Lost & Found

The tale of a conflicted girl

"Mom, what happened to my boxes from high school?" Emma asked with her head in the hallway closet.

"Your what?" She heard her mother shout down the hallway.

"You said you saved all my stuff from high school. From before I went to Boston," Emma reminded her.

"Oh. Uh, have you checked the attic?" She asked.

"The attic?" Emma grumbled to herself.

She always hated the attic. It creeped her out more than she cared to admit. Piper always loved it up there. She would spend hours up there reading by the old stained-glass window, whereas Emma found it dusty and spooky. But Emma was a grown-up now. Things like that shouldn't affect her anymore. But even so, she got that familiar shiver as she crawled up the attic ladder on her quest to find her memorabilia from her formidable years.

The indistinguishable smell of the past wafted through her nostrils, giving her even more of an eerie feeling. She didn't like that any of her stuff was up there. She pulled on the string for the light and waited as it flickered to life.

Looking around, Emma couldn't help but be overwhelmed by the number of boxes her mother kept up there. From Christmas decorations to baby clothes to camping equipment – it was all stored up there. Even after her father passed away, her mother kept all of his things tucked away in this very attic. God knows nobody in this house was going to pull out that camping equipment and use it anymore. It was her father's passion, not his wife or daughters. The days when they went camping as a family had long passed.

It took Emma a bit of time to come across the box labeled 'Emma's Things'. She dusted off the top of the box before pulling it out of its little nook in the attic. She wasn't about to spend any more time than necessary up there, so she took it down to her bedroom with her. She set the box on the bed and took a deep breath before she opened the top. She was about to dredge up memories she long since repressed or forgotten. She was doing it willingly, yet she was scared to death of it.

"Come on," she coaxed herself as she pushed away the flaps from the top of the box.

On top lay her 10th grade yearbook from her final year of school in her hometown. Memorial High School was written in large letters across the cover along with the swooping numbers of the year below it. It was the last year she went to school in Long Island. Grabbing the book out of the box, she took a seat on the edge of the bed. With another deep breath, she opened the cover.

There wasn't much she remembered – the years decayed and distorted her memories of her life at MHS. Her most recent school memories all took place at Bridgeport in Boston. But there were some things she would never forget – like the way Aiden Hawthorne made her feel during the time she spent with him. And that was something she'd never find in a yearbook.

Her heart skipped slightly when she came across a photo of Aiden in the book. He was standing in the middle of a group of friends, with a smug smile on his face. He was the type of boy who always had friends because he was just so likeable. He was always making people laugh. But no one laughed harder at his jokes than Emma did.

She sighed looking at the face of the teenage boy she left behind. If she had to do it all over again, she might have actually chosen to stay in Long Island with him instead of going to boarding school in Boston. But then she thought of Patrick and how amazing her life was with him by her side. And she knew it wasn't fair to put Aiden up on a pedestal like she was doing. Patrick was just as significant in her life, if not more. He was the man she married, the man she had a child with.

Emma flipped to her own picture in the yearbook. She looked almost unrecognizable. But deep down, past the overly highlighted hair and goofy smile was the same girl she always was. Emma Haines. She was Emma Gaunt now, taking Patrick's family name. Though legally, she had hyphenated her last name - Haines-Gaunt - she still only went by the surname Gaunt.