Chapter One: Logging On

 

People surrounded me the next few hours.  Blood was drawn, more CAT, PET, MRIs, if it was an acronym, it happened to me.   The only thing was, I didn’t know how I got here.  They say that after a head injury, you’re unable to remember anything that happened immediately prior, right, immediately, sure.  Anyway, all I knew was I was confused.

The most confusing thing was that when I told them it was 1999 and I was twenty-one, my mother cried.  Odd, she hadn’t cried when I turned thirteen, eighteen or twenty-one.  So why start now?

Well, thing of it was, I wasn’t twenty-one or even twenty-two; I was twenty-six.  What the hell?  Twenty-six?  Who the hell is twenty-six?  My fashionably older boyfriend Marc wasn’t even twenty-six for a few more months.  As you can assume, I went through all the stages: anger, denial, uh, atheism, no wait, that’s something else.  Well, whatever they are, I went through them. 
            I was told I hadn’t been asleep (or you know, in a fucking coma) for five years, only for two weeks.  I had had an accident, a car accident (great, like I don’t already know I can’t drive) and for some reason, my brain had decided it didn’t like the last five years.  Well, that’s not the medical jargon, but that’s how I think of it.

Nobody bothered to tell me what happened in those intervening years, or why I was now so weak minded I couldn’t even face the truth.  My every question is now answered with trepidation.  Actually, it’s a lot like when I was four and asked about sex, both hetero and homo.  For weeks, every time I said “Question!” my mom kind of spazzed.  That’s how it was now.  I was a petulant child seeking answers to the unanswerable yet again.

“Ara?  Do you need anything?”  Mom’s voice pulled me out of my reverie. 

“Yeah, some answers would be nice.”  I saw Mom look at the doctor, who shook his head.  “Okay, doc, let’s get something straight. It’s my life and I want to know about it.  So stop with the vague and make with the chatty.” 

“Arabella, give it time.  We’ll give you the basics, but I’d rather it all come back naturally.”  Now normally, I’d go all psycho on him, but did I mention he was hot?  And that maybe, in some corner of my mind, I wanted to play along?  Enjoy being the patient, the star of the show.  Well, I never said you and I were going to be best friends did I?

“Fine, but if I have to stay here, I want my toy.  Where’s Marc?  He should have his ass here, shouldn’t he?  I mean really.  If the last memory I have of him is New Year’s Eve, then why isn’t he here?  Fucker.  OW!” Mom’s hand thwacked my shoulder.  Eh, normally it would’ve been the back of my head, so that was cool, even though the “f-bomb” wasn’t (did I mention I hate that term; just fucking say it).

“Marc?  He had to… go back to work today.  Actually he was here the first couple days, but, Arabella, the whole world couldn’t stop.  I mean, he couldn’t afford to lose his job.  You’re high maintenance, you know?”  Why the hell was she laughing so nervously?  My eyes narrowed, but I let it go.  I’d talk to Marc, get some answers out of him, and then kick some ass. 

I have to admit, I pouted for the rest of the day.  Marc didn’t get off until 11 and the nurses tried to say it was too late, so I didn’t eat.  The IV itched, so I tried to jerk it out.  The television annoyed me, so I hid the remote. In short, I made everyone else as miserable as I was.  It’s not like anyone was bringing me what I wanted. 
            Things started looking up when Lacy and Calla came in.  Calla was my cousin and my, uh co-conspirator.  Basically, if something bad happened, it was Calla and I.  Drive-by flashing?  Us.  Midnight peeping Tinas?  Yep, us again.  We never really broke the law, just massaged it.

 Calla had long brown hair, high cheekbones and chubby cheeks.  At least 99’s Calla did.  The girl in front of me now had an awesome haircut, a size four figure and way more boobs than I remembered.  And where the fuck were her clothes?  Yeah, I was out of place here.

Lacy is my best friend.  She has been for years.  Except for when she wasn’t.  There have been these weird periods of time when we were competing for Jack.  Then, we hated each other.  As best I could remember, we’d been talking back in 99, but were we now?  I guess so.  It’s hard to keep track of the on/off switch sometimes.

Lacy looks more like me, even though we aren’t related.  She has auburn hair to my blond, blue eyes to my green, but somehow we still can pass as sisters.  I think it’s a style thing.  We don’t exactly dress alike, but similar.  I’m a campus cutie meets private schoolgirl type (pleated skirts and white button-ups or wool sweaters over my trademark long sleeve tee), while she’s campus cutie going to a Pixies concert (lots of funky jewelry and quirky shoes).   

The girls and I joked around a bit, but honestly, I was just killing time to see Marc.  Finally, at 11:30, despite the nurses’ protests, he arrived.  My beautiful boy, all five-feet ten inches of him.  Yeah, Marc’s short, but so am I.  At five-feet, we complimented each other perfectly.  

“Ari, hi.”  He looked nervous.  Why was he nervous?  What the fuck was going on?  He also looked… older.  I don’t mean just “hey I’m almost thirty” older, but mature, his hair was shorter and he had on dad clothes.  Khakis and not the cool kind.  More like Dockers and a polo.  Eeek, I was sleeping with this?