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 Posted: Sun Mar 21, 2010 5:54 am
The bubbling scent of cheese and tomatoes slowly filled the kitchen. Fallon took the seat closer to the oven at the island. She'd be getting up in a few minutes to pull out the dish anyway. "My therapist tells me that it is a lie that our captors convinced us was true. He showed me a video of a girl who told everyone she had been abducted by aliens. She described their glassy eyes and pale skin and strange technology for hours on end. When they caught the guy that grabbed her, he was an albino who wore sunglasses and lived in the back of a junk shop." Fallon could remember the girl from the video just as surely as she were sitting beside them. Her hair was dark red, almost black, and her shoulders shook when she described what happened. Is that what Fallon looked like to Dr. Price? She couldn't get the thought out of her head.
Clearing her throat, Fallon glanced to the fridge. "May I have something to drink? Sorry, my throat is a little dry. Water, maybe." Talking about Barren Pines was both stressful and cathartic. Fallon felt like there was some realization she was supposed to have about that school, or whatever it was, and she did not think she had discovered it yet. So her only answer was to keep asking questions, to keep trying to find out more. "That girl from the video believed that it was true, beyond a shadow of a doubt. But it wasn't. It was just some creepy guy who held her captive. I can see that from watching the video." Her eyes found Calintha's. "Do you ever think that maybe we are wrong about it being a school, and they just haven't found a good explanation for why we think that yet?" Two weeks ago, Fallon might not have thought this, but lately, she was confused.
A painted nail traced a zig-zagging pattern over the desk. "I don't remember anyone dying or being sick at Barren Pines," she said. Her finger began to trace tight loops. "But I remember starting classes with my friends. I remember the big kitchen they let me have all to myself for my culinary arts study. I can still draw a diagram of the kitchen's set-up. Is it possible I made it all up?" She shrugged. "Maybe." Fallon leaned forward and rested her chin on the flat of her hand.
"My parents don't remember Barren Pines. They told me I was going back to Destiny City to study at Crystal Academy. They put me on a plane in August and never heard from me again until I showed up in the hospital." Fallon still felt guilty about that. It wasn't as if she asked to be abducted, but her mother looked like a disaster when they finally met again. The months that Fallon was missing were the worst of her life. It was good, in a way, to know that her mother loved her so deeply, but it didn't help alleviate the resulting guilt. Her father was no better, but he had a knack for hiding it.
A weak smile played across Fallon's lips. "You think we'll ever understand it, Calintha?" Her eyes searched the other girl's for something, but she wasn't sure what.
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Posted: Mon Mar 22, 2010 11:09 pm
"Sure thing." Calintha stood, crossing the short distance over the floor of the kitchen to reach up into a cupboard. She pulled down a simple glass and filled it with water from the pitcher in the fridge. As a second thought she grabbed herself a glass of water, seeing as they would be eating soon. "I think my shrink explained to me a similar story."
It wasn't true though. There was a difference between it, she could just feel it. "I...don't know Fallon. They keep telling us these things, but there is SO much they still can't explain about everything." She took the two glasses of water back to the island, and resumed her seat. "I had scars you know, scars I didn't make up. I have pictures of them, just a little while before I 'died'." She made air quotes with her fingers. "I fell into a fire when I was younger." It wasn't quite the whole truth, but it was close enough for the purpose of the story.
"I don't have them anymore Fallon. When I woke up in the hospital, all of the fire scars on my stomach were gone. How do they explain that?" It was her one bit of sanity. People didn't just die and then wake up scar free. If anything, they died and woke up with MORE scars. "And I mean, we all have the same ideas about Barren Pines. Its scarily similar if we made it all up. I just don't understand why others won't believe it."
Calintha was full on rambling now. "So much just doesn't make sense... Nothing quite adds up the way it should." Everybody was confused, and it showed. She sighed heavily, and took a sip of her water. The smell of cheese and tomatoes and spices was making her very hungry. She hadn't had much of Fallon's cooking, but she'd had enough to know that it was ridiculously good, even if Fallon didn't think so herself. Calintha was growing more and more excited for the meal.
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Posted: Tue Mar 23, 2010 6:46 am
Fallon took the water with a smile. "Thanks." She tipped it to her lips and drained nearly half the glass before Calintha was done speaking. Scars didn't make any sense to Fallon, but she believed Calintha. Imogen said that Zue mentioned something about a bad fire back then. So maybe it was true. Maybe there was a fire? Maybe just wasn't good enough for Fallon; there were too many maybes floating all over Barren Pines.
Her glass clicked against the table. "If we were all fed the same lies, then it makes sense we would think the same thing," she said, voice light. "But it seems like a lot of trouble to go to for an organ ring. Couldn't they have just drugged us and been done with it?" Not that that was what Fallon wanted. If they had done that, she would certainly be dead.
The lasagna continued to send waves of cheese and tomato into the kitchen. Fallon slipped from her seat and popped the door to the oven open. A wave of heat rolled out on to her legs. "I never thought I would say this, but," she slipped on a pair of oven mitts, "I have almost stopped caring." Stopped? Well, not exactly... just, sort of... given up? "There are no answers to the questions that I have, and sometimes, I feel like I am just tempting fate to be so concerned with how I survived instead of just being happy that I did." She pulled the lasagna out of the oven and rested it on the stove tops.
The top layer bubbled, popping in oil-filled bursts. "That's a sad topic," she said, opening a cabinet to search for two plates. She found them on the third try. "Why don't you tell me more about this tea harvesting thing?" Silverware was brought out, and Fallon portioned the food on to matching plates. They laughed and smiled for the rest of the evening, promising to make it a habit.
Out of Barren Pines, Fallon had survived -- and so had Calintha. Perhaps that was all that mattered?
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