Betrayal

Betrayal

Mayandree Michel

PUBLISHED BY

Mayandree Michel

mayandreemichel.blogspot.com

Betrayal

Copyright © 2011 by Mayandree Michel.

All rights are reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the author.

Cover design by Samantha Oyola

Model: Giselle Elyse Lopez

* * * * *

and

my mother, Andree, whom I miss very much

* * * * *

Without the assistance of my treasured few, my story would still be locked away in my laptop.

To my husband, and action flick enthusiast, Aaron, for understanding that the story of The Descendants had to be told, and for your approval of every action scene.

To my angels, Blake and Kale, for not fussing too much when it was time to go to bed, because you knew mommy had to write. I am blessed to have you both and love you with all of my heart.

To my baby sis, Adrienne, for reading each draft and loving the story more each time.

To Mary “Mamouche” Stone, for all of your encouragement from beginning to end.

To Samantha, for reading my story, and for an incredibly stunning cover design.

To Giselle Elyse Lopez, for lending your beauty.

* * * * *

Where there is love and power,

there is always…

Betrayal

The thunder grumbled louder than the ancient Bergnum steam engine train, on one of its weekend tours. I shielded my eyes from the torrential downpour, but it was futile. Through the deluge, I vaguely made out the bright headlights of the C Street Line bus, cautiously approaching my bus stop.

I cursed my cheap umbrella for succumbing to the forceful wind gusts, and flipping upward several times, as I ran the half a block to the stop.

Already soaked through my shirt, with still a quarter of a block to go, I decided to abandon my now rectangle shaped umbrella. Thunder rolled and crashed, halting me midstep. I hated thunder storms because of my debilitating fear of getting struck by lightning, yet tonight there wasn’t any. The sky was black as singed coal, devoid of any light.

I waved my hand in the air hoping Fred, the bus driver, noticed me, and would wait. I couldn’t hang around for twenty minutes in this downpour for the next bus. Only a few yards away from my stop, I was forced to immediately stop running again as if I slammed into a brick wall. This time it wasn’t because of the thunder or because of the deep puddle I just splashed through. I froze when I saw the giant shadow emerge from the sidewalk in an upright position.

The silhouette stood a few yards ahead of me, obstructing the entire view of the bus. I squinted upward, trying to make out what it was. The shadow appeared to be of a giant man towering at least eight or so feet. A man on stilts, maybe? The shadow’s coat or cape, I couldn’t tell in the haze of the bus’s headlights, which outlined the figure, whipped around like a swarm of furious bats exiting a cave. As it began moving toward me in slow motion, I realized the figure wasn’t a man or a person at all, but an enormous shadow.

I was rooted where I stood under the pouring rain, unable to breathe with a strange and unfamiliar clenching in my chest. As if on cue with my heightened fear, the creature spread out its flickering cape with a snap, and inched toward me in a swift pace. I couldn’t move as if my feet where an extension of the wood boarded sidewalk. The shadow lurched forward, and a rush of stinging and stifling heat arose from somewhere deep within the core of my body.

I began to tremble uncontrollably when crackling lightning bolts shot from my fingertips, eyes, ears, and burst from my chest in long crooked, blinding rays. The rays which seemed to retaliate against the chorus of bellowing thunder in the sky were aimed at the shadow which had been silent up until this point. The silhouette recoiled into the sidewalk with a screech as if the lighting had caused it excruciating pain.

I woke up two days later with eyelids that seemed to weigh a ton a piece. I tried to focus, and barely made out the view of the Nickel City playground from my window. I had no idea where I was until I noticed the shocking, stark white sheets covering me on the stiff bed I laid on. To my left, I saw my mom sitting in a chair beside me. I watched the corners of her mouth curl up a little.

Without warning, she started rambling about how I’d been asleep in the Nickel City Hospital for the last two days after being struck by lightning, before running out of the hospital room to get a nurse. Everything came rushing back to me as if a plug had been yanked out of my head. I wondered if anyone knew what really happened that night.

After a dozen or so tests, the doctors couldn't find anything wrong with me, so I was discharged. As the days crawled by, my mom and dad never brought up the night of the storm or mentioned a thing about me being struck by lightning. I hadn’t forgotten although, it wasn’t as my mom had explained it. Lightning didn't strike me. It had been the other way around.

One

Reverie

Once again, I peered at the clock on the wall. My heart sank. Only two minutes had passed since I last checked. It was ten minutes to quitting time, and the shop was empty. I hated cashiering at Clarkson’s Gift Shoppe and being surrounded by ‘Old West’ collectables – reminders of a sluggish era. The hours seemed to drag from the moment I punched in for work. But working here was a small sacrifice, and my only shot at an escape from this dawdling town. I planned to flee before my graduation cap descended from the toss.

Nickel City High, the only high school in Nickel City, Nevada, was where I served my sentence. Nickel City was a tiny town where everyone knew everyone and their family, so my plight of taking mass transit for the last three years was common knowledge amongst the entire senior class. Kudos to them for finding some way to obtain the most coveted item – a car to park in the senior parking lot. No one cared how you got the vehicle; whether you inherited the car from a generous uncle, earned it from an afterschool job, or mommy and daddy’s checkbook, your status was catapulted. I didn’t care about status, or the real estate of the much fought over senior parking spaces.

A car meant money being spent on insurance and gas. I’d ride the bus for another year, and be teased and called a ‘bus rat’ by my fellow classmates, if it meant I could defect from this dreary town promptly after graduation.

I jumped from the startling crackle and chime of the bells hanging on the etched glass door as a group of rowdy kids stumbled into the gift shop.

My eyes glanced instantly at the clock as the heat filled my head and my nostrils flared. What the heck were they thinking coming in here now? The shop would be closing in eight minutes. The raucous group, a familiar bunch from Nickel City’s only junior high school, was armed with skateboards in hand and colorful skull caps strategically placed askew on their heads. I wondered if the little slackers had come in precisely at this time to tick me off. If they had, their plan had worked. I narrowed my eyes and clenched my teeth when the goofy quartet started zooming up and down my freshly straightened greeting card aisles.

“Hey, you can't ride your skateboards in here,” I yelled, leaning over the counter, but they ignored me. I began to have one of those out of body experiences where you see yourself do something erratic and so out of character that it shocks you. I saw myself leap over the counter, smack every one of those knuckleheads hard across the face, and then throw them out of the shop by the seat of their pants.

Aaahhhhhhhhh, so satisfying, I thought.

Mr. Clarkson, my boss, was a short butterball of a man, and owner of the gift shop. He waddled out of his office, closing the door behind him. He watched, with an exaggerated frown which was strictly for my benefit, as the group of greeting card snatching buffoons grabbed a couple packs of chewing gum from the candy stand by my register. They argued for a minute about who was actually going to pay. Listening to them bicker, must have shaved at least a year off my life. Chain smoking had to be safer than being stuck in a room with a bunch of asinine junior high kids.

At last, a couple of crumpled up dollars landed on the counter. I looked past the knuckleheads to my perfectly aligned greeting cards which were now a flipped over and smeared mess. I almost hurled their change at them. They finally left the shop grinning at me with their future perfect teeth, thanks to the gunmetal tracks. I narrowed my eyes and mouthed some choice words of profanity at them.

Finally, Mr. Clarkson and I began closing up. Tonight that consisted of Mr. Clarkson locking my cash drawer away in the safe, and me aligning the greeting cards, again. It took us all of five minutes. I snatched my messenger bag from the stock room, grabbed my text book on World History, which I hid under the counter to sneak and study while there weren’t any customers. I waved goodnight to my boss, and was out the door. The second I stepped out of the gift shop, I saw my bus gliding down C Street, the town’s main street. I still felt apprehensive about the half a block walk to my stop although, it was a clear evening, and it had been two weeks since the galactic thunderstorm.

“Good Evenin' Delia,” Fred chirped from behind the wheel. He was as plump as a Thanksgiving Day turkey, and scrutinized my every step as I entered the bus and swiped my bus card. Since the night of the tempest, Fred seemed wary of me, and me of him. Although, he never uttered a word about that night, I feared he had seen what happened, yet I couldn't be sure. Lately, he looked at me with anxious eyes as if he were a parent watching a toddler’s first steps with the anticipation of an inevitable fall. Even though he seemed cautious of me, he always had a beaming smile – the ear to ear kind.

“Hi Fred.” I did my best impression of a smile, and edged passed him. As I eased down the aisle between the bus seats, I glanced at the same faces I'd been looking at three nights a week for the past two years. They all gazed up at me to either smile, grunt, or reshut their eyes for another quick doze. I shuffled along to my favorite seat in the rear by the exit doors. I could almost feel my front door knob twisting open as I anticipated getting home.

I looked out the grimy and smudged window of the bus, and beyond it was the wondrous and breathtaking view of the looming Sierra Nevadas, a mountain range stretching from Nevada to Northern California. The view, in my opinion, was the only perk of growing up and living in Nickel City. I never tired of the serene and sandy brown peaks that, right now as the sun set, made it difficult to differentiate where the mountains ended, and the pinkish tangerine sky began.

I looked out the windshield of the bus to the familiar main street. The town’s wood planked sidewalks littered with gifts shops, old saloons, bed and breakfasts, and shabby restaurants, was home to a population of just a thousand or so strong, unlike its glory days over a hundred years ago, during the gold rush. I've heard time after time how Nickel City, once a bustling mining town, had a crowded population of twenty thousand. I couldn't imagine residing here then. That much activity, in such a minute town, had to have been chaotic.

The legend remains, Nickel City practically appeared overnight with the discovery of gleaming silver in its lakes and mines. The mining era had been a prosperous time, but equally dangerous. Greedy and at times murderous prospectors from all over the U.S. and abroad, heard that the roads were practically paved with the sparkly and lucrative minerals. They came in droves; pick axes and shovels in hand, to stake a claim on their fortune. One look at this dilapidated town now, you'd know that those days were gone.

Today our town is thought of as an ancient ghost town although; I haven't seen one specter yet. You would expect the ghost stories would keep the tourists away. But in fact, they lured them in. The sightseers traveled far to observe and hear all the nostalgia this dull town had to offer. They showed up in Nickel City every weekend to tour the inactive mines which haven’t produced a nickels worth of silver, no pun intended, since the turn of the century. The day trippers toured the poorly preserved mansions and sagging buildings (where they believed we kept all the ghosts), the oldfashioned saloons on C Street, and rode the archaic Bergnum Steam Engine Railroad.