Mallory's Melody

Chapter 31

MALLORY HAD TWO BIRTHDAYS, the first being her actual date of birth and the second, the day Cole had brought her home from the orphanage. They were the same days, but different. June one was when she was born, and September 29th, the day that she was reborn, reborn in the sense, that by adopting her, Cole had untangled her from the clutches of fate, and remoulded her into the person he wanted her to be, the future he wanted her to have—he and Jane.

She read all this on her bed, among the stacks of letters she'd gotten from all sorts of people, some people she'd seen at the annual family get together, and others whose names she hadn't heard before. Yet it was Cole's letter that stood out amongst the litters, a judgement she made without having to read the other letters. She didn't have to. There would be more depth and meaning in Cole's letters than there ever would be in the letters of a bunch of random strangers who she didn't know, and who most likely didn't know her too. Familiarity fueled meaning, made the inked words on a paper seem much closer to the heart, more genuine than if someone she hardly knew wrote it. It could be the same words written but to a different effect.

Cole's letter had made her cry. She read it in his voice. She read everything in his voice, that calm, dreamy voice of his that had grown vines in her memory since she was a child. It was the voice that she'd heard every night before she went to sleep. Cole had read those bedtime stories that sent her into a deep spiral of unconsciousness. But it wasn't really the story that made her sleep, it was his voice, more lullaby than lullaby itself, an anastasia that would work faster than any other.

Mallory pulled out a pen and paper and began to write back, but stopped halfway, her heart protesting. How could she write to the same person she still harboured malice for. Or did she? She touched her chest as though to look for it, the black inked stain of resentment that sometimes sullied the purity of the heart. But she didn't find it. She was mad at Cole from a logical side—he should have told her about Jane— but was soft for him emotionally. Time had quelled her anger.

"Mal, take out the garbage will you?" Susan yelled from the kitchen, her high-pitched voice filling Mallory's ears with steam as it usually did. She hated Susan on a normal day but hated her more now. Who gave a person chores on their birthday? Who but an insensitive, emotionally out-of-tune person, which were descriptions Susan would fit in for any day but still...

Mallory reluctantly shoved the pile of letters from her lap and climbed off the bed. She slipped into her bunny slippers and began heading for the kitchen to refuse Susan's demands. But Susan was not there, the pot of potatoes she was boiling, rumbling and clattering on the cooker. She walked over to it and turned the knob off, not because it was overdue, but because she wanted to elongate the time that it would take to be due. Susan's cooking was not the best. No, in fact, it was the worst, much more disgusting than a pile of cow dung. But at least, something as repulsive as that would still have a taste. The longer she had to wait to shove the meals underneath the table cloth during lunch, the better.

She took the black waste bag from the kitchen floor and slung it over her shoulder. It was surprisingly weightless, as though nothing but air occupied it, and that was a shock considering the quantity of waste Susan produced from her numerous trial and error cooking sessions. She shrugged and made her way outside, opened the large entrance door that led to the green dumpster cans outside, and was met with everything she wasn't expecting.

"Suprise!"

Mallory yelped at the sight of them, a colony of people lined up across the green lawn. Ballons and Happy birthday banners hung over them like colourful adornments. The cheeky grins on their faces were so jubilant, it was heading towards creepy. She recognised some of them, most of them being from her high school, Becky Ryan, Mary Jones, Tracy Umpire, and hers truly, Allen Wrights, the person who she spent her entire high-school year crushing on from a distance. He'd never actually noticed her, and over time, the pain of an unrequited attraction had quelled every inch of romantic feeling she had for him, but yet there was still something magical about this, something dreamy-like about the brawny, caramel-skinned jock setting foot in her territory in her house, and something almost pleasurably murderous about his staring at her.