Taylor Hanson
Despite this, when I woke up that early morning after the "incident," as I would take to calling it later on, I was aware of her immediately. I knew, without looking, that she was sitting next to the bed that I was in, in the chair that I had last seen Parker in. I also knew, without looking at her, that she was a stranger and that was what prevented me from becoming excited as I would have if I had thought it was a family member.
To prove myself right, I looked cautiously from the window over to my other side, where, sure enough, a strange woman was sitting in the chair I had last seen Parker in, staring blankly at a page in a magazine that, at first, I thought she had brought with her. Then, seeing the title of the magazine, I guessed otherwise.
"GQ, huh?" I said, my voice still as scratchy as it had been before.
"Pardon?" she said, looking up suddenly. She was looking at me like I had lost my mind. I was probably looking at her the same way.
"Gentleman's Quarterly," I said, pointing to the magazine she was holding. "The magazine you're reading."
"Oh," she said, smiling with embarrassment. She put the magazine down, shaking her head at herself. "Harrison Ford is on the cover. I couldn't help myself."
I smiled a little bit. "And I thought you were thinking about going on Viagra."
Her smile grew wider. "Do I look that old?"
"I'm fifteen," I said. "Everyone looks old to me."
"Gee, thanks," she said sarcastically. "You could've just said 'no.'"
"I guess," I said.
Really, she definitely didn't look old. If someone had asked me to guess her age based on the way she looked, I would have said somewhere in her early thirties. If someone had asked me to guess based on her apparent personality, I probably would have guessed much younger.
She nodded. "How do you feel?" she asked cautiously.
"Confused," I answered. "Maybe it's just the medicine they gave me before I went to sleep, but, um, am I supposed to know you?" I asked back.
She laughed. I recognized that laugh from somewhere. It came to me during the few moments it took her to think carefully about her answer that Parker laughed like that. Exactly like that.
"I guess not," she said. "You've seen me before, but you were very little. Two or three, I think. I'm not sure you'd remember me. My name is Annie Lawrence. I'm a friend of your parents."
"Oh," I said. I searched my mind frantically for a time my parents might have mentioned an Annie Lawrence to me. They talked about people that they knew "way back when" quite a bit. But I couldn't remember them mentioning an Annie Lawrence. "I'm Taylor."
"Taylor," she repeated as if tasting the name. She nodded to herself with satisfaction.
There was a moment or two of what must have been an uncomfortable silence for her. I myself hardly noticed it since I was too busy taking her in.
Her clothes were the first thing I noticed. I almost needed sunglasses to look at them since the colors were so bright. I wondered if Zac had ever met her. They could have given each other tips on loud clothing.
Then, unable to look at her clothes too long without getting a headache (they probably weren't really that bad. It just seemed like it at the time), I moved upward to her hair. It was short in sort of a boyish cut and a light auburn color. I wondered to myself if she had forgotten to brush it before she had left her house. It looked like she had traversed through a windstorm to get to me.
The next and last thing I looked to were her eyes. They were as blue as a cold ocean and just as deep. They say the eyes are the windows to the soul. They certainly were in her case. I could tell just by looking at her that she had a lot of secrets. I could tell by the way she was looking at me that some of those secrets might have something to do with me.
"How did you know I was here?" I asked without really thinking about it first. My mouth was thinking, my brain at the time, wasn't.
"Uh, well," she stalled, obviously not sure how to explain this to me. "Do you remember, uh, just before you...passed out, crawling into the kitchen and picking up the phone?"
I tried to think back.
"Vaguely," I replied, remembering the far away hellos coming from the phone that I thought I had accidentally broken that day that already seemed like a million years ago even though it was barely twelve hours ago that it had happened.
She nodded. "I was on the other end."
"That was you?" I said, even though in a way, she hadn't answered my question.
"Yup," she said.
"Why were you calling Gina's house?" I asked, thinking that it was a little bit too much of a coincidence that she had been calling Gina's house when she was just a friend of my parents. I certainly didn't recall Gina mentioning any Annie Lawrence either.
"Gina was an old friend, too," she said. "I was just calling to say hello."
In the middle of the afternoon?
"Oh," I said instead of following my line of questioning. I barely knew the woman. It wasn't right to grill her. Not yet anyway. I had a feeling I was going to be doing some heavy duty grilling later on.
Without meaning to, I yawned.
"Am I boring you?" she asked with a laugh.
"Not at all," I said. Then, remembering something my friend's grandmother always used to say, I added, "Not boring company, just bad manners."
She laughed again. That was definitely Parker's laugh.
"My mother always used to say that," she said.
"My friend's grandmother says that a lot," I told her, my eyes already beginning to close. "Ugh, why am I sleeping so much?" I mumbled to myself, not doing anything to stop it.
"You need your rest," I barely heard her say as I felt her gently take my hand.
Questions? Comments?
Index
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Three