Six Days: Book One in the SIX Series
Read Six Days: Book One in the SIX Series Online
Authors: Randileigh Kennedy
SIX DAYS
Book One of the SIX Series
By
Randileigh
Kennedy
Copyright – 2014 by
Randileigh
Kennedy
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to
historical events, people, or places are used fictitiously. Other names,
characters, places, and incidents are simply products of the author’s
imagination, and any similarity to actual events, locales, or persons, living
or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced or used in any way whatsoever without written consent from the
author.
To M.F., my greatest adventure yet.
Table of Contents
When I was nine years old, I was given wings, with which
I could use to fly anywhere, at any moment. I have spent hours, days even,
staring out into a universe of stars, or watching the sun come up, feeling as
though I might sail over it at any moment.
So why is it now, in this very
moment,
that
I question why it is that my feet have never left the ground? I
guess I should start at the beginning. People don’t often just end up on top of
a mountain trying to decide whether or not they should jump, right?
As
luck would have it, my life story kicks off with a traumatizing childhood. It
doesn’t seem so bad now after all this time I guess, but I’m sure some
psychoanalysis professional would say my numbness to the whole thing is some
type of repressive denial.
Whatever.
My parents owned a small bed and breakfast in the cozy
town of
Starlite
, Nevada. I
know,
sounds dreamy, right? Unfortunately it wasn’t as magical as it sounds. When I
was six my father was arrested. It turned out he had another business on the
side other than his welcoming hospitality gig. When guests would check into the
bed and breakfast my father would sell their address information to a group of
guys, including their length of stay at the inn. While the guests were on
vacation, their houses were broken into. Their stolen goods were sold and my
father received a hefty cut of the profits, which he quickly turned around into
a gambling addiction. It took the cops two years to track all the break-ins to
my dad. Even my mom never saw it coming.
My mom was so mad about the whole thing she didn’t even
tell me which prison he was sent to. The bed and breakfast was shut down and
sold to pay my father’s debts. My mom moved us shortly after, so if my dad ever
tried to contact me, I’m not sure he would have been able to find us. We moved
around a lot, and I never knew what kind of new life my mom was actually trying
to find. I asked her about my father occasionally, but she was so bitter and
angry about the whole thing. I knew she didn’t like to talk about it. As a kid
I really believed they were in love. It seemed that way to me anyway. But then
again, I wonder if that’s what every kid believes, perhaps because they are
just too young to really know the difference. It wasn’t until I overheard her
one night talking to a friend on the phone about going out to find husband
number two that I realized maybe she wasn’t as brokenhearted about my dad’s
departure as I thought.
It wasn’t long after my dad left when my mom remarried.
It seemed all too quick if you ask me. His name was Hank, and well, we just
never really connected. I’ve blocked most of it out by now, other than the
horrible stench of cheap whisky. He worked long hours, which I was grateful
for. But when he came home, he had a bottle of bourbon in one hand and his
angry temper in another. Sometimes when my body aches I swear I still have
splintered bones from how hard that man knocked me around.
Apparently my mom didn’t fare so well through Hank’s mood
swings either. One night, when I was nine, my mom took too many sleeping pills.
People who knew her all assured me it was a terrible accident. They all swore
it was a mistake. But I had known better, even at nine years old. That same
week, Hank blamed me for my mom’s choice to never wake up again. He blamed me
good. I was so black and blue after that I could barely open my eyes, and I had
a severely broken left arm.
After finally being released from hospital, I was taken
to a woman’s house. Her name was
Ardell
, and she was
about eighty years old. She wrapped me in a blanket that night and held me. It
was the only time my whole life I could remember being held like that. We
didn’t say much. I just sat there, shaking, a scared nine year old girl. And
she just sat there, ancient, holding me. When I awoke the next morning I was
still wrapped up in that blanket, and her arms were still wrapped around me.
Ardell
explained to me that
morning that some people were coming to take me. They were good people.
People that would take me somewhere safe.
Minutes before I
left, she gave me a small box. Inside was a small pair of white porcelain
wings. They were beautiful wings that looked like they belonged to an angel.
She told me to hang onto those wings, no matter what, and that someday they
would save me. She told me someday I could use them to fly, anywhere, somewhere
I would never be hurt again. That was the very first time I believed an adult -
more so because I felt I had to at that point, otherwise there would be nothing
left for me.
The State tried to locate my grandparents, but I had
little information about them. Neither of my parents had spoken to their folks
in years. Apparently my mom got pregnant at seventeen, and she ran away with my
dad and got married young, which neither of their parents approved of. Since
the State was unable to locate anyone willing to claim me, I was eventually
passed around through a few foster homes. By the time I was fourteen, I
realized not too many people were open to taking in a teenage girl. I was
eventually sent off to an all-girls boarding school in Mason City, Nevada. Mind
you, not the kind of boarding school rich kids get sent to, that’s for sure.
More like the kind of school you’re sent to because no one else wants you.
Fortunately I excelled in school, finally latching onto
something meaningful in life. I was even transferred to a different school my
senior year of high school. It was a school for advanced learning, since I
clearly didn’t fit in with the rest of the kids at Mason Prep, given their lack
of enthusiasm for knowledge. Eventually I was able to get a full scholarship to
a small college a few towns over in California.
I
really enjoyed college. I took tough science classes and enjoyed electives such
as art, which I hadn’t experienced much of in my prior education. I was a cute
girl, pretty enough for college boys anyway, though that doesn’t say much. I
had grown out my blonde hair and was pretty slender, though I wasn’t interested
in any compliments. I stayed shy and studied, never wanting to get too close to
anyone so I wouldn’t have to explain my life to them. That was, until I met
Grant.
Grant was in my chemistry labs, which I thought was so
cliché at the time that I blew off his advances. Eventually he wore me down
though, and we began dating. He was a nice enough guy, sure, though not overly
romantic. We spent a lot of time together though, and for the first time in my
life, I really opened up to him. I told him all about my parents, what I could
remember about them anyway, and about what I went through with Hank. He didn’t
have a great relationship with his own parents, so we connected in that way. He
was an attractive guy with light brown hair, hazel eyes, and a dimpled chin.
Grant was smart too, and I liked that about him. We didn’t do many adventurous
things together, though Chinese take-out and a good movie several nights a week
was enough to sustain me, making me think I finally had a normal life. Time
passed quickly, and I felt comfortable with my place in the world.
Grant
made a promise to me one night, a promise that he would never leave me. We
moved in together the following weekend, shortly before graduation. We both
graduated with degrees in biology and expected to do something great, but
things quickly went downhill from there.
Grant was unable to find a decent job after we graduated
which took a toll on him. He went out more with his friends, and that’s when
the drinking started. I tried to keep it all together, taking any jobs I could
find in order to pay our bills. Life in California wasn’t cheap, and the dreams
we had at twenty-two weren’t enough to keep us afloat. We moved several times,
further down to southern California, but things seemed more expensive and
stressful the further south we moved. I knew it wasn’t the life I wanted, but
somehow I stayed with him four more years on the promise he would be the first
person to truly love me. That somehow turned into me wondering why he was the
person to hurt me the worst.
Finding out we were pregnant surprised us both. Sure, we
were still young and it was anything but planned, but I thought it could be an
adventure for us.
Maybe something to help Grant grow up a
bit.
Instead, he was anything but happy. He left the night I told him
the news, and came home seven hours later in a drunken stupor. The following
few weeks, things got even worse. I just wanted it all to end.
The night I lost the baby, I thought of my mother.
My father.
Grant.
Everyone who was supposed
to love me in the world, abandoning me.
And now my baby abandoned me
too.
All I could think was that the baby
knew better, or that maybe I had wished the baby away and it came true. I
pulled out the box that night; the one
Ardell
had
given to me, which I had held onto all this time. I pulled out the small white
angel wings, held them against my chest, and cried. For two days, I wept. Grant
didn’t even come home.
It was in that moment I knew I needed to get
out,
out of the life I was living. I just wanted to be free.
Free to be someone, anyone, without this story, without the life I had suffered
through. Everyone left me, one by one, without reason or explanation. I always
had some feeling in me that I was made with intent, that I would have some sort
of better life than what I had already experienced. But time after time, I felt
as though I was being proved wrong. I packed one large bag, drained our savings
account of its twenty-three hundred dollars, and got in my car.
I drove north for what seemed like an eternity that
night, though my clock indicated it had been about twelve hours, and somehow
that seemed good enough. I ended up in a town called Mountain Ridge, Nevada,
really close to the California border near Lake Tahoe. The mountains seemed comforting
and the lights of downtown twinkled in the early morning hours. The air was
crisp and it was the closest I felt to a clean start.
I
rented out a small apartment in a brick complex owned by a little old lady.
Maybe she recognized the sadness in my eyes, or maybe she didn’t understand the
current inflation crisis and rent prices, but she cut me a good deal. Since the
place was vacant, I was able to move in that afternoon. She even left it
furnished, though I wasn’t sure that was part of the deal she originally had
advertised, but I happily accepted it.
I immediately set out to look for a job, though I knew
had no use of my biology degree. The odd jobs I took trying to support Grant
the last four years never exactly led me into a steady career path. Honestly, I
wasn’t sure what I even wanted to do. I knew I would need to start making money
quick though, because my twenty-three hundred dollars would dwindle fast.
The town was lively, mostly with tourists, which was
comforting since I didn’t know my way around either. There were beautiful
resorts, casinos, boating shops, and cafes. I felt lost, not sure where to go,
but somehow this feeling of ‘lost’ didn’t bother me nearly as much as I would
have expected. I’d felt lost all twenty-six years of my life, so I knew that
this at least felt different. I could finally do anything, something for
me
.
Maybe, after all this time, I could finally live the kind of life I wanted.
