Korene stepped up and snapped at Bianca, "Yea, just like you're born with that little mole on your left ear." Bianca's eyes widened with stirring fury as she felt the little mole on her ear. Her friends around her began to chuckle.
"Oooh, you've been served!" Sky replied aloud, snapping her fingers dramatically.
"No Sky, it's you got served, got served!" Korene mumbled to her. Then they walked away and headed down the outer corridors of the school building.
"Thanks," Ria stated.
"You shouldn't let them talk to you like that," Korene said.
"I'll keep that in mind," Ria replied, "But thanks for that, back there."
"Oh, I would have done more if they messed with me," Korene stated.
"Even Alesia Samuels?"
"She knows I can hack into her Insta account and ruin her social media reputation,"
"Ooh! Speaking of Instagram! Evan Sebana just posted another hot pic of himself!" Sky said as she scrolled through her phone. "Although, this one's an older picture of him. Like seriously, he looks way old!"
"That's a pic of his grandpa," Korene rolled her eyes.
"Oh," Sky replied, then she realized the small fonted caption below the picture, "Hope surgery goes well for Gramps tomorrow."
"Surgery?" Ria questioned.
"Their grandfather's got cancer," Korene answered.
"Me too!" Sky gasped with a smile.
"I'm not talking about the star sign, Sky," Korene corrected. "The grand owner of Sebana Rum Liquor and company, is dying. They'll be reading out his will, soon enough."
"Poor him," Ria thought.
"Oh he's not poor, he's actually filthy rich," Sky stated with a nod, "My dad purchases Sebana rum from them, all the time for our hotel."
••••
"Did you sleep well, last night?" Dr. Bates asked before they started their one hour session that afternoon.
"Yep," Ria nodded. Then she turned to look to Mrs. Harber who stood in the corner of the room.
"No nightmares?"
"No nightmares," she replied.
"Okay," he said, then he brought forward a small tray of pills and a glass of water. "Today we're going to carry out that regaining loss memory activity. You are gonna have to sleep through 45 minutes. You'll first take these special tablets, then I'll dose you off with a sedative shot."
"Is it.......safe?" Ria asked as she turned again to Mrs. Harber.
"It's actually a protein known as RbAp48, that helps people recover a short or long term memory loss," Mrs. Harber assured, "It's safe, but, I'm not sure if it'll help you regain what you want to remember. But let's hope it does."
"You ready?" Dr. Bates asked, "I'm gonna need you to lie back on that chair, and get really comfortable."
Mrs. Harber helped Dr. Bates set up an electroencephalogram machine to monitor Ria's brain waves. He stuck two electrodes on the side of Ria's forehead, connecting the wires to the EEG .
Then, Ria took in the tablets along with the water in the glass. With one gulp she swallowed them in, before lying back on the long chair. Dr. Bates came up with an injection. Ria felt the shot of the needle plunge into her arm, for just a second then he placed a cotton wool on the injected spot. "That should be it."
Mrs. Harber came up with a comforting smile and gently touched Ria's forehead.
"Try counting backwards from 100," she suggested. So Ria looked to the white ceiling, and began to count. She felt her eyes becoming heavy, her head going drowsy. As she mumbled the numbers on, her eyes slowly closed shut, and she was finally in a deep sleep.
•••
Ria saw herself in a very familiar bedroom. Everything around her seemed big, but then she later realized that she was just a little smaller. Her surrounding seemed blurry but realistic enough when she reached out her hand to touch the bedside table. Her fingers ran along the wooden surface and along the paper drawings that were on the table. She looked around the room, feeling as if she'd been there before. But then, the second she turned her head around, the setting changed. The bedroom was gone and she found herself in a dark passage. Along the end of the passage she saw a dim white light coming from an open door on her left.
She moved closer towards the doorway, the closer she got the louder she heard movements coming from within that particular room. She came to the side of the door and peeped in. The room turned out to be a spacious kitchen. In the dark corner of that kitchen, she saw movements. Someone was splashing something on the tiled floor and when Ria walked in to take a closer look, the figure in the dark vanished. Ria found herself going towards the big refrigerator, she opened it and her eyes scrolled up and down and landed right on a small carton of milk. Just as she was about to reach for it, a sudden shadow rose above her head and grabbed her by the arm. Everything around her changed once again, she felt herself being pulled away and carried in the air. The darkness around her transformed into arousing flames. Fire began to appear at each dark corner and spread across the floor. Ria heard faint cries, it was calling out her name. Again and again, the voice called out her name in agony.
"Mommy?" Ria heard herself saying, as she was still being carried away by the strong arms of an unknown figure. "Daddy?" The shadow carried her away from the fire and away from the voices, and into the swallowing darkness. The next second, she found herself in a dorm room. She saw Matron Mal looking younger than she currently was. She walked back from a drawer chest with a pair of warm clean clothes for Ria.
"This should do," she heard the matron say. She was preparing to dress Ria. Ria heard a booming sound from behind her, she turned around to see what it was but there was nothing there. She turned to face Matron Mal but the matron was gone and she found herself in another setting. She saw herself back in the orphanage. She was standing before the front door and looked up at the old wooden stairs in the front hall. The house seemed empty, frightfully quiet and lifeless. Suddenly there came the familiar sound of clicking footsteps of a pair of heels. Ria looked upstairs as she heard the footsteps coming closer and it made her heart beat faster in fear. Ria froze the moment she set her eyes on the appearing Matron Ila. The matron stood above her with her whip at hand.
"You annoying little rascal! I'll teach you a lesson for being a disrespectful, wretched imp!" she hissed. Ria tried to make a run for it when the matron stepped down the stairs, lashing her whip in front of her. But the more Ria tried to move her feet forward, an unknown force seemed to slow her down and pull her backwards. To her horror the lashing whip, sounded right behind her.
"No........" she cried. "Noooo....."
•••
"No...." Ria suddenly sat up. Her eyes looked around and she found herself back at Dr. Bates' clinic. She felt a rush of pain in her head, before they told her to lay back down.
"Hey, it's okay. It's okay," Mrs. Harber comforted. She held Ria's shoulders and advised her to rest.
"I saw it. I saw it," she kept mumbling.
"Saw what, Ria?" Mrs. Harber asked.
"In my.....dream, and my...........I think I was taken from my burning home," Ria said, then she interpreted her regained memory to the two. Five minutes later they were assured that Ria might have been a house fire victim.
"Did you see anything else, like......words or symbols?" Dr. Bates asked.
"Um......." Ria remembered a symbol or a logo that sometimes appeared and disappeared in a blur. In her dream, she'd turn to the side of a wall and see it pinned up there for only a split second. "...uh......no."
"How 'bout, faces?" Mrs. Harber questioned, "Did you see the person that took you away?"
"No, I didn't. He was like some kind of........shadow?" Ria answered, "But I saw, Matron Mal. I remembered the time she took me in. But I also saw Matron Ila."
"Well that was quite effective," Mrs. Harber replied. "I think you're getting closer to learning about your past Ria."
"I agree," Dr. Bates replied, "You should rest now. You did great, I am going to go study your brain waves more further with these results from the EEG."
"Here, have some water," Mrs. Harber told Ria giving her a glass. "You feeling okay?"
"Yeah, I just....." Ria said,"I don't know why I can't remember anything?"
"It's probably because you were too young to remember. And you've gone through so much. I'm sure there's gonna be some kind of explanation that Dr. Bates will provide," Mrs. Harber comforted.
"But what if I'll never be able to remember? How do I know this procedure would work?" Ria shrugged. Mrs. Harber turned to her with a sigh and stroke her curls.
"Ria, this procedure is just..... a wagon that takes you to the deepest depths of your mind. It can't take you to what you exactly want coz you're still trying to forget some things you can't face. You have to go back and remember everything if you wanna go beyond that to the time you first came to the orphanage. That's why all these memories are jumbled in your mind," Mrs. Harber replied, "Kinda like an archive room. How can you expect to walk into a room full of scattered documents and look for an old file? You're gonna need to go through everything. So maybe you shouldn't let that fear of remembering the horrors of the past pull you down. Instead, use it to make you stronger. Coz you're survivor. Got that?"
"Yea," Ria replied with a nod.
••••••
Ria looked across the bed to find the time on the alarm clock that sat on the bedside table. It was already six pm and she was already fresh out of the shower and got dressed into a pair of long, black tights, with only her sports bra under a big grey pullover. She was just planning that evening, to do a little study for their upcoming short test, the next morning. Ria gathered her books and took them down to the big study room, downstairs. After leaving her books on the table, she walked back from the room to head into the kitchen for a drink. There, she found Sheela cooking up some dinner for them that night.
"That smells good!" Ria exclaimed.
"Well, chicken has that sweet aroma when cooked in curry," the Indian woman smiled.
"Another one of your famous dishes?" Ria asked as she walked up to the cooler for some water. She was taking a drink as she looked right out the window and spotted Hayne, doing his normal training on the lawn. The floodlights outside, shone on his sweaty body as he wore a loose grey vest and short rugby shorts. His muscles and biceps moved well in his big arms and legs as he ran from one corner of the grass to the other and making his passes with Brian and his other dark-haired friend. The trio were working out on the lawn at the same tempo.
"Right Ria? Ria," Sheela called, making Ria break her long gaze at Hayne. She quickly looked down as she regretted staring out the window like that, and she hoped Sheela hadn't noticed it. "What you lookin' at?"
"Nothing! Nothing, I was just..........making sure this cooler was working, haha-see?" she smiled awkwardly. "You know what? I'm gonna, head to the study room. So, I'll be there if anyone needs me." With those words, she quickly paced across the kitchen and left Sheela in a state of confusion.
"Hhm......strange," the woman said as she continued stirring the spoon in the pot.
After dinner, Ria went back to the study room to continue with her books. A few minutes later, Mrs. Harber arrived home, from her long hours at the hospital.
"Hey," she said when she came by the study room and found Ria sitting in there, "Are you having an exam tomorrow?"
"Yea, it's just a short Algebra coursework test,"
"Oh. Why aren't you studying with Hayne?"
"Uh....... I think he's in the pool house. Studying with his friends,"
"Oh, well I should call them in so you guys can-"
"No, no no! I mean.....ah.....I like, studying alone," Ria quickly refused, almost standing on her feet as if to stop Mrs. Harber from doing just that.
"Oh-kay," Mrs. Harber replied, "Well, I'm gonna head upstairs now, for a long bubble bath. Goodnight."
"Goodnight Mrs. Harber,"
Four hours later, Ria looked again at the clock on the wall to find that it was almost 1am in the morning. She stretched her hands and cramping legs and gave a yawn. Then she got up to get herself another glass of water from the kitchen. She felt the cold refreshing liquid run down her dry throat, quenching her thirst. After placing the cup back at the cooler and turning around to head out she met Brian coming in through the back door.
"Hey there!" he smiled.
"Uh-hi," Ria replied awkwardly, hoping that her feet would have quickly taken her into the living room by now.
"Er-wa-wait right there," Ria saw him walking up close to her, "What was your name again?"
"Ria?"
"Ria. Of course! You were that smart chick in algebra. Did I mention smart and hot?" he began.
"Er.....okay? I'm just gonna head back to the study, now," Ria tried to get away, but the guy was trailing right behind her, and he followed her right into the study room.
"Study. Right! Short test tomorrow. Almost feels like the finals, eh?" Brian tried to strike up a conversation. "I kinda like girls who study. A lot! If that's what....you like-to do..."
"Look. We both have an important test tomorrow, right?" Ria replied in her polite tone. "So why don't we go back to our own books that'll....... benefit us both! So unless you have an algebra question to ask me, I'm not interested in anything else."
"Okay. Fine. I'll give you an algebraic question. But on a deal," Brian smirked.
"Deal?"
"Yea. There is a question we've tried to solve. If you're able to solve it, I'll stop bothering you for the night,"
"And if I don't?" Ria raised an eyebrow at him in her cute expression, while folding her arms.
"You make me your very own study-buddy for the rest of the night," he smirked, while Ria gave him a disapproving look.
"Fine. But if I do answer it right, you stop bothering me from now onwards! So, what's that question you got?" she said accepting the challenge.
"Problem 12. 5, page 157," he said opening the specific text book before her. Ria gave him a suspicious glance at first before turning back to the pages. She finally found the question and studied it through. She had to admit, that Brian had given her a pretty tough one, but with the rules and formulas of mathematics in her head that she had learned how to pick up; the problem would not be that difficult to solve.
Brian watched as she scribbled a long working on her white piece of paper. He seemed to be impressed and surprised at the same time as she worked her way through without the use of her calculator.
"Yo Brian!" Hayne called from the kitchen, and he wondered where his friend went. "Brian?"
"I'm in here man," Brian responded. Hayne followed the voice to the living room and approached them in the study. "Bro, she finished that algebraic expression in two minutes!" Hayne came up to see what they were doing. He was in a fitting navy shirt that hugged his muscular arms and body, and along with a pair of sweat pants. "You know, the one you were trying to figure out in the last two hours?" Hayne gave him a frown before turning back to the page Ria had in front of her.
"Not.....really," he muttered.
His expressionless face did not want to show how surprised he was. He just gave a sneer and tried to point out some errors. Ria bit her lower lip nervously, as she felt Hayne move up close.
"Hhm. You'd still get a half mark cut off from that final answer. The question only requires the answer to one decimal point," Hayne replied.
"It's just a half mark?" Ria shrugged.
"A half mark that still counts if you're on the brink of failure,"
"A half mark that can round off to one,"
"Most examiners will never neglect the fractions. They'll always place pinpoint marks," Hayne stated with folded arms.
"Well, most examiners only require how the student shows the process of getting the solution more than the solution itself,"
"I'm sure they do in public schools,"
"And what makes private schools any different? Same curriculum, same system just a different study environment?" Ria said, while Brian just stood on the side in silence, curiously hearing them quarrel.
"Better environment, better learning!"
"I doubt that. Coz according to the latest statistics in the Secondary School Academic survey, on a national scale; high academic standards are in more in favor of public schools than in private," Ria spoke confidently, "Sorry to burst your bubble."
"Ooh...ouch. Even I'm hurt from hearing that," Brian replied stroking the back of his head. "Can't argue with th stats, bro." Hayne was silent for a moment; he turned his gaze away from Ria's sparkling dark eyes and decided to head back to the kitchen.
"I'll believe it when I see it," he said before turning and walking out of the study. Brian gave Ria a shrug and followed Hayne out the door as well.
He caught up with him at the foot of the stairs, as he was stomping down the hall.
"She's quite a feisty one, isn't she?" Brian said, "..........remind you of someone?" Hayne walked on, and didn't care to know who Brian was talking about.
"And who'd that be?"
"..........Rache?" Brian answered. Hayne stopped from taking another step forward to turn to Brian with a hard look. "Ok, I'm sorry. I know you don't like us mentioning her name. I was just thinking out loud."
"Whatever," Brian studied his best friend's reaction and thought that Hayne hadn't been this disturbed before. Although, he knew that the mention of Rachel would make him stir up with emotions, that was why he hated anyone mentioning her name around him. But this reaction was quite a different one. Brian knew him too long and too well to recognize that.
#F1J1 #679
Dear reader 😊 ,
I hope you liked this chapter. Please vote on it if you do and leave any comments & tell me what you think!......don't forget to also follow me on Wattys @AniNawaikula! 😉
Thank you!