Red Moon ~ Chapter 4 ~ Memories

Chapter 4: Memories

This time, I was really hyper during the time we spent in the car. I kept changing my hair color constantly; sometimes without even realizing it and my eyes were a warm gold like my parents’ eyes. Mom got worried because even in my sleep, my hair kept changing shape – curly, wavy, straight over and over again – color and length, and only when I was lost deep in my dreams, I stopped and it turned back to normal.

The next morning, I was somewhat calmer and quiet as I talked with my parents, imagining how the Cullen’s would react to our arrival in Sherrill. They insisted that I should have some human food so we made several stops on the way. (Chinese was one of the things I ate at these stops. My mom started in again saying how unhealthy it was, but when she saw she couldn’t change my mind, she stopped.)

When we reached Texas, we went to our old house to leave the car – there was no way we would cross half the continent in our little Toyota iQ micro-car; it would take weeks! We had spent only seven months in that house during my second year…but I knew this house well.  It was my grandparents’. My grandma, Eshe, lived here before us and there was plenty of her stuff in this house. It makes me sad that I never got to meet my namesake.

Dad felt bad about it too, as well as for the fact that he didn’t go back once to tell her; “Mom, don’t worry, I’m okay.” He didn’t even go to her funeral. When he died, there were so many people he knew and they would realize that something was wrong with him… especially since he was supposed to be dead. 

I ran out of the car and opened the front door. It was just like I remembered. There was a maid paid to clean the house while we were away, so there were no signs of the fact that no one lived here anymore. Most of the house was decorated in old, dark wood and many African masks were adorning the walls. All the furniture was very dark brown wood, with carved flowers and leaves and the pillows and carpets were in beige and brown tones with simple shapes. The house was very classical but I liked the theme a lot.

I rushed upstairs and turned right away towards a wooden door, my bedroom’s door. My room still looked like a nursery with my childish bed, toy box and many dolls with fluffy dresses on the shelves and small cute pillows on my bed. The walls were a soft lavender color, one of my favorites, and with a cream carpet on the floor. It had the same theme as the rest of the house, old wood mixed with flowers. My dad said this was my grandma’s heritage and it reminded her of home. I sat in my room and searched every shelf, closet, drawer and toy box, to check that everything was in place. I found my old diary.  Yeah it’s odd to have a diary when you are two years old, but I was like a genius nine year old so it’s not exactly the same normal two year old. Half of the diary was covered with my handwriting and many drawings I had made, but the rest was empty. I didn’t think I needed to take it with me when we moved out and it was left here with the rest of my stuff.

I decided to spend the rest of the time in the garden. Dad told me that grandma Eshe was so fond of this garden. These plants and her family were her whole life. My mom made sure the whole house would stay in good condition and hired a gardener to take care of the plants my grandma used to tend with so much care. Mom and dad stayed inside, two sparkly vampires are something even weak human eyes would notice. I ran in the garden (at human speed) and the scents from the flowers overwhelmed me. The scent of roses, lilies, lavender, sweet grass… apple and cherry trees were also in bloom and were full of little beautiful white-pink flowers that had a soft, sweet smell. I cut some of them and made my hair curly to make sure the flowers would stay in my hair. I sat under the shade of a nice cherry tree next to the fence on the side of the street. I never was very social; I preferred peace and quiet. Unfortunately, instead of my parents whom humans instinctively didn’t say much to, humans always paid attention to me. I could say I was somewhat of a human magnet. As time passed and I watched people walking on the sidewalk through the fence, I noticed how little this place had changed. Mr. Robinson still tied his bag on his green bike and rode all the way to work. Mrs. Wilson came to the front door to get the newspaper while Molly with Jennifer (her children and my ex-classmates) came out to play in the garden like they did every weekend. The old lady, whose name I never knew, still took her white poodle for a walk every two hours. She always did it even if though was very old. The houses were just like they were three years ago, people living around were the same as well, except Ms. Anderson’s little baby. He was a beautiful baby with baby-blue eyes and small blonde curls. He looked like an angel. If he didn’t smell 100% human, I would swear he was like me. I greeted his mother; she smiled as she remembered me. I looked a little older than I should but I was short and I had childish characteristics like my father so she didn’t suspect anything. We talked a little, she asked how I have been and said that she almost didn’t recognize me (I smiled at that) and asked about my parents. I couldn’t say they were in because if she didn’t notice anything weird about me as she would my parents. When we lived here, mom and dad were supposed to be twenty six, so now they should be twenty nine. They definitely didn’t look like they were that old, so I told her they were out shopping. A simple innocent white lie…

The problem was that when I stood up to greet Ms. Anderson and little Michael (her son), other old neighbors recognized me. Perfect! Exactly what we needed! The whole neighborhood knowing we were back. First came Molly and Jennifer, the two girls I had seen playing before. They were now twelve years old and thanks to my height (again) they didn’t notice much I had grown a ‘little’ more than they had.

We sat in their garden and they told me the latest gossip from school. We all went to a public school so I knew every kid that lived around here. They were my fellow classmates. By seven o’ clock in the evening, half of my class had greeted me and had told me how much they had missed me. I repeated many times that we wouldn’t be staying here and that we came here for a little visit, but then we would be boarding the plane to get back to my mom’s home in Alaska (this is where we were supposed to live). They were pretty disappointed, I never had a best friend at school or was very popular but as I said, I am a human magnet! Actually, I realized that I had missed them all too! I felt really bad.

 What if I was just human? What if I could have a normal life? Normal friends? I shook these thoughts away. I am not normal and I never will be. Tonight, I will leave for Sherrill and I will meet someone like me for the first time. There is nothing to be sad about. I thought to myself.

I was about to excuse myself and leave, to get ready and get any stuff I wanted from to take from here when Darryl appeared. He was also in my class. He was a shy, blond boy with honey-golden eyes (they looked like he actually was a vampire) who sat next to me while I was enrolled at the school here. He had a little crush on me but he never told me. If I stayed here, maybe something could happen…

Well the twins, Molly and Jennifer, had told me that he now wasn’t shy at all anymore and actually, he was one of the most popular kids at school and he was absolutely gorgeous (they were right). He had a girlfriend now, luckily someone who wouldn’t bite him if he cut his finger or something like that. I had a hard time at school at first with little kids falling all the time and running to the school nurse with blood covering their knees or elbows. I even asked mom to stop letting me attend school then.   

“Hi, Eshe!” He greeted me and smiled.

“Darryl! Hey! Long time no see!” I told him and smiled back. He wasn’t the person I remembered or I expected to see, but I tried to hide it.

“So…” Okay, he still was a little nervous around me. I thought. “How have you been doing? Do you like Alaska more than here? I guess you are freezing up there.” He continued trying to cover the signs of nervousness he had shown before.

“Nah. We are fine. It’s not that cold. But I miss the sun a little up there.” I explained him. “Well, actually we weren’t in Alaska before.”

Crap, crap, crap! Why did I say that?! Am I serious? What should I say now? Okay, okay, think a little. I looked at him. The last statement seemed to have confused him.

“We were with a group of family friends on a tour in the Amazon for the last month.” Phew. I hope this covered what I said before.

“Nice! How was it?” he asked looking at me a little weird but obviously curious. I guess he thought I should have come back at least a little tanner since I was over there for a month. I said the first thing that came to my mind.

“Wet. It was really wet. The rainy season started a little after we arrived.” What. The. Hell. Am. I. Saying.?! Am I crazy? Couldn’t I find anything stupider to say? At least this explains how I didn’t tan…

“Oh, I am sorry for that. You would have enjoyed your vacation if you had gone another time of the year…” he smiled and cocked his eyebrow.  Wow!  He was really cute. 

“No, no! It was really nice! We were moving through the forest with boats and the house we were living on was floating on the water…” Okay, that’s enough! I need to get out of here! I said a lot. And crazy stuff too. Um… Now, let’s see… A nice excuse… An excuse, an excuse… I pretended to look at an invisible watch on my hand.

 “Oh, look at the time! I am really sorry guys but I have to go and pack! Bye! I hope I’ll see you all again soon!” I hugged quickly the twins, waved my hand at Darryl and crossed the street fast (maybe a little too fast) and got in our house and closed the door behind me, safe at last.

“Hi, honey! Why didn’t you stay a little longer with your friends?” my mom asked. Of course she and dad had already seen who I was with and what I was doing. I hate it when they check my every movement. Were they eavesdropping too? Overprotective parents!

“I thought it was a good idea to pack some things I want to take with me from here.” I told her and thought how lucky I was vampires aren’t mind readers like in traditional vampire stories. Being a vampire, or even half of it, it’s good to know what humans believe about your kind so I had read lots of books about vampires, old or new, most of them were about the same things. Bad, bad bloodsucking monsters with fangs; who can’t stand garlic, crosses and sunlight. A bunch of stupid fairytales.

“Okay, sweetie. We will leave late tonight. Go pack whatever you want and rest a little. If you want a snack, I am sure the gardener has left some cheese, ham and bread to make a sandwich.” Mom answered.

“If I get hungry, I will.” I answered; annoyed they did that push for me to be eating enough again and ran up the stairs.

I sat in bed and randomly opened a page of my diary:

After this, I had made a drawing of a child, pale white, with burgundy eyes and breathtakingly beautiful. This is how I imagined an immortal child, not that I had met or would ever meet one. I don’t want to brag about it, but it is a really good drawing. I had made it with acrylic colors. I remembered every single word I had written under that drawing. I was babbling about the Volturi being unfair with vampire children and that my opinion was that they were overreacting etc…

I closed the diary, put it in my bag to have something to do if I got bored and turned the television on. There was the series ‘Charmed’ again. It is a really old series, it started in 1998 I think, but people still watched it so I was watching reruns. It was my favorite episode from season five. I watched it and after it ended, I changed to the MTV channel and watched ‘America’s Top 20’. I must have fallen asleep because I couldn’t remember the number one song or video. The clock was pointing to eleven o’ clock. I carried down all my stuff and went to make a sandwich to eat before we left because airplane meals always sucked. 

Around midnight, we called a taxi to get us to the airport and booked three tickets for the next flight to Buffalo, New York. From there, we would go on foot. It wasn’t long (considering that we were vampires and half-vampire).

The flight was pretty boring; the stewardess gave the passengers the usual flight emergency instructions.  A hysterical old lady was panicked and cried that she was claustrophobic, so I decided to sleep… I would have gone crazy if I heard her say once more she had claustrophobia!

Six hours later, we were off the plane and heading out of town. We hadn’t had many things with us, one backpack for each of us with some clothes and a few sentimental items. We would go shopping after we decided where we would stay. We didn’t have wait until it got dark since the weather forecast in the airport said it would be cloudy and foggy for the next three days in the biggest part of the state. The cold felt really weird after so many months in Amazon. I had gotten used to running around the jungle in a pair of shorts and the top of my bikini.  Now, wearing a shirt with long sleeves and a coat was so odd… The hours passed and we were running until I got tired and my legs couldn’t hold me up anymore. My dad carried me on his back. It wasn’t the most comfortable thing to be on a vampire’s back running at inhuman speed, but I didn’t really care at the moment. I let my exhaustion take over; my lids became heavy and I drifted to sleep.

When I opened my eyes, the first thing I noticed was a big wooden sign saying: “WELCOME TO SHERRILL”. We were finally there! I decided to change my appearance like that day not so long ago in the Amazon. Long bronze ringlets covered most of my back and my eyes turned into a milky chocolate brown. This time though, my whole face looked like Renesmee not just my hair and eyes, I hoped this would help the Cullen’s recognize us.

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