Chapter 4: Lexy

Neither of us slowed down till we reached my house. I don’t know what I was expecting, but part of me was surprised to see it still in one piece. I had no reason to think otherwise, but still, I felt a little surprised when I walked in.

“Mom? Dad?” I called out, but I wasn’t actually expecting an answer. Neither of them was supposed to be home. Mom was doing some volunteer activity today and my dad was at work. It was just a typical Tuesday.

As soon as we knew the coast was clear, we ran up the stairs to my room, and Annabeth immediately raided my closet for the clothes she left over here for days when she didn’t expect to spend the night, or on days like she got spaghetti dumped on her by random boys. Things like that happened more often to us than one might think.

“Okay,” I started as I plopped down on my bed. “So, what’s the big thing that’s actually wrong?”

“I didn’t say anything was wrong,” Annie answered trying to sound nonchalant.

“Yes, you did,” I responded. “You told me to keep my earphones out, and that means you were worried about something. What has you freaked out?”

“I ran into Jake again.” She blurted out after a moment.

“What?” I questioned, not following.

“Jake. Jake Green. The kid who spilled the spaghetti all over me. The kid who followed us home.”

“Okay… I’m not following…” I replied slowly.

“I can’t explain it,” She answered sounding flustered. “Both times, I don’t think I should have run into him. It was like we were being pulled into each other or something. And when we touched…”

“When you touched, what happened?” I questioned, sitting up.

I could feel that she didn’t want to tell me. I could feel her trying to decide if she should. If I wanted to, I could have just read her mind, and been done with it, but I respected her privacy. I rarely ever read her mind. And sometimes when you’re close to someone it’s harder to read them.

“I saw something that scared me.” She finally answered.

“Okay, you lost me again.” I replied, leaning back again.

“I saw you… and I saw him… in a bad situation...”

“How bad?” I asked, remembering the weird noise I had heard at school.

Anna didn’t answer… She just ignored the question.

“Annabeth Layne McAlister, tell me right now what you saw.”

She still didn’t want to tell me, but the urge to tell someone was overwhelming so finally she blurted out, “I saw you and Jake both in handcuffs and chains on a dirt floor looking pretty beaten up…”

“Oh.” I responded.

“Look, I don’t know what that means. It’s just weird. It could be one of those things that have a different meaning or something.” She tried.

“Annie, we both know you don’t have those very often. It must be a warning. We can probably prevent it.” I didn’t feel confident with that answer, but it seemed to make her feel better.

“Lexy!” My little sister, Calynn shouted as she walked in the door. “We’re home!”

“Okay!” I yelled back. “I’ll be down in a minute!”

“So, what do we do now?” Annabeth asked.

“Now, we go give the children a snack, and we forget about everything for the time being,” I replied simply. “There’s no use worrying about something that may or may not happen.”

She nodded and we headed downstairs.

It was Tuesday so that meant I had to cook dinner tonight. Sometimes, I made a real meal, but more often than not, I put in frozen food like a chicken cordon bleu and made some instant mashed potatoes in a pot with some microwave corn and called it a day. Annabeth, being a vegetarian, kept her own supply of food at our house, so she would make some fake meat food from our freezer.

Dinner was in the oven, and we were all doing our homework by the time my parents came home. It was nothing out of the ordinary, for which I was grateful.

“Mommy!” Sara, my youngest sister exclaimed when they walked in.

“Sari!” My mom wrapped my sister up in a hug as my dad walked in behind them.

“What? No hug for me, Sara-Bear?” He teased.

Sari made some very odd noise, sounding a bit like a pterodactyl, before letting go of Mom and jumping into Dad.

“How was your day, girls?” Mom asked as she put her stuff down and walked over to the table.

“It was good.” I answered, and there was a round of echoes of about the same thing from around the table.

“And your presentation, honey, how did that go?”

“Eh,” I answered, writing down the answer to the math problem. “It could have gone better.”

“What? The people didn’t like your presentation on uh what is it, the supernatural appeal to teens?”

“More like I stuttered and stumbled and made it about as unappealing as I could have.” I told her with a sigh.

“I told you, you just gotta sing a happy song when you’re stressed. It works like a charm every time.” My dad responded. “You listen to enough music; I’m sure you have a good song for things like that.”

“Dad… It never works that way for me,” I stated annoyed.

“You don’t know it till you try it.” He reminded me.

I sighed and closed my math book and moved to take dinner out of the oven.

“I have tried, dad.” I responded. “But it doesn’t work for me.”

Annabeth rolled her eyes at me but didn’t say anything.

“Annabeth, how did her presentation really go?” My mom questioned.

“You know, she did her best,” Anna stuttered, nearly choking on the glass of orange juice she had just gotten. We only kept orange juice in our house because she liked it.

“That’s my girl,” My dad hugged me as I was walking dinner to the table.

“Careful, it’s hot!” I exclaimed, attempting to dodge out of his way, unsuccessfully.

And just like every other night we sat down around the table and had dinner. The way we had every night for as long as I could remember. And the thought of something bad happening, disappeared in the contentness of the night.